The Seattle Earthquake Project is an upcoming documentary about earthquakes, anxiety, and the fragile relationship between people and land, told through the story of a city built on unstable ground.
Not if. When.
The Seattle Earthquake Project is the working title of an upcoming feature documentary about a rapidly growing region and the seismic forces that continue to shape and threaten it. The Pacific Northwest has endured multiple major earthquakes, yet much of that history has been forgotten. The film uncovers this past in drowned forests, fractured brickwork, and archival records, asking why decades of expert warnings have failed to prompt the action this danger demands.
Blending insights from dozens of scientists, emergency mangers, engineers, and historians, the film looks beyond the physical danger to examine how anxiety shapes preparedness, how cognitive biases distort risk, and how collective memory influences what we treat as urgent. It investigates the hazards beneath our feet and the deeper faults in our systems and priorities.
The film is slated for completion in 2026.
Why It Matters
Scientists estimate Washington has around an 86 percent chance of experiencing a damaging earthquake in the next 50 years, yet both the state and the broader Pacific Northwest remain dangerously unprepared.
Thousands of older brick buildings remain vulnerable to collapse, many of them concentrated in historically underserved neighborhoods. State assessments have found widespread seismic vulnerability in public schools, meaning many children continue to spend their days in unsafe buildings. Coastal communities face serious tsunami risk; dozens of evacuation towers are needed, and Washington has only two. Individual preparedness can save lives, but it cannot replace the planning, investment, and political will that public safety requires. Misconceptions about earthquakes and the fatalism that often follows make meaningful action harder at every level.
This is a story about how people live with known danger, and how we undervalue the histories written into the land beneath us, science, and the future itself.