25 ms·

California fault capable of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake has begun moving

220 points by spking 7y ago

unlinked_dll 7y ago
I wonder if this is posted because of the California Shakeout drill today. >Whether the destabilization will result in a major quake soon cannot be predicted. In September, the U.S. Geological Survey said the most likely scenario is that the Ridgecrest quakes probably won’t trigger a larger earthquake. Nevertheless, the USGS said that the July quakes have raised the chances of an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 or more on the nearby Garlock, Owens Valley, Blackwater and Panamint Valley faults over the next year. So keep your china cabinets tidy, keep your earthquake kit stocked, but don't fret and carry on like normal? Seems a tad alarmist.
- FooHentai 7y ago
  It's not possible to please people with these kinds of notifications. On a long time scale, that fault IS gonna rip and if civilization exists around it at the point it goes, a LOT of people are going to die. But, our ability to predict quakes on a short time span (read: human lifetime) is abysmal. The best we can say is eh, maybe. There are no consistent, confirmed precursors. So, what can you do? Every warning will be accused of being alarmist if it doesn't eventuate, and every failed prediction (note that you don't see these from reputable professionals working in the field) mocked. If a warning is ever actually borne out by a significant seismic event, expect a TON of criticism that someone knew but didn't provide sufficient urgency in their warning. Putting all the stuff about warnings aside for a moment, let's examine at individual's justification for and capacity to make preparations for such an event. At one extreme you have preppers, and at the other end there's folk that do nothing. Both approaches seem predominantly to hinge on pure opinion on the immediacy of the threat. If you immerse yourself in various materials on the topic to be found online, you'll probably adopt a prepper mindset. If you simply never bother to do that and continue about your day, you'll likely sit on the 'do nothing' extreme. There really isn't a 'right' here without a crystal ball, which everyone seeks from seismologists and get frustrated when they can't provide any tangible insights. In summary: Mankind's ability to risk assess and rationally respond to long-interval threats of high severity is very, very poor.
  - unlinked_dll 7y ago
    I get what you're saying but this post isn't about a fault experiencing a catastrophic event, but cascading events. If this fault rips it could trigger an event on another fault. Now I'm no geologist, but I question why the order the authors listed possible sites as this: >A large quake on the Garlock fault has the potential to send strong shaking to the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita, Lancaster, Palmdale, Ventura, Oxnard, Bakersfield and Kern Count Which seems to be influenced by the population of those areas and not the geographic distance from the Garlock fault itself. All the propabalistic models I've seen for "the Big One" have the waves that reach the SF Valley (which has iirc 2 million people) originating from the southwest from a major quake on the San Andreas fault, not a ripple effect from the northeast.
    - lazyasciiart 7y ago
      That paragraph is literally about the impact on society that it would cause. Yes, they are listing metropolitan areas. And yes, all the models you've seen before moooooost likely did not take into account activity from Garlock that had literally never been seen. That should not be a surprise.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    I'd distinguish between prepping and doomsday types. Prepping can be as simple as having some basic supplies and nonperishable goods such that you're not going to die if, for any reason, you need to survive independently for some period of time. It's not like some lifestyle or even dependent upon an assumption that you'll even ever need these things. So it's a relatively low cost decision to be able to be at least somewhat prepared for an eventuality that, though extremely improbable, would have disproportionately negative consequences if you were of the 'do nothing' extreme on the other end. To put it mathematically, if I said there was a 1 in a million chance of you