[JDazzle]

There are so many building regulations, and grants to help older buildings meet standards that were not in place when they were built, awareness and education campaigns, and built-in procedures and policies in place that a regular California resident doesn't need to let the fear of an earthquake take over their life.

California is as prepared as any state can be for an earthquake and it is constantly looking for better ways to be prepared.

[jorblumesea]

There's lots of regulations, but the regulations seem flawed by design. For example, in California at least, buildings need to be built to survive earthquakes, but not necessarily be functional.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-legi...

In the event of a larger quake, you might survive the initial shock but a high percentage of your city, including new buildings will need to be torn down.

This represents a huge loss to a city in economic terms. Imagine if downtown LA lost 50% of its office buildings and apartment buildings. Compare this to Japan where buildings survive and are required to be usable. Japanese engineers are shocked at what they consider to be American substandard building codes.

The US govt has even concluded that better and stiffer building codes would save billions a year: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.nibs.org/resource/resmgr/docs/MS_C...

[Scipio_Afri]

Also a really relevant article with great info-graphics.

"Buildings Can Be Designed to Withstand Earthquakes. Why Doesn’t the U.S. Build More of Them?"

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/03/us/earthquake...

[rjurney]

Well, not really. Compared to Japan...

[iscrewyou]

Because Japan has way more earthquakes. Relatively, we are pretty well prepared in references to buildings. Now food supplies and power? I feel like people aren’t mentally prepared for that.