So… how do I bring this up exactly? I mean honestly how does one bring up what I’m about to bring up? If you’re from outside the United States and you have zero idea what I’m even talking about don’t worry, the reason I feel compelled to make this thread in the first place is due to the fact that Americans seem hellbent on not talking about how commonly we have to deal with this problem. Or as far as social media goes, that seems to be the case. I’ve searched and searched, used nearly every search engine, and crawled across the vast array of social media apps and multiple subreddits and made this same thread dozens of times as well. Still, I have come up with zero good faith responses to my inquiry. So I’ll just bring it up again and ask nicely like I’ve been doing in the hopes that I break through to one of you so that you’ll actually be willing to talk about it.
So here it goes. Why does everyone act like the continental hinge that exists at the shore-side border of Virginia and North Carolina isn’t there? Please, for the love of God, you have to know what I’m talking about. I’m sure there’s at least ONE, at LEAST ONE of you who’s watched that thing swing open for a few minutes and swallow a smorgasbord of trees, street lamps, street signs, wild animals, or God forbid, a car full of people whole only to close up just as quickly.
I swear I’m going to lose my mind if the responses in this thread act like I’m speaking gibberish again. The hinge, it’s located at the apex of where North Carolina and Virginia meet the Atlantic sea as I said, and from that pivot point the split in the continent it causes runs along the NC/VA state line down the NC/TN border eventually ending up at the frontier between Louisiana and Texas. I’ve made a crude map of it that I pinned to the top of my timeline, so none of you should have any excuse this time to pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.
I’m no geologist or anything, but this has at least been going on since 98 given that’s the first time I remember it happening. It doesn’t seem to happen at any sort of regular, predictable interval so I’m wondering if tectonic plates don’t relate to what’s going on here??? No clue. If you are a geologist yourself, please, I’m begging you to chime in. What’s been causing this? Do any of you like… ever talk about what’s going on? What to do about it? Anything??? Is the government going to do anything? The scientific community? Literally anyone? I’m sorry if I sound desperate I just don’t understand why a lot of people I’ve brought this up to pretend like they’ve never heard of it or (and this is actually the most common response) just shrug it off like it’s not somehow a big deal that a vast chunk of the continent swings out wildly on a hinge into the ocean every now and then, throwing everything laying along its boundary into a dark murky abyss of black water never to be seen again.
This isn’t a problem to people? Maybe I’m bitter, or screw it. I am bitter. I am very bitter that everyone has ignored this. I’ve been bitter since I first learned about this thing when my dog fell into the abyss it created all those years ago. I’ve gotten bitterer since I’ve seen people driving right in front of me on the highway get swallowed up because of it. I’ve grown irate watching all the construction work being done (at least where I am) just to repair the damage to the roads its caused over and over again, only for the people working on it to be seemingly oblivious to what caused it. And worst of all, I’ve grown paranoid, freaked out, and mentally scarred since the very last time the hinge swung the lower southeast out into the ocean.
That was about a month ago. There’s no way none of you remember that. There was a blackout and after that an internet outage where I was and everything. The area of North Carolina I live in, we’ve had a small homeless encampment problem in our rinky dink downtown for about two years now. And then suddenly around the time April rolled over to May, we didn’t. I mean I’m sure a lot of you have heard of cities busing the homeless to other cities or locales before, but… Let me just say, in regards to what I ran into and watched happen last month driving down the rural back roads outside of civilization when this last swing happened, I know now that there are indeed people who know damn well that the hinge is there. They know enough to bus all of our town’s homeless population to where the continent splits open and wait long enough for it to happen in order to… I think you catch my drift. What I’m still completely thrown by is the fact that the people hired by the city seem to know enough about it to reliably predict when it will occur.
That’s why I’d appreciate a geologist’s input, or anyone’s really. Please for the love of God, tell me you at least know what I’m talking about so I can stop rambling.
Please.