Smithsonian Magazine’s March cover story is well-timed. Entitled “Future Shocks,” it is on the study of  earthquakes and tsunamis, those previously unrecorded in history and the potential for others to occur.

The story focuses on past and potential quakes in the Pacific Northwest.  Predictions remain elusive, but past disasters, Smithsonian reports,  can now be recorded with great specificity.  Scientists, for example, peg a massive earthquake just off the Washington state coast on January 26, 1700.  Evidence from the resulting Tsunami was uncovered thousands of miles away in Japan.

Definitely worth a read, but it makes the reader feel like he is living on an elephant’s back. So do the pictures coming out of northern Japan.