The other day a friend told me about a four-day bike camping trip that she took with her young son along the Oregon Coast. On the third night, after they’d eaten their dinner and settled into their sleeping bags, my friend was seized by panic: What if they’d pitched their tent in the tsunami inundation zone?1
My friend called her husband, who knew a lot about coastal geography and topography, including all the places a person definitely shouldn’t be in case of a tsunami-causing earthquake. She described exactly where they were and asked him if they were in the tsunami zone.
“I don’t think so,” he said, “but hang on, let me check.” She heard him typing something into the computer. A little while later he got back onto the phone. “No,” he said. “You’re totally safe where you are.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Good Ideas to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.