PSAT Writing and Language Practice Test 47: Beauty and Peril

Questions 1-11 refer to the following information.

Beauty and Peril

One would be hard-pressed to find more gorgeous scenery 1 than that in California and the Pacific Northwest. From the Santa Monica Mountains to the Malibu lagoons, from the gorgeous Cascades and Mount Rainier to Puget Sound, the entirety of the coast from California to Washington is breathtaking. Tucked beneath that striking veneer, sinister and lurking, however, 2 is secrets of a magnitude of which we are suspicious but uncertain. The reality, though, is as follows: 3 a conspiracy is afoot.

For one, the region is threatened by the San Andreas fault line. Popularized by countless Hollywood films in the previous decades, San Andreas is perhaps the most recognizable (though, unfortunately, perhaps not even the most potentially destructive) of Pacific geological hazards. 4 Extending for 810 miles in length through the bulk of California, the San Andreas fault line had its largest recorded earthquake in 1906, the infamous San Francisco earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter scale. The death count was 3,000, 5 and that must be accompanied by the disclaimer that the population was significantly less than it is today.

6 In addition to the previously mentioned things, there is also the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate. This plate comprises part of the Cascadia subduction zone. Cascadia stretches all the way from Northern California to Canada's British Columbia, and this is the place where seismologists predict is the most likely spot for the "Big One." 7 For centuries North Americas continental shelf has ground against Juan de Fuca, and the shelf has been compressed upward all the while—every moment, every day, every century, a little bit more all the time. Predictions are that this sort of unrelenting stress 8 is approaching its breaking point of both literal and figurative nature. When that finally occurs (and advanced computer models put the likelihood of that catastrophe at greater than one in three in the next fifty years), it's difficult to affix an accurate estimation of the impending damages. Tens of thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and billions of dollars in damaged property are not outside the scope of possibility. 9 Moreover, as both San Andreas and Juan de Fuca are coastal, subsequent tidal waves would accompany the earthquakes. And, at this point in our 10 wild goose chase, perhaps it is best not to venture any further down our path of apocalyptic prediction.

11 Despite all of these frightening possibilities, by no means am I advocating avoiding the Pacific coastal states. We must refuse to allow fear to dictate the courses of our lives—refuse to be deterred in our pursuit of happiness by the fragile futility of, "Well, what if . . . ?"

Source: OpenStax College