Image – Underwater Car by Gass77

I lived through the Big One, but not everyone in LA did.

That quake was the mother of them all, and still a source of controversy. I mean, most coastal properties were underwater now. Who could have planned for that?

The San Andreas Fault tended to rumble — I took geology as an undergrad, so I knew that much — but part of California dropping into the ocean … um, no. That was beyond even the most way-out conspiracy theories, until fifteen years ago when a series of quakes went literally off the Richter scale.

A section of the coastline split like someone cracked a peanut shell, leaving pieces scattered along the seafloor. It’s a whole new world down there.

Some blamed it on fracking. Others said it was God’s punishment. Not that I attributed anything biblical to it. If it had been Righteous Intervention, the ‘higher powers’ had neglected to eradicate the bad guys. Gangs, drug dealers and thugs were still aplenty. If anything, more of them emerged and took control in the anarchy of the Aftermath, flooding in from other cities to pick over the spoils.

Fun Fact: Ever since the Big One changed the topography of LA, clubs were popping up everywhere. Who knew certain business owners were going to become billionaires when California cracked? Goes to show, even a crap-ass housing project becomes prime real estate if it suddenly sports an ocean view.

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