Earthquakes!

[xmas74]

On Discovery right now. Must be disaster night.

Damn, they need to quit talking about San Andres all the time. I'd rather hear about New Madrid since I'm SOL if that hits hard.

[AirmensMom]

1. Thanks, xmas!

Someone was just telling me about earthquakes. I have to keep the volume low, though, so I don't wake harleydad.

[xmas74]

2. You're welcome.

They always focus on California on these shows. Kinda disappointing since New Madrid has the nastiest recorded activity in the US.

If you're interested Google "New Madrid-1812". That is a frightening fact of life around here.

[In_The_Wind]

3. Maybe I should watch.

In preparation for my drive. :scared:

[xmas74]

4. You'll feel them more on the West Coast.

If my faultline ever really goes again you'll feel that one for a much longer distance.

[In_The_Wind]

10. I never feel them in NY.

We have them :shrug: I just never feel it.

[xmas74]

12. 1812 NM supposedly rang church bells in Boston.

Now that is a kick ass earthquake!

[Whoa_Nelly]

5. Here's a great site re: Historical Earthquakes image collection

Includes the New Madrid 1811-12 EQs

http://nisee.berkeley.edu/kozak/index.html

Images of Historical Earthquakes
The Jan T. Kozak Collection

And here's the historical list part of the site:

http://nisee.berkeley.edu/elibrary/browse/kozak

Thanks for the heads-up, xmas1974! :hi:

Am watching it now!

[xmas74]

7. Thank you for the site!

I've got this one up right now.

http://hsv.com/genlintr/newmadrd/

I'm about 4 hours or so from it and I remember doing the drills in high school, when they thought it was ready to go. We're overdue.

[ChoralScholar]

6. I interviewed for a teaching posistion in New Madrid, MO

Kind of a neat little place.

[xmas74]

8. Neat until that little f*cker finally goes!

I've been there before too. I'm just waiting for the day that whole area sinks into the ground.

"The probability for an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 or greater is significant in the near future, with a 50% chance by the year 2000 and a 90% chance by the year 2040. A quake with a magnitude equal to that of the 1811- 1812 quakes could result in great loss of life and property damage in the billions of dollars. Scientists believe we could be overdue for a large earthquake and through research and public awareness may be able to prevent such losses."

http://hsv.com/genlintr/newmadrd/

[ChoralScholar]

9. I think the whole area will

become a big-ass dam for the Mississippi river.

I needed a job pretty bad, but I still didn't take it.

[xmas74]

11. 60% of Memphis will be gone,

according to the predictions.
I live near KC and I will be able to feel that one. Wonder when I should start thinking about nailing shit down?

I have relatives on the West Coast who tend to boo-hoo about their earthquakes and possible tsunamis. Sometimes I hope the NM finally hits a good one so that I can tell them to shut their pieholes.

[XemaSab]

13. The Cascadian Subduction Zone

is different than the San Andreas.

:shrug:

[xmas74]

14. Very true.

It just seems to be the most focused and most talked about. If you mention earthquakes to the man on the street they can usually name San Andreas.

Maybe I just get sick of hearing about it all the time. There's still no love for New Madrid.

[XemaSab]

15. Oh, I have love for New Madrid

Two of the top 10 quakes in the lower 48, no?

The Mississippi river flowing backwards is some hardcore shit. :bounce:

[xmas74]

16. The Mississippi is just a part of it.

Reports claim that bad boy rang church bells in Boston.

I live just a few hours from there. They used to make us do drills for it in high school.

[XemaSab]

17. Good times, good times

:bounce:

[xmas74]

19. It ought to be fun

if it ever pulls off some decent damage in my lifetime.

They say that we are almost overdue for a 6 or above right now.

[KFC]

18. New Madrid is the intraplate superstar

Intraplate Strain Accumulation in the New Madrid Seismic Zone
Mark H. Murray, Mark D. Zoback (Stanford University), Paul Segall (Stanford University)



Introduction
The New Madrid seismic zone (NMSZ) in the central United States is the most seismically active intraplate region in North America. It includes two SW-NE-trending zones of right-lateral strike-slip faulting on subvertical faults and a zone of thrust faulting on 30 SW-dipping plane at a left step-over between the strike-slip fault zones (Figure 30.1). Three widely felt magnitude 7-8 earthquakes occurred in the 250 km zone in the the winter of 1811-1812, and the central thrust zone was sufficiently displaced during the 7 February 1812 event to create a waterfall on the Mississippi river.

The NMSZ is located within a failed rift that was active about 600 million years ago, followed by period of magmatic reactivation and igneous intrusion of mafic plutons 80 to 60 million ago. These episodes of activity introduced heterogeneities into the crust that may act as stress concentrators for the late Holocene seismicity, possibly initiated by the most recent deglaciation event (Grollimund and Zoback, 2001). Paleoseismic evidence indicates that 1811-1812 sized events have occurred throughout the late Holocene, most recently around 1450 and 900 A.D., but the small cumulative fault offsets inferred from seismic reflection data suggest that the current high level of seismic activity initiated recently, and there is scant paleoseismic evidence for more than 4 episodes prior to the historic events.

Low rates of strain and the lack of apparent active surface tectonics suggest that the central and eastern U.S. are within the stable interior of the North America plate. Geodetic studies of broadscale deformation within this region generally find that relative station velocities are consistent ( mm/yr) with a rigid plate with strain rates not significantly differing from zero. High strain rates (100 nanostrain/yr) were reported within a network spanning the southern NMSZ based on a 1991 GPS survey and triangulation data collected in the 1950's (Liu et al., 1992). We present new strain rate estimates within this southern NMSZ network from GPS surveys conducted in 1993 and 1997 that show the recent deformation rates are not significantly greater than zero.

[xmas74]

20. I feel so dumb.

I just don't understand what some of this means!

Maybe I should have paid better attention in science class!

[XemaSab]

21. I got your mafic plutons

RIGHT HERE BABY!!!!