Late one afternoon during the first week of November 2020, I packed my remaining items into my Subaru Outback and headed for the Oregon border. After dragging my carcass under some barbed wire and dodging a few bullets, I departed California for good, never to return to the once golden state, now turned all dross.
Okay, I'm exaggerating about the barbed wire and the bullets. California isn't quite that bad. But it's bad enough, and I'm not the only person to think so. In 2020, an estimated 180,000 people fled California. They escaped for a variety of reasons: high taxes, burdensome regulations, insane lockdown restrictions, and a government run by a disturbing alliance between the corrupt, the incompetent, and the insane.
I spent the last fourteen years doing contract work with the state of California. I got a chance to see how the sausage was made. It was hardly an edifying experience. And yes, what I saw contributed to my resolution to flee the state. What follows is the eight major reasons why I left the state.
(1) Gavin Newsom replaced Jerry Brown as state governor in January of 2019. Now it's important to understand what Brown's retirement meant to the state. For all his faults, Brown was a competent administrator and, what is unusual for a politician of the left, fiscally conservative. During his last two terms of governor Brown did more than anyone else to hold California together. His fiscal conservatism did not always make him popular with state workers (who wanted heftier raises), but it kept the state solvent — which is actually a big deal. Unlike the Federal government, the State of California can't "print" it's way out of debt (i.e., create money ex nihilio to cover the liabilities). When the money runs out, chaos ensues. Chief among the item inducing chaos is California’s crumbling infrastructure.
The state’s roads are falling apart. There are bridges that need to be replaced and highways that need to be repaved. Then there is the states water system. In 2017, problems with the upkeep of the Oroville Dam led to 180,000 being evacuated. Energy has been problem for California since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Rolling blackouts have become a routine occurrence throughout the state. Forest mismanagement has turned much of California into a fire hazard. In the fall of 2019, the electricity was turned off for days at a time for large sections of northern California because of fear that winds would topple power-lines, setting off catastrophic wildfires.
If even under a competent administrator like Jerry Brown the state’s infrastructure is nonetheless falling to pieces, just imagine what would happen under an incompetent administrator. This brings us to Newsom who, while not a complete dunce, nonetheless hardly inspires hope for the future. To begin with, there's his petty self-conceit. Every state building places a picture of the sitting governor in their lobby. But throughout much of 2019 and into 2020, Newsom's picture was missing. What had happened? I was told by people in the know that the governor's staff was having a heck of a time finding a photo that met with Newsom's approval. Some may dismiss such antics as a harmless foible, but at the same time it's hard to imagine past governors, whether democrat or republican, engaging in such behavior. This is an indication of the type of men who now occupy positions of responsibility and authority in our government. They are vain, quick to take offense, and petty.
These qualities go hand-in-hand with a kind of sentimental alienation from reality. Newsom began his career as a centrist in the Dianne Feinstein mold, but he has tended to govern increasingly to the left as he has occupied more powerful offices. He talks a centrist game, but when the chips are down, his instincts tend to carry him leftward. One example is his support of "universal healthcare" in California. I understand that many people believe that everyone has a “right” to basic healthcare. But there are moral wishes and then there is reality. The goal of providing universal health care is restricted by the fact that there are not enough doctors, nurses, and medical facilities to provide medical care for everyone's needs. In short, healthcare is primarily a supply problem, but advocates of government supplied medicine almost always treat it as a demand problem. The California version of Obamacare, for example, provides lower income individuals with a subsidy to pay for health insurance. This has the effect of increasing the demand for healthcare services without at the same time increasing the supply. If you increase demand while keeping supply constant, this will lead to a dramatic escalation in prices. There's no way to get around that. It's how supply and demand works.
We see the supply problem in emergency rooms across the state of California. According to California law, anyone who walks into an emergency room must be seen by a doctor. Hospitals can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars if they turn anyone away. When Newsom talks about "universal" healthcare, he means everyone, including "young undocumented workers." I understand this sounds wonderful. Who doesn’t want to provide healthcare for everyone? While we're at it, why don’t we provide healthcare for the entire world? Well obviously we can’t: there’s not enough of it to go around. Yet this is a fact which many rather sentimental individuals have trouble wrapping their heads around.