losing a billion dollars sometime in your life, and you agreed with me, it'd certainly be logical, if you could, to provide insurance against that eventuality for $1. In fact it'd still be mathematically sound to spend $1000. But this is for an event that you are literally 99.9999% sure will not happen. I think the big difference is in seeing reality as a neverending stream of probabilities as opposed to seeing reality as a neverending stream of certainties. The probabilistic mindset can lead you to conclusions and decisions that look peculiar to a deterministic mindset. By contrast doomsday types are those who have a deterministic mindset and have decided that the world (as we know it) is going to end and thus make that a part of their persona and worldview. Granted, they could also be of a probabilistic mindset with a different weighting but, at least in my experience, that's not usually the case.
blondin 7y ago
man... some of these titles are getting harder and harder to understand
- MickerNews 7y ago
  Temblor, his arms wide.
  - mamurphy 7y ago
    When the walls fell.
    - mcagl 7y ago
      Sokath, his eyes uncovered!
Hamuko 7y ago
Having listened to a short podcast about the predicted big earthquake that would hit California ("the Big One"), I'm not sure how people in California manage to get a good night's sleep.
- garmaine 7y ago
  Easy: you don't fret over low probability events that are unlikely to cause you major damage anyway. (I've lived through multiple major earthquakes! meh, what's one more.)
- greglindahl 7y ago
  Have an earthquake kit handy, buy earthquake bonds, and sleep tight.
  - unlinked_dll 7y ago
    TL;DR one gallon of water per person per day, expect a boil-water order for one month and disruption of telco and transit for a bit, so keep a stash of cash on hand. Stay put for the immediate time after the foreshock and aftershocks. Not much else you can do.
    - greglindahl 7y ago
      TL;DR go look at a real earthquake kit guide.
- milofeynman 7y ago
  This article [0] makes the San Andreas big one seem relatively mild. California buildings are prepared for it and the fault is only capable of an 8.2 or so. Now Portland is overdue for a much worse quake... [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...
  - wahern 7y ago
    There've been recent suggestions that older, post-1950 buildings, which generally used welded joints now known to be inadequate, may not fair well or may even fail catastrophically. Older steel buildings used riveted connections, while newer buildings use improved welding techniques and, at critical points, bolting. Riveting is more resilient, while bolting is considerably stronger.
mehrdadn 7y ago
Question: What's the fastest earthquake notification source publicly available? I ask because USGS seems to have a 5-10 minute delay, whereas I'm hoping for less (ideally a few seconds).
- rolltiide 7y ago
  Twitter lol You just dont get magnitude, depth and location data You can also make your own seismoter, its not complicated but everything makes them go off
  - King-Aaron 7y ago
    Compulsory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/723/ https://xkcd.com/723/
  - daveslash 7y ago
    Excusing the commentor's misuse of grammar and punctuation: I'm Not sure why this comment is being down voted. I haven't done the research, but is @rolltide incorrect in his assertion that you can get certain data from USGS (such as magnitude, depth, and location)? That information is available on the USGS website. Or are people down-voting him/her because of the claim of making your own seismoter? (rolltitde did misspel seismometer).
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      For one, twitter can't give you a notification for an earthquake.
    - mkl 7y ago
      It sounds like they just meant random people tweeting about earthquakes the moment they happen, instead of actual data or reliable notifications.
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      > Excusing the commentor's misuse of grammar and punctuation: I'm Not sure why this comment is being down voted. I downvoted it for "Twitter lol". 1) The "lol" is unnecessary and juvenile 2) The statement indicates that either using Twitter should somehow be obvious, or that the poster is not taking the posed question seriously On balance, it pulls the level of discourse down, which is my (and the proper) criteria for a downvote.
