By Jordan Rich
“Man O’War Beach” By Samuel Thompson
In “The Really Big One”, Kathryn Schulz doesn’t just explain the science behind a potentially catastrophic earthquake in the Pacific Northwest—she exposes the quiet danger of collective denial. One of the questions from The Craft of Science (p. 272) asks readers to consider how Schulz uses narrative to raise awareness and possibly provoke change. Through a masterful blend of fact, story, and emotional stakes, Schulz pushes readers to reckon with the terrifying reality of the Cascadia subduction zone, not by shouting doomsday predictions, but by showing the human cost of inaction.
From the beginning, Schulz establishes a tone that is both matter-of-fact and uneasy. She introduces us to the Cascadia fault with scientific authority, then steadily raises the stakes. As Schulz (2015) writes, “The odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three,” and the odds of a really big one are one in ten. By placing these statistics early in the piece, she grounds her narrative in the language of probability, not panic. This planned framing builds trust with readers who might otherwise tune out a message they’ve heard before: disaster is coming, but few are listening.
Schulz’s article becomes most compelling when she centers the scientists themselves, figures like Chris Goldfinger, who understand the full scale of the risk. In a particularly scary passage, Schulz recounts how Goldfinger watched the 2011 Japanese tsunami unfold in real time on a “two-inch screen,” completely aware that the disaster mirrored what Cascadia is capable of. This use of first hand experience and information lends immediacy to scientific knowledge. It’s one thing to know the Juan de Fuca plate is slipping under North America; it’s another to witness the consequence of similar tectonic activity from half a world away. As Siri Carpenter points out in The Craft of Science, storytelling that humanizes experts can help readers engage with complex information more deeply and emotionally (2021).
Moreover, Schulz uses metaphor and imagery to make the abstract concrete. Her description of tectonic plates as two hands, one sliding beneath the other, helps readers visualize geologic processes that occur over many centuries. This metaphor is not just explanatory; it’s uneasy. “That is what North America is not doing,” she notes, explaining that the continent is stuck, tension building unknown beneath our feet. Her language pushes us to recognize the danger isn’t hypothetical; it’s already underway.
Ultimately, Schulz doesn’t end her article with any level of reassurance. Instead, she leaves us in the uneasy space between knowledge and action, a space many readers likely occupy without even realizing it. This is perhaps the article’s most important lesson: that understanding science is just not enough. As Schulz warns throughout the piece, awareness must be paired with preparedness, or the consequences could be devastating.
In conclusion, Schulz’s careful construction of narrative, tone, and metaphor powerfully transforms scientific data into an ethical call to attention. In a culture often desensitized to warnings, The Really Big One stands out for its ability to make the abstract terrifyingly real and, hopefully, impossible to ignore.
Science Writings 