The desire to take theatrical moral stances is one of the least salubrious characteristics of progressive elites. Because they don’t actually provide more health care (that would involve increasing supply, which they don’t know how to do), they simply distribute it to a different set of people. To make themselves feel good about themselves, they give Peter medical care by taking it away from Paul. Meanwhile, the elites themselves never go without. Gavin Newsom, with all his wealth and status, can always get the health care he needs either for himself or his family. So it's very easy for him to put on moral airs for securing healthcare for "undocumented workers" (i.e., people who have violated the nation's immigration laws to be in this country). He's not giving up his own private healthcare to benefit these illegal aliens. No, he's essentially taking that healthcare away from someone much less privileged than himself, who must pay the price for Newsom's moral preening.
Newsom's heavy-handed "progressivism" was seen to full effect in his handling of the pandemic. Although Newsom afflicted the state's citizenry with some of the country's toughest pandemic restrictions, California ultimately had the 29th-lowest death rate out of the nation’s 50 states. While it would be unfair to blame Newsom entirely for the lockdowns (that approach recommended by “experts” like Dr. Anthony Fauci), the fact that Newsom tended to err on the side of too much restriction shows the tendency of his governance. At one point Newsom, upset that people were congregating en masse to the state's beaches, threatened to pass an order closing every beach in the state. This happened around the time that studies were emerging demonstrating it was nearly impossible to contract the virus outdoors. People like Newsom like to talk about "following the science," but they only tend to follow the "science" that conforms to their innate proclivities. Like many other progressive elites, California’s governor enjoys exacting coercion on ordinary citizens. When this coercion is resisted, he becomes vindictive.
I must add at this point that the Covid-19 lockdowns were an ill-conceived and economically dangerous policy. It's not clear at this point how effective the lockdowns actually were in stopping the spread of the virus. The evidence so far remains ambivalent and difficult to access. But there's good reason to believe that they may have done serious long-term damage to the economy. Progressives are often woefully ignorant about market economics. They have no appreciation of how intricate and delicate supply chains really are. Case in point: I'm beginning to hear concerns about the food supply as a result of lack of parts for farming equipment. Already, because of the lockdowns, there's been an increase in starvation in the Third World. This autumn when shore shelves become increasingly bare, will any of those who supported the lockdowns with such implacable dogmatism and irrational fervor ever admit they may have been wrong? Don’t count on it.
Certainly will hear no such mea culpa from Newsom himself. Typical in this respect is his reaction to his administration's embarrassing mismanagement of $11.4 billion of the federally funded Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. Funds were disbursed to ineligible claimants, including (from what I've heard from inside sources) to inmates Georgia-based prisons. Another $19 billion remains under investigation for fraud. While billions were being embezzled, legitimate claimants faced lengthy delays in receiving much needed financial assistance. The Newsom administration tried to palm off their incompetence on the Trump administration for failing to provide "appropriate guidance." This has to be one of the most stupid excuses ever. Given the contempt with which California political elites hold President Trump and his administration, why would they ever deign to seek guidance from such a source? Couldn’t they figure out how to distribute funds on their own without Trump’s help?
The larger lesson to be drawn from all of this is that California is governed by people not fit to rule (a problem afflicting much of the West). It is not pleasant to be governed by corrupt elites alienated from reality. Reason enough to flee the state.
(2) Crony capitalism. California, despite its progressive tax system and extensive social welfare programs, features the highest poverty rate in the nation. How does this make any sense? How can one of the nation's most "progressive" states also be one of its most poverty-ridden and unequal?
The answer is pretty simple. Intentions don't guarantee results. Progressive elites may whine and bleat all they like about their desire to "fight" poverty and inequality, but they are too naive, ignorant, and thin-skinned to make this desire a reality. Progressives don't realize that trying to achieve social aims through political means is fraught with danger. Politics is a very dirty business. If you seek idealistic outcomes via the political process, more often than not your agenda will be hijacked by darker forces. This is what has happened repeatedly to American progressives.
