The Scariest Earthquake Is Yet to Come ... Even more worrisome than geography and topography, though, is geological history. For this event cannot be viewed in isolation. There was a horrifically destructive Pacific earthquake in New Zealand on Feb. 22, and an even more violent magnitude-8.8 event in Chile almost exactly a year before. All three phenomena involved more or less the same family of circum-Pacific fault lines and plate boundaries—and though there is still no hard scientific evidence to explain why, there is little doubt now that earthquakes do tend to occur in clusters: a significant event on one side of a major tectonic plate is often—not invariably, but often enough to be noticeable—followed some weeks or months later by another on the plate’s far side. It is as though the earth becomes like a great brass bell, which when struck by an enormous hammer blow on one side sets to vibrating and ringing from all over. Now there have been catastrophic events at three corners of the Pacific Plate—one in the northwest, on Friday; one in the southwest, last month; one in the southeast, last year. That leaves just one corner unaffected—the northeast. And the fault line in the northeast of the Pacific Plate is the San Andreas Fault, underpinning the city of San Francisco. All of which makes the geological community very apprehensive. All know that the San Andreas Fault is due to rupture one day—it last did so in 1906, and strains have built beneath it to a barely tolerable level. To rupture again, with unimaginable consequences for the millions who live above it, some triggering event has to occur. Now three events have occurred that might all be regarded as triggering events. There are in consequence a lot of thoughtful people in the American West who are very nervous indeed—wondering, as they often must do, whether the consent that permits them to inhabit so pleasant a place might be about to be withdrawn, sooner than they have supposed. full article
Didn't the San Andreas fault rupture in 1989? My understanding is that the biggest fear in the Bay Area is an Earthquake on the Hayward fault that runs through the East Bay.
^ From Wiki: 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake: About 25 miles (40 km) were ruptured (although the rupture did not reach the surface) near Santa Cruz, California, causing 63 deaths and moderate damage in certain vulnerable locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. Moment magnitude this time was about 6.9.
Earthquakes are nothing compared to the volcanic horror stories. The two US caldera time bombs (Pacific NW and Yellowstone) and a volcano in some atlantic ocean island off of Africa...can't recall ... that will create a Mechatsunami 200 ft tall.
The tsunami won't come from the volcano erupting, but when the side of the mountain collapses into the ocean. It could slide off at any time eruption or not. The largest recorded tsunami happened in Alaska after the side of mountain slide into a lake.
That's true there are a lot of giant potential threats out there. While it makes sense to be prepared but for things like a caldera eruption there really isn't much that can be done about them and you could make yourself crazy worrying about things like that.
Don't move to the East of either caldera. Stay in Houston. Although that mechatsunami might go right over Florida and hit the gulf coast.
The island off of Africa is the Canary Islands and it's the Cumbre Vieja volcano. I watched some episode about it on Discovery or the Science Channel. Pretty scary stuff. I think the Yellowstone mega-volcano going off could dwarf the damage of any of these other ones because its impact would be immediate and cause climatic change. On the plus side, I think the period of eruption is like half-a-million years, so while we're at that point, it could still be a few thousand years away. :grin:
damn, i hope they start providing incentives for people to move out of that area before all that happens, probably won't work though..
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Misery loves company. Nothing more miserable than a supervolcano mechatsunami. Think of all that company you'll have in abrupt completely unavoidable death!
Meh, in Dec. of next year the world is going to end anyway. All these disasters better hurry if they want the chance to happen.
Yeah, this article seems very poorly informed. Geologists don't at all agree on this "cluster" idea. And the San Andreas is in a local "shadow" right now, as you noted, after 1989. Hayward has like a 60% of popping by 2030 or so, however. That's going to be a mess because the east side of the Bay has grown so much -- I think that's literally where most of the population is now, and the Hayward fault is running right under like seven or eight towns in a row (not to mention the Berkeley football stadium, if they don't cancel football that is.)