smsm42 7y ago
Money quote from the article: “We don’t know what it means.”
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  I remember a Seismologist that said that moving rocks in a region with fault lines are a good sign. At least better than not moving rocks that are constantly building pressure. Of course "we don't know" is probably the most accurate prediction.
  - emcq 7y ago
    The small energy released by small movements doesn't add up to a large earthquake. For example, magnitude 8 earthquake is a billion times more energy than a magnitude 3 earthquake. This was the sobering perspective of a geophysicist when I asked if small earthquakes are a good thing in California to help relieve potential energy.
seaish 7y ago
If you picked up a paintbrush, you could say "human capable of painting the Mona Lisa has started painting". The article doesn't really give any information about what makes this fault special, besides not having seen it move before. Is the original paper available?
- env123 7y ago
  "A major California fault capable of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake has begun moving for the first time on record, a result of this year’s Ridgecrest earthquake sequence destabilizing nearby faults" Is that not information enough?
  - jnty 7y ago
    No - because it doesn't give any context about what the consequences of that might be. The next paragraph could say something like "this is perfectly normal, though, and is very unlikely to lead to an earthquake" or "this means an earthquake is nearly inevitable in the next month" and I'd be no more surprised by one that the other.
  - jchw 7y ago
    Not really, because the article goes on with this quote: >“We don’t know what it means.” Then... >Whether the destabilization will result in a major quake soon cannot be predicted. In September, the U.S. Geological Survey said the most likely scenario is that the Ridgecrest quakes probably won’t trigger a larger earthquake. And of course... >Also, a creeping fault triggered by a nearby quake doesn’t necessarily mean a big quake is coming. The southernmost tip of the San Andreas fault has traditionally crept in response to distant quakes, including the magnitude 8.2 quake off the coast of southern Mexico in 2017, nearly 2,000 miles away. “But that doesn’t mean the San Andreas went off,” said USGS research geologist Kate Scharer, who was not part of the study. They do their best to not link to the actual study for which the alarmist headline seems to be derived. It is probably this: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/346 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/346 What I'm really wondering is whether the '8.0' figure is present in this paper or not. Because otherwise, where did they pull that number?
obilgic 7y ago
There was just an earthquake in LA
pts_ 7y ago
>The creeping illustrates how the Ridgecrest quakes that began on the Fourth of July have destabilized this remote desert region of California between the state’s greatest mountain range, the Sierra Nevada, and its lowest point, Death Valley. A cruel joke one could say.
mattlutze 7y ago
Relatively relevant, there's a review of the current challenges in detecting, correlating and acting on seismic events: http://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/escidoc:2405891:5/component/escidoc:2408890/2405891.pdf http://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/escidoc:2405891:...
raydev 7y ago
> But new satellite radar images now show that the fault has started to move, causing a bulging of land that can be viewed from space. Wow, it'd be sure be great for the article mentioning this to, you know, either host the pics or provide a link.
- alteria 7y ago
  And it seems like most of the articles are just copies of the LA Tribune or AP stories.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  I imagine it's something most people would look at and go "I have no idea what I'm looking at". For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_radar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_radar If you showed me the images in the Wiki entry with no context, I would assume i was looking at lichen growing on a rock like in this image https://cumuseum-archive.colorado.edu/Research/Objects/Images/sep04_lichen.jpg https://cumuseum-archive.colorado.edu/Research/Objects/Image...

