Since reading that great article at Outside Magazine, "Totally Psyched for the Full-Rip Nine", I've been paying more attention to my most common driving route on Interstate 5, Everett to Chehalis.

If a major shake hits during peak traffic hours, it's going to be one awful mess!

This freeway has been designed (apparently specifically) NOT to let anyone off the freeway except at designated ramps.

Wire fences would not be a problem, I would just go through those, but just about the only fences I see are really in the flatter areas around the exits and onramps.

The sides of the freeway are lined with either concrete barriers, concrete walls (tall), closely-growing trees, very dense/tall wild blackberry bushes, or slopes so steep that I couldn't even climb them with lower 4WD.

So, any section of freeway that has a collapsed overpass sitting on it and doesn't have an open exit ahead is going to be a parking lot. Even if there was room for people in the right lane to turn around and creep back to the exit, more vehicles would be lining the onramps behind. And, of course, if a few little cars had left enough driving room ahead of them and stopped that way, then maneuvered to get turned around, the morons behind them would move up to block the openings they left.

So, this would be an interesting dilemma.

I could wait for hours in place, hoping the people behind me could get turned back and exit via the onramps (or alongside them), so eventually I could exit there.

Or, I could just get out and start walking (a long walk, with my luck).

Even after getting off the freeway, movement is likely to be strictly curtailed due to some serious debris and downed power lines.

Jeez, I hope I'm home if it happens!

Sue