I'll provide one example illustrating how this works in California. It involves a major contractor providing services to the golden state. This contractor has stolen millions, possibly tens of millions, from its employees who worked on state sites. They have accomplished this by gaming a system that was originally set up to guarantee a "living wage" to state contract workers.
The company in question is a powerful corporation that is armed to the teeth with lawyers. For this reason, I cannot reveal the company's identity. An ordinary citizen like myself does not have what the political scientist Gaetano Mosca described as "juridical defense" against powerful corporations. This is the case even when making largely factual statements about them. Hence I will refer to this company merely as "Corporation X."
Section 19134 of California's government code regulates how much private companies must pay employees working on state contracts as follows:
Personal services contracts entered into by a state agency ... shall include provisions for employee wages and benefits that are valued at least 85 percent of the state employer cost of wages and benefits provided to state employees for performing similar duties.
These wages rates are set by the California Department of Human Resources. For example, a “Cook Specialist I” must be compensated $27.47 an hour. By law, an individuals with such a position can’t receive a cent less. But there’s catch in the regulation. The cook’s compensation does not have to be paid entirely in liquid cash. A certain portion of the remuneration, called the “benefit” rate, can be paid in the form of health, dental, vision, holidays, sick leave, vacation, and/or retirement. So this is what a corporation that is powerful and has plenty of lawyers and lobbyists can do. They pay their employees who work on state contracts the basic “wage” rate. Then they provide a cheap, no frills “benefit” package that only covers a part of the “benefit rate.” The company then pockets the difference. The benefit rate for the cook is $12.17 an hour. If his employer gives him medical benefits worth $6.09, that leaves the company with an extra profit of $6.08. If the cook works forty hours a week, over a years time the company will have taken over $12,000 of his earnings as defined by state regulations. If this company has over a hundred full-time employees working at state sites, it can earn over a million dollars in extra profits through such practices.
A company like Corporation X can usually get away with this kind of finagling because the vast number of people working for them don’t know anything about Section 19134 or what they’re entitled to as contract employees working for the state. Corporation X, which has done business with the state of California for nearly two decades, staffing state sites with over a hundred employees, has made a tidy sum through cheating people barely earning a minimum wage. It could easily be in the tens of millions. That’s money they have filched from people barely making over the minimum wage. Outside of a few localized exceptions, the California bureaucracy has done virtually nothing about this.
Are such abuses of section 19134 widespread? That I don’t know. The state does seem to do a pretty good job of enforcing the regulation against small businesses that win state contracts. It’s only big powerful business corporations, such as the aforementioned Corporation X, that have enough clout to get away with gaming the system.
Crony capitalism goes well beyond the abuses of section 19134. California is rather generous with its corporate subsidies. A study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that if California eliminated all its corporate tax subsidies from its tax code, they could reduce the state income tax (which is nearly the highest in the nation) by 6.2 percent.
Consider as well, in this context, the abuses by so-called “nonprofits” to consider. As the California Policy Center explains:
California’s homeless crisis is certainly caused in part by unaffordable housing, but it is exacerbated by another type of cronyism, “nonprofit cronyism.” These are rent seeking nonprofits that develop scandalously expensive “permanent supportive housing” for the homeless. In Los Angeles today, apartments for the homeless – palatial abodes by any reasonable comparison to the squalor of living on the streets – are being constructed in some cases for as much as a half-million per unit. The government pays a portion of these costs through grants, using taxpayers money, while other funds are secured through tax deductible donations. And when these units actually are opened to a microscopic fraction of the homeless population, because they are owned and managed by nonprofit corporations, they pay no income or even property taxes.
