Reply #26: The recent earthquake

[Uncle Roy]

caused some pretty drastic changes in the ocean floor in the Straight of Sundai. Some areas that used to be 4,000 feet deep are now barely 100 feet deep, and the USGS is hurrying to re-survey the area. Something similar might have happened off of Guam. They have some pretty big subduction zones over there.

I don't know anything about submarine navigation, but I suspect the Navy has pretty detailed sea-floor information, and I would be surprised if our subs didn't have that info on-board in some kind of navigational computer system. What happens if the ocean floor changes suddenly and the info stored in the computer no longer agrees with reality? Did the software guys who wrote the navigational system take that possibility into account? Things could get pretty hairy.

No idea what really happened, but interesting to speculate.