Shakedown: The Great Las Vegas Earthquake
an excerpt

Sixty-seven seconds is not a long time, by any stretch of the imagination. Yet that is exactly how long it took for an earthquake to bring one of America’s most important and prosperous cities to its knees. Though unusual for a major earthquake to strike without foreshocks, it wasn’t without precedent. In 1976, the city of Tangshen, China, was rocked by a major quake in the middle of the night. A quarter of a million people died in the disaster.

What had been hours ago been a magical place for fun and frolic—a city that had literally risen out of nowhere, in the middle of the unforgiving Nevada desert--had become a disaster zone. When the shaking finally stopped, those who survived it began to take stock of the carnage surrounding them. They now had to figure out what to do next, how to continue to survive in the ruins. They also had to prepare for a possibility all too real for a situation like this—aftershocks.

The survivors of the Great Las Vegas Earthquake, as it would come to be known in the years following the event, had no idea that Mother Nature wasn’t finished with them just yet.