I live and work in Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California. The dangerous San Andreas Fault runs through San Bernardino, California, about 75 miles from Santa Monica. The San Andreas runs along much of the western edge of North America. Where the plates on each side of the fault are smooth, as in central California, there are frequent minor earthquakes as the plates slowly move in opposite directions. In contrast, where the plates on each side are jagged and thus held rigidly in place, as in both northern and southern California, there are no such small earthquakes. Instead, the tension created by the force of the plates accumulates, year after year, decade after decade, so that when they finally move in opposite directions along those parts of the fault, the resulting earthquake is catastrophic, around 8 on the Richter scale. The San Andreas breaks in southern California on the average every 150 years, and the last big earthquake along this fault in southern California occurred in the 1850s. I, along with many Angelenos who are aware of these facts, live in a vague state of anxiety. It is an existential anxiety—about our own existence and the existence of all those whom we love (http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780881634679/).