California is the sort of state where, if you have the right kind of connections in the state bureaucracy and legislature, crafty enough lawyers, and are skilled at political and economic chicanery, you can become very wealthy. If you don’t have these skills, or you don’t want to play such a dirty game, you must content yourself with crumbs. There’s a reason why California has the highest inequality ratios in the country. It’s a feast or famine state. The elites that run the place, whether bureaucratic, corporate, or union, or political in nature, are at war with the state’s middle class. We see that very clearly in Newsom's excessive lockdown policies, which have decimated what was left of California’s small businesses (while allowing big retailers like Amazon and Walmart to enrich themselves with untold billions).
Who wants to live in a state that increasingly looks like a dysfunctional Third World oligocracy, with a handful of ultra-rich crony capitalists presiding over a population consisting of impecunious peasants? I certainly don’t—which explains in part why I have left the state for good.
(3) State Budget. California’s much touted surplus of $21 billion is disappearing fast. The state is expected to face a $53.4 billion deficit over the next year along with 18 percent unemployment. Small businesses have been hit especially hard by Newsom’s draconian shelter-in-place orders. There are, or were, 4 million small businesses in California that employ seven million people. Restaurants make up the largest share of these small businesses, and at least 30 percent of such establishments will likely close forever as a consequence of the lockdowns. To make matters worse, thanks to CalPERS, the nation's largest public pension fund, the state is saddled with unfunded pension debt liabilities of one trillion dollars. California is teetering toward bankruptcy. Already state employees are being forced to take two furlough days every month (equal to a 9.23 percent pay reduction)—a situation that will remain in place for at least another two years.
State budget financial woes can be especially hard on those dependent on government welfare programs. In the last budget crisis, the education sector, which at the time made up 42 percent of the budget, ended up bearing the brunt of cuts; but there were cuts in programs to the poor as well. Such cuts are likely to be even worse in a future budget crisis, because the cuts have to come from somewhere and there’s only so much money they can cut from other areas of the budget (pensions and emergency services are essentially off limits).
Perhaps even more ominous is what the budget crisis means for the state’s failing infrastructure, which I’ve already mentioned. I can remember when California had some of the best roads and schools in the country. Not any more. I’ve traveled fairly extensively within the Western United States and California’s roads are among the worst (the best I’ve run across are in Utah). Expect conditions to worsen as budget constraints limit options for new projects.
I could mention education here as well, which could also be adversely affected by a budget crisis. But the problem with education in California has more to do with corruption and the teacher unions rather than with spending. Essentially, the California education system has fallen victim to what might be called “bureaucratic grift.” There are indications that radical left ideologues have way too much influence in the system as well. If you have children and you want to live in California, you better be able to afford private schools.
Many Sacramento elites seem to be operating under the assumption that the Federal government will bail them out. But if, as seems likely, the Republicans take over the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, that source of funding may be cut off. Moreover, there’s another consideration that has to be kept in mind. If, as some believe, the country is segregating itself by ideology—that is to say, conservatives are moving to red states and liberals are moving to blue states—bailing out a state like California might create dangerous tensions between red and blue states. According to a Mercatus Center study “Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition, 2018 Edition,” a very clear trend emerges. Red states tend to be more fiscally solvent than blue states. The most fiscally solvent states are Nebraska (#1), South Dakota (#2), Tennessee (#3), Florida (#4), and Oklahoma (#5). The least fiscally solvent states are Kentucky (#46), Massachusetts (#47), New Jersey (#48), Connecticut (#49), and Illinois (#50). Red states are not going to be pleased with the idea of bailing out blue states. Imagine if you fled California to Florida or Texas to escape taxes and suddenly you learn that California is now, through the federal government, reaching across state lines and poking its greedy fingers into your wallet! Under such a scenario, we might expect the secessionist and civil war rhetoric we’ve been hearing more of late to get ratcheted up by at least several notches, if not more.
It is not pleasant to live in a state run by financially irresponsible elites—hence yet another reason to flee California.
(4) Cost of living. This may be the most important reason why many are leaving the state. It’s damn expensive to live there, especially in the big cities along the coast. Part of these costs arise from the fact that California, from a weather and natural beauty standpoint, is a very desirable place to live. But taxes and regulation also play a role in California’s high cost of living. When regulations, for example, make it difficult to build new houses, this will obviously push up the price of housing.