220 points by spking 7y ago

I wonder if this is posted because of the California Shakeout drill today. >Whether the destabilization will result in a major quake soon cannot be predicted. In September, the U.S. Geological Survey said the most likely scenario is that the Ridgecrest quakes probably won’t trigger a larger earthquake. Nevertheless, the USGS said that the July quakes have raised the chances of an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 or more on the nearby Garlock, Owens Valley, Blackwater and Panamint Valley faults over the next year. So keep your china cabinets tidy, keep your earthquake kit stocked, but don't fret and carry on like normal? Seems a tad alarmist.

FooHentai 7y ago
It's not possible to please people with these kinds of notifications. On a long time scale, that fault IS gonna rip and if civilization exists around it at the point it goes, a LOT of people are going to die. But, our ability to predict quakes on a short time span (read: human lifetime) is abysmal. The best we can say is eh, maybe. There are no consistent, confirmed precursors. So, what can you do? Every warning will be accused of being alarmist if it doesn't eventuate, and every failed prediction (note that you don't see these from reputable professionals working in the field) mocked. If a warning is ever actually borne out by a significant seismic event, expect a TON of criticism that someone knew but didn't provide sufficient urgency in their warning. Putting all the stuff about warnings aside for a moment, let's examine at individual's justification for and capacity to make preparations for such an event. At one extreme you have preppers, and at the other end there's folk that do nothing. Both approaches seem predominantly to hinge on pure opinion on the immediacy of the threat. If you immerse yourself in various materials on the topic to be found online, you'll probably adopt a prepper mindset. If you simply never bother to do that and continue about your day, you'll likely sit on the 'do nothing' extreme. There really isn't a 'right' here without a crystal ball, which everyone seeks from seismologists and get frustrated when they can't provide any tangible insights. In summary: Mankind's ability to risk assess and rationally respond to long-interval threats of high severity is very, very poor.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  I get what you're saying but this post isn't about a fault experiencing a catastrophic event, but cascading events. If this fault rips it could trigger an event on another fault. Now I'm no geologist, but I question why the order the authors listed possible sites as this: >A large quake on the Garlock fault has the potential to send strong shaking to the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita, Lancaster, Palmdale, Ventura, Oxnard, Bakersfield and Kern Count Which seems to be influenced by the population of those areas and not the geographic distance from the Garlock fault itself. All the propabalistic models I've seen for "the Big One" have the waves that reach the SF Valley (which has iirc 2 million people) originating from the southwest from a major quake on the San Andreas fault, not a ripple effect from the northeast.
  - lazyasciiart 7y ago
    That paragraph is literally about the impact on society that it would cause. Yes, they are listing metropolitan areas. And yes, all the models you've seen before moooooost likely did not take into account activity from Garlock that had literally never been seen. That should not be a surprise.
- rjf72 7y ago
  I'd distinguish between prepping and doomsday types. Prepping can be as simple as having some basic supplies and nonperishable goods such that you're not going to die if, for any reason, you need to survive independently for some period of time. It's not like some lifestyle or even dependent upon an assumption that you'll even ever need these things. So it's a relatively low cost decision to be able to be at least somewhat prepared for an eventuality that, though extremely improbable, would have disproportionately negative consequences if you were of the 'do nothing' extreme on the other end. To put it mathematically, if I said there was a 1 in a million chance of you losing a billion dollars sometime in your life, and you agreed with me, it'd certainly be logical, if you could, to provide insurance against that eventuality for $1. In fact it'd still be mathematically sound to spend $1000. But this is for an event that you are literally 99.9999% sure will not happen. I think the big difference is in seeing reality as a neverending stream of probabilities as opposed to seeing reality as a neverending stream of certainties. The probabilistic mindset can lead you to conclusions and decisions that look peculiar to a deterministic mindset. By contrast doomsday types are those who have a deterministic mindset and have decided that the world (as we know it) is going to end and thus make that a part of their persona and worldview. Granted, they could also be of a probabilistic mindset with a different weighting but, at least in my experience, that's not usually the case.

blondin 7y ago

man... some of these titles are getting harder and harder to understand

MickerNews 7y ago
Temblor, his arms wide.
- mamurphy 7y ago
  When the walls fell.
  - mcagl 7y ago
    Sokath, his eyes uncovered!

Hamuko 7y ago

Having listened to a short podcast about the predicted big earthquake that would hit California ("the Big One"), I'm not sure how people in California manage to get a good night's sleep.

garmaine 7y ago
Easy: you don't fret over low probability events that are unlikely to cause you major damage anyway. (I've lived through multiple major earthquakes! meh, what's one more.)
greglindahl 7y ago
Have an earthquake kit handy, buy earthquake bonds, and sleep tight.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  TL;DR one gallon of water per person per day, expect a boil-water order for one month and disruption of telco and transit for a bit, so keep a stash of cash on hand. Stay put for the immediate time after the foreshock and aftershocks. Not much else you can do.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    TL;DR go look at a real earthquake kit guide.
milofeynman 7y ago
This article [0] makes the San Andreas big one seem relatively mild. California buildings are prepared for it and the fault is only capable of an 8.2 or so. Now Portland is overdue for a much worse quake... [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...
- wahern 7y ago
  There've been recent suggestions that older, post-1950 buildings, which generally used welded joints now known to be inadequate, may not fair well or may even fail catastrophically. Older steel buildings used riveted connections, while newer buildings use improved welding techniques and, at critical points, bolting. Riveting is more resilient, while bolting is considerably stronger.

mehrdadn 7y ago

Question: What's the fastest earthquake notification source publicly available? I ask because USGS seems to have a 5-10 minute delay, whereas I'm hoping for less (ideally a few seconds).

