San Andreas Fault Big earthquake soon…?

One comment

1. 

   Nick on July 6, 2010 at 11:31 pm

   If the quake is large enough, it can be felt for many miles and sensed by seismographs on the other side of the planet. The underwater quake which caused the Tsunami a few years ago was sensed all over the world, and many monitoring stations KNEW there would be a Tsunami simply they could triangulate and locate the source within a few miles, but they had NO way to warn anyone the waves were coming. In the case of the San Andreas, about 2/3rds of CA, running from San Diego north to somewhere north of San Francisco will be directly affected, because the fault and offshoot faults will carry the slippage that far, directly. Then, energy released could travel further north and south as well. In an extreme case, the side west of the fault could drop, slip actually, and "fall" a few feet toward the ocean. The displacement will cause a Tsunami traveling west which will cross the entire Pacific Ocean in a matter of a hours. A Tsunami travels through water at about 2/3rds of the speed of sound, 500 miles per hour or so. Hawaii will be affected, as well as the islands to the west some of which are only a few feet above sea level. Of course, all of this is conjecture. There are two schools of thought; one which says that as long as we have little tremors, energy is being released and it will be time for the big one if the little tremors stop. The other school of thought is exactly the opposite, that the little tremors are precursors to the big one. The answer is: No one actually knows anything, just that earthquakes have happened in the past, some bigger than others, and to date, NO ONE has successfully predicted ANY earthquake accurately. The best we can do is an educated guess.