Now I happened to reside in one of the least expensive places to live in California: in Humboldt County on California’s far northcoast. So cost of living was not as important a consideration for why I left the state as it might be for others. California, as a place to live, is desirable only for the wealthy. Expect to pay a handsome bounty for the “privilege” of living there.
(5) One party state. For all intents and purposes, California is controlled by the Democratic Party. There exists no viable competition from the Republican Party or anyone else. Every state-wide electoral position is held by a Democrat, and the Democrats enjoy super-majorities in both of the legislative houses. As a consequence of this, there exists no “countervailing” power to the Democratic political machine. The Democratic Party is dominated by two main factions which exist in a strange and perplexing symbiosis. There is first the Tammany Hall side of Democratic Party—i.e., the faction dominated by neo-liberal plutocrats and the public employee unions. Then there is the “woke” faction—the idealists, the moralizers, the people with various agendas which they wish to inflict upon those better constituted than themselves. Neither of these factions seem capable of governing. They both suffer from lowness of conscientiousness, which makes them prone to corruption.
Over a hundred years ago the Italian social scientist Vilfredo Pareto analyzed plutocratic elites very similar in complexion to what we have here in America and especially in California. Pareto believed that if such an elite becomes dominant so that it can do as it pleases, it will very quickly loot the society it governs into bankruptcy. We already can see something along these lines at the federal level. The neo-liberal plutocracy that dominates our ruling elite has run up $23 trillion in debts, and rather than attempting to rein in it’s profligate ways, it is doubling down on deficit spending. The Federal Deficit in 2021 is projected to be $2.3 trillion—the second largest since World War II. This ruling elite doesn’t care about keeping its finances in order. The Democratic Party, in particular, needs to spend money to stay in power. There are palms that need to be greased, beaks that need to be wetted, and electoral blocs that need to be bribed. The day when the money runs out and Democratic legislators and office holders can no longer dole out large sums of largesse to their key supporters is the day when the Democratic Party begins to lose grip on power.
The one exception to this rule would seem to be California, where it's hard to imagine the electorate ever turning on the Democrats. Consider, as one example, the Newsom recall. Some people are under the illusion that the recall can make a difference, but that is based on a misconception. The governor is not yet in any great danger of being recalled. All that’s happened is opponents of Newsom have been able to acquire enough signatures to run an election which might get the governor recalled. But in order for that to happen, 50 percent or more of the electorate will have to vote for removing the man from office (which I suspect is unlikely to happen). If this were to happen and the governor were recalled, odds are another corruption-soaked Democrat would be electd to replace Newsom, so the California electorate will find itself back at square one. But even if (per implausible) a Republican like Catilyn Jenner managed to somehow sneak in, nothing would likely change, because a Republican governor will be faced with Democratic super-majorities in the two legislative houses, a bureaucracy staffed with Democratic stalwarts, and powerful public employee unions that have enough political muscle to put a stop to any serious effort at reform.
In short, there exists no credible path toward reforming California’s political and budgetary woes. The Democrats can do as they please; and they’re pleasure is to do the bidding of the SEIU and other power elites that dominate California’s political economy and don’t give a fig for long-term financial stability.
Living in a corrupt one-party state where there exists no hope for accountability or reform is reason enough to flee from such a God-forsaken place.
(6) Drought and fire. California is in yet another drought. The state's 154 major reservoirs are at 71% of normal for this time of year, and this situation will likely worsen as summer, which tends to be very dry throughout California, approaches. In 2020, more than four percent of the state’s land went up in flames, making the year the worst on record when it came to wildfires. Every year it seems like the fires are getting more intense and gobbling up more forests and acreage. There are various arguments trotted forward to explain why this is happening, with one faction blaming climate change and another mismanagement of forest lands. For those of us who are powerless to do anything about the situation, it hardly matters what the cause of it is. We can be confident that whether as a consequence of global warming or mismanagement of resources (or a combination of both), California’s politicians will not be up to the task of remedying the situation. Every year there will be less water and more of the state will succumb to flames. This is practically a given. Nothing to be done for it, except—well, there’s always the option to leave the state. If your world is burning down and there’s no more water, that’s God’s way of saying it is time to move to a more hospitable environment.