rolltiide 7y ago
Twitter lol You just dont get magnitude, depth and location data You can also make your own seismoter, its not complicated but everything makes them go off
- King-Aaron 7y ago
  Compulsory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/723/ https://xkcd.com/723/
- daveslash 7y ago
  Excusing the commentor's misuse of grammar and punctuation: I'm Not sure why this comment is being down voted. I haven't done the research, but is @rolltide incorrect in his assertion that you can get certain data from USGS (such as magnitude, depth, and location)? That information is available on the USGS website. Or are people down-voting him/her because of the claim of making your own seismoter? (rolltitde did misspel seismometer).
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    For one, twitter can't give you a notification for an earthquake.
  - mkl 7y ago
    It sounds like they just meant random people tweeting about earthquakes the moment they happen, instead of actual data or reliable notifications.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    > Excusing the commentor's misuse of grammar and punctuation: I'm Not sure why this comment is being down voted. I downvoted it for "Twitter lol". 1) The "lol" is unnecessary and juvenile 2) The statement indicates that either using Twitter should somehow be obvious, or that the poster is not taking the posed question seriously On balance, it pulls the level of discourse down, which is my (and the proper) criteria for a downvote.

smsm42 7y ago

Money quote from the article: “We don’t know what it means.”

raxxorrax 7y ago
I remember a Seismologist that said that moving rocks in a region with fault lines are a good sign. At least better than not moving rocks that are constantly building pressure. Of course "we don't know" is probably the most accurate prediction.
- emcq 7y ago
  The small energy released by small movements doesn't add up to a large earthquake. For example, magnitude 8 earthquake is a billion times more energy than a magnitude 3 earthquake. This was the sobering perspective of a geophysicist when I asked if small earthquakes are a good thing in California to help relieve potential energy.

seaish 7y ago

If you picked up a paintbrush, you could say "human capable of painting the Mona Lisa has started painting". The article doesn't really give any information about what makes this fault special, besides not having seen it move before. Is the original paper available?

env123 7y ago
"A major California fault capable of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake has begun moving for the first time on record, a result of this year’s Ridgecrest earthquake sequence destabilizing nearby faults" Is that not information enough?
- jnty 7y ago
  No - because it doesn't give any context about what the consequences of that might be. The next paragraph could say something like "this is perfectly normal, though, and is very unlikely to lead to an earthquake" or "this means an earthquake is nearly inevitable in the next month" and I'd be no more surprised by one that the other.
- jchw 7y ago
  Not really, because the article goes on with this quote: >“We don’t know what it means.” Then... >Whether the destabilization will result in a major quake soon cannot be predicted. In September, the U.S. Geological Survey said the most likely scenario is that the Ridgecrest quakes probably won’t trigger a larger earthquake. And of course... >Also, a creeping fault triggered by a nearby quake doesn’t necessarily mean a big quake is coming. The southernmost tip of the San Andreas fault has traditionally crept in response to distant quakes, including the magnitude 8.2 quake off the coast of southern Mexico in 2017, nearly 2,000 miles away. “But that doesn’t mean the San Andreas went off,” said USGS research geologist Kate Scharer, who was not part of the study. They do their best to not link to the actual study for which the alarmist headline seems to be derived. It is probably this: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/346 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/346 What I'm really wondering is whether the '8.0' figure is present in this paper or not. Because otherwise, where did they pull that number?

obilgic 7y ago

There was just an earthquake in LA

pts_ 7y ago

>The creeping illustrates how the Ridgecrest quakes that began on the Fourth of July have destabilized this remote desert region of California between the state’s greatest mountain range, the Sierra Nevada, and its lowest point, Death Valley. A cruel joke one could say.

mattlutze 7y ago

Relatively relevant, there's a review of the current challenges in detecting, correlating and acting on seismic events: http://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/escidoc:2405891:5/component/escidoc:2408890/2405891.pdf http://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/escidoc:2405891:...

raydev 7y ago

> But new satellite radar images now show that the fault has started to move, causing a bulging of land that can be viewed from space. Wow, it'd be sure be great for the article mentioning this to, you know, either host the pics or provide a link.

alteria 7y ago
And it seems like most of the articles are just copies of the LA Tribune or AP stories.
ryanmercer 7y ago
I imagine it's something most people would look at and go "I have no idea what I'm looking at". For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_radar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaging_radar If you showed me the images in the Wiki entry with no context, I would assume i was looking at lichen growing on a rock like in this image https://cumuseum-archive.colorado.edu/Research/Objects/Images/sep04_lichen.jpg https://cumuseum-archive.colorado.edu/Research/Objects/Image...