earthquake aftermath
2011 Tohoku, Japan, quake and tsunami, pictured here. Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY MIKE CLARKE / AFP / GETTY

For most of the past three years, I’ve worked as a book critic, which is not a job that affords me many opportunities to scare the living daylights out of my readers. (Authors, occasionally; readers, no.) But earlier this month, when a story I wrote about a dangerous fault line in the Pacific Northwest hit the newsstands, the overwhelming response was alarm.

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