(7) Personal security. There seems to exist a disturbing trend in this country in which mobs of people, as long as they are affiliated with the radical left (i.e., Antifa and Black Lives Matter) are allowed to riot, loot, and even engage in acts of violence with near impunity. This permissiveness goes hand-in-hand with a disturbing zeal on the part of authorities in “blue” cities and states to go after anyone who has the temerity to defend themselves against the intimidation and violence of these mobs. We saw this very clearly with the St. Louis couple who tried to defend their property and their lives by brandishing weapons; and I’ve also come across other examples of the nation's so-called “justice” system targeting people trying to defend themselves against the radical left. There was a story recently of a woman whose car was suddenly surrounded and attacked by a mob. Panicking, she hit the accelerator of her vehicle and wound up running somebody over. How did the “justice” system treat this case? Well of course they went after, with a zeal that is as disturbing as it is unjust, the woman in the car. Something like that can happen to just about anybody these days. You can be driving to the store and not realize that there are a group of angry protesters ready to ambush you as you make your way through town. What exactly are you supposed to do when the mob attacks your car, banging on your windows with the side of their fists and screaming curses at you? If you let them break into your car and drag you out into the street, you’ll likely either be murdered or severely beaten. If you attempt to drive away, however, and if you end up seriously injuring, or killing, one of the protesters, be prepared to stand trial for vehicular assault or manslaughter.
The “justice” system, particularly in blue states, hates you and wants bad things to happen to you. That’s in any case how I read it. The notion that there’s something wrong with trying to defend oneself against a mob is deeply troubling. It demonstrates that we are living among people who are sworn enemies of civilization and who hate normal people who just want to be left alone.
This concern about being attacked while in one’s car is not an altogether idle fear. In Eureka, California, where I used to live, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, there were reports of protesters attacking vehicles as they drove down the main thoroughfare through the town. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. But that’s an incredibly dangerous behavior which, in a well-run polity, would not be permitted. Protesting is one thing. But when those protests merge into large-scale temper tantrums in which the chronically discontented seek to intimidate the rest of us, then it’s gone too far and needs to be stopped.
I saw an interview last year where some radical leftist supporter of “defunding” the police insisted that the desire of a white woman to be protected from violent crime was merely another example of “white privilege.” Now I regard such a view as beyond despicable. The whole point of living in a civilized social order is to be safe from arbitrary violence. Anyone who would like to remove these protections on the grounds that they constitute “white privilege” is, in my book, an evil little shit. I don’t want to live in any area of the country where the “justice” system gives the upper hand to such people. I want to live among individuals who think I have a right to be protected from violence, and where that protection fails, that I can resort to self-defense without worrying that the justice system will go after me instead of my attackers.
Increasingly it appears to me that in blue sections of the country, especially in large cities, you don’t have a right to protection and self-defense. The police are being intentionally demoralized and defunded; and the justice system pursues, not the initiators of violence, but those who have the temerity to defend themselves from the mob. Ultimately, I merely wish to be left alone. But there are people in this country, particularly in the so-called “blue” areas, who regard this desire for self-autonomy as a kind of personal attack against themselves—which is as bizarre as it is disturbing.
California, being one of the bluest of blue states, does not strike this observer as a safe place to live. If you don’t have the right views, I fear there might exist left-wing activists within its “justice” department who hate you and want to see bad things happen to you. That’s reason enough to flee the state.
