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Thread: California Earthquakes?

  1. #1
    Character Animator The_e-Tahn's Avatar
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    California Earthquakes?

    Hey guys, just did a search on the fourms here and saw that no one's posted about the earthquakes we've been getting here in CA!
    I just found it a little odd that all of a sudden, in the past 5 days, we've gotten 4 earthquakes, one of them had 21 aftershocks (dunno about the rest), and... there have been an excessive amount of car crashes, two helicopters crashed, people are driving like they're nuts... Supposedly there was a sun flare / sun spot that was pretty huge and it could have thrown GPS and radio signals (perhaps even people's brains?) off.
    There was also a tsunami alert (!!!) but it was cancelled after minutes because the technology that decided there could be a tsunami was "old".
    Okay... now I could be using toooootally crazy logic here, but I thought some might agree and work with these ideas: the last huge tsunami was after a huge earthquake-- that was on the other side of the world-- what's to stop such a huge thing from kinda shockwaving it's way back here and creating a similar effect? I kinda thought something like this would eventually happen... Anyone think it's going to get any worse? Because things have been more bezerk than usual.... about the sun flare thing, that could be making more gravity, hence pulling the plates closer up and jerking them from peaceful resting?
    ...or am I just crazy?

  2. #2
    Banned indivision's Avatar
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    im going to take the same line as the LAPD in regard to the freeway shootings. "It's all perspective," we aren't experiencing any more earthquakes at this time than we have any other recent years so there's really "nothing to worry about."

  3. #3
    Guys, you might not believe me , but before all those things happened in california, I read from the "Bible code" that there would be a "Great earthquake" in california. I dont know about you guys but If I was to chose between staying in california and moving somewhere else, I would choose to move to somewhere else. Continue...

  4. #4
    FK's Geezer Mod Ask The Geezer's Avatar
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    It wasn't that the tsunami warning thing was old. It's that the science of detecting and understanding different kinds of earthquakes is advanced. They put out the warning as soon as they got the shock on their equipment, which was the smart thing to do, but within minutes, they were able to determine that the quake was from side to side slippage, not subduction. That told them there would be no tsunami, so they killed the warning.

    Your tax dollars at work. Good equipment, smart people running it.

  5. #5
    Not PWD ViRGo_RK's Avatar
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    Maybe the big one is coming.


    PAlexC: That's just Chuck Norris's way of saying sometimes corn needs to lay the heck down.
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  6. #6
    Character Animator The_e-Tahn's Avatar
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    oy... that's what I hope isn't going to happen.
    I'm probably overreacting to the whole thing, being we do get quakes here more often than others, being we're right on a fault.
    I only heard a smidgit about the tsunami thing on the radio... glad to hear that our tax dollars are actually getting used well! lol... well I certainly hope they can keep us protected somewhat in the future...

  7. #7
    FK's Geezer Mod Ask The Geezer's Avatar
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    I don't think there is any protection from natural forces that big. Warnings, yes, they seem to be getting better, but there isn't much protection from a tsunami. I mean, no sea wall is going to stop a big one. The only protection is to not be there.

    I had the intersting job of working at Mt. St. Helens in 82, two years after it blew up. I worked for the Highway Department, putting the roads back in. There was one spot, an overlook pullout thing that by the contour map we had, was exactly ten miles from the center of the crater, on the slope of the next mountain to the North. You can do this yourself, to get the feel of what I'm saying. Stand where you can see for ten miles. Put your arms out to your sides, level with your eyes, so you can't see them. Now, move them forward till your peripheral vision just picks them up. Take a mental picture of that area. It's an enormous amount of land.

    I did that from that overlook, and everything in my field of vision was totally destroyed, for as far as I could see in any direction, except behind me. That pullout was at the edge of the destruction, near the side that didn't blow up. If you've ever been in the Pacific Northwest, you know how big the trees get. What I saw was grey, nothing alive in that area. Those trees were grey, dead, blown down. They looked just like a hand full of pickup sticks all let go at once. A tangled grey mess. Words can't describe how much destruction that volcano caused. But I can tell you, there is no protection from forces like that. Except to not be there when it happens.

    I do think the West coast is going to slide off into the ocean. But it's not going to happen overnight, or all at once. It's going to happen a few inches or feet at a time, over millions of years. No natural catastrophe has ever happened on such a scale as California sliding off into the sea. Except possibly the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. If it had, there would probably be evidence of it and we'd all know of it. so I wouldn't worry about living there. In fact, I have lived there for a number of years, and I wish I still were.

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    Last edited by Naked inc.; 06-20-2005 at 09:29 PM.

  9. #9
    Banned indivision's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by iaskwhy
    I do think the West coast is going to slide off into the ocean.
    The San Andreas fault is actually moving parallel to itself. So its not possible to slide off. Though, Los Angeles could one day end up where Mexico City is now.

  10. #10
    FK's Geezer Mod Ask The Geezer's Avatar
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    I'm thinking at best, it's a guess, what's going to happen. I saw a recent Nova that showed water between the LA, more or less, coast line area, up to the Bay area. It was off the coast of Arizona by about a hundred miles, some time in the future. It looked like the Sea of Cortez kind of came north to visit the bay and just eroded what was in between. But who knows? I doubt it will be what Hollywood thinks it will be.

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    Quote Originally Posted by indivision
    The San Andreas fault is actually moving parallel to itself. So its not possible to slide off. Though, Los Angeles could one day end up where Mexico City is now.
    And how would that be any different from today... ?

    In all seriousness (coming from the child of two geophysicists, take if for what it's worth), the quantity of quakes seems up a bit, but when you average it out, it's not that bad - we've had a few quiet years, and the plates are just catching up.

    While the two sides of the SA fault aren't moving away from each other, there is still an opportunity for separation over many hundreds of thousands of years - it would be foolish to assume that the Baja peninsula can't be extended northward; the Gulf of California was created by North American plate (headed westward) grinding over the Pacific Plate causing the rift valley to drop, expand, fill with magma, and crust over to allow the formation of the oceanic floor. That is, even though they're moving slightly towards each other (not really parallel, certainly not separating, actually moving towards each other), you can still get rifts and valleys that will fill with sea water once they're extended to the current gulf.

    PS: ftp://hazards.cr.usgs.gov/maps/sigeq...0050616fig.jpg

  12. #12
    Banned indivision's Avatar
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    That would be true. Except that the plate that Baja is on is moving up and the rest of the continent is moving down. The SA fault is on a Transform Boundary (moving parrallel) not a Convergent Boundary (moving into).



    http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/te...rstanding.html

    It is possible that volcanic activity and massive earthquakes cause deep valleys along the fault that would fill with water. But, because of the elevation of the area where the fault is and it's distance from the coast, the changes would have to extreme and far reaching to involve the ocean. They would most likely be additional lakes. Of course, melting ice caps could change all of that.

    Measurements show that the change is happening at 2" per year.

    http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/earthq3/move.html

  13. #13
    Banned indivision's Avatar
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    About the recent earthquake/tsunami warning. You can see the Mendocino fracture zone in my last post. That's where that quake originated from. According to a professor, it is one of the highest tectonic tension points in the world. If a large piece of that plate slips, it could easily create a massive tsunami that would probably affect the entire west coast.

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