(8) Earthquakes. Most of the reasons I have so far given for fleeing the horrors of California could be chalked up to economic and political forces. These of course could change over time—either for the worse, or possibly for the better. Let’s briefly examine how things might turn out for the better. If, for example, attempts to develop a workable nuclear fusion pan out, this could lead to such gains in the economy that we could actually see our way out of the massive debt burdens that threaten to crush us at both the state and federal levels. It is possible as well that political threats—the threats, say, posed by Antifa and BLM—could wane over time. Political phenomena are ultimately cyclical. They occur in waves. We’ve had radical left cycles before in American history—in the thirties and sixties, for example. At some point, by their dishonesty and appalling behavior, these movements stir up opposition in the population at large, until decent people decide to band together and stop tolerating all the radical leftist nonsense.
It’s possible, then, that issues with the state budget, cost of living, the governor, and even personal security could take a turn for the better over the next ten years. I’m somewhat skeptical that this will happen, but I can’t say for sure that things will only get worse. But there is one threat that will not abate in the years to come, and that is the threat of a major earthquake striking somewhere along in California, either along the cascadia subduction zone in the far northern part of the state, or along the San Andreas fault in the southern part of the state. It’s not a matter of if, it is only a matter of when.
The last major earthquake to hit the southern part of the San Andreas fault occurred way back in 1857. Thomas Jordan, the director of the Southern California Earthquake Center, has warned that, because there has not been a major release of seismic stresses along the fault in over a hundred and sixty years, the southern portion of the fault “looks like it’s locked, loaded and ready to go”.
A large quake on the southern portion of the San Andreas fault would cause an estimated $200 billion in damages, injure 50,000 people, and kill 2,000. Even worse would be the devastation to infrastructure. It might take months to repair services for water, sewage, and electricity—not to mention all the damage sustained by roads and housing. We could see millions of people fleeing the golden state after a disaster of this magnitude.
An earthquake in far northern California could be significantly worse. The cascadia subduction zone is capable of generating earthquakes of magnitude 9.0 or higher. Since I lived in Eureka, I was always more concerned with the cascadia subduction zone than with the San Andreas fault. A magnitude 9.0 earthquake would not only wipe out coastal towns like Eureka, it could generate a thirty meter tsunami, which would cap off the destruction caused by the massive quake. No sensible person would want to live on the coast during such a quake (which could easily become the worst natural disaster in American history, as it could involve the entire subduction zone from Northern California to the Puget Sound).
One thing else to note: it is thought that subduction quakes could trigger sizeable tremblers along the San Andreas fault:
Studies of past earthquake traces on both the northern San Andreas Fault and the southern Cascadia subduction zone indicate a correlation in time which may be evidence that quakes on the Cascadia subduction zone may have triggered most of the major quakes on the northern San Andreas during at least the past 3,000 years or so. The evidence also shows the rupture direction going from north to south in each of these time-correlated events.
Incidentally, the last major quake along the cascadia subduction zone occurred in January of 1700. Historically, there exists a general average earthquake recurrence interval of 243 years in the subduction zone. Which means the Pacific Northwest is overdue for a catastrophic quake. Fortunately, not every trembler along the zone is a 9.0 magnitude “full margin rupture” quake. Of the last forty-one quakes along the subduction zone, only 19 have involved the entire zone. So it’s always possible that the next big quake will only be an eight-something and not affect the entire Pacific Northwest.
Jim Berkland, the geologist who accurately predicted the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, believed that the next rupture of the cascadia subduction zone would occur in October of 2030. If this happens, given the fact that there hasn’t been a high magnitude quake (7.0+) on the San Andreas fault since the 1906 San Francisco trembler, this could easily trigger major quakes in the southern part of the state, causing untold damage to highways and structures and bringing California’s population to its knees. California has not suffered a 7 magnitude or greater quake in the vicinity of a large metropolitan area since that Frisco quake. The whole state is hence living on borrowed time, blissfully unaware of how unsettled this section of the earth really is. Until California’s faults and subduction zones can relieve themselves (via massive quakes) of all their built-up seismic tension, California is not a place any sensible person would want to live.
I guess it's a good thing I live in southern Utah then. We have our problems but not anywhere near as bad as California.
You made for the Oregon border, but did you settle in Oregon? If not, which state did you end up settling in? (BTW, you are a very talented writer)