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Seismologists suspect earthquake on San Andreas Fault is imminent
- tims33 3y agoFunny. In with the roar of multiple paragraphs spent explaining all the reasons this spot will be the next big one. And then out with a quick whimper that the scientists are not convicted.
- operatingthetan 3y agoDidn't happen in the last five days either. Does that make it more likely or less?
- callalex 3y agoI’m an independent statistic who don’t need no covariant!
- CamperBob2 3y agoAnd then out with a quick whimper that the scientists are not convicted. Well, no, this isn't Italy.
- mogadsheu 3y agoI think op is referring to a TS Elliot poem
- mroche 3y agoThis is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. --- Excerpt from The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot[0]. I'll have to add it to the page, but it was also used as the introduction for The Compound by S.A. Bodeen[1]. It's an interesting young adult novel about a family living underground in a state of the art bomb shelter after a nuclear attack occurs. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hollow_Men https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hollow_Men [1] https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-compound-s-a-bodeen/15548537?ean=9780312578602 https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-compound-s-a-bodeen/1554853...
- CamperBob2 3y agoWe would also have accepted, "The best lack all conviction / While the worst are filled with passionate intensity." Even though that's Yeats.
- hof 3y agoActually, I think the reference might be to this: https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/11/7193391/italy-judges-clear-geologists-manslaughter-laquila-earthquake-fear https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/11/7193391/italy-judges-cle...
- ubitaco 3y agoWhereas GP is making reference to a case in which Italian seismologists were literally convicted after their predictions did not come true.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoConvinced? :-)
- vsnf 3y agoLikely what they meant, but convicted could be correct here, in that the scientists may not have much conviction in their assessment, i.e. do not feel certain.
- andrewflnr 3y agoUm, no. Right from the start of the article it was clear this was a relatively small, periodic family of earthquakes, nothing like "the big one".
- alex_young 3y agoIn Parkfield CA. Halfway between LA and SF.
- flatline 3y agoThe paper is actually science, but it’s not news. It is, however, being portrayed that way. This type of writing seems like a job that could, and possibly should, be replaced by AI. I personally believe the Cascadia fault will go off on June 18, 2025, but I may be wrong!
- cromulent 3y agoNearby Corcoran has been subsiding at up to 60cm per year (from water extraction). Seems like quite the area. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/89761/san-joaquin-valley-is-still-sinking https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/89761/san-joaquin-v...
- refulgentis 3y ago60 cm!!? Wow.
- echelon 3y agoI'm a non-Californian, so I'm not very familiar with the tectonics at play here. If there's an earthquake on this fault, how bad would it be? Would it trigger a tsunami? Would SF and LA be damaged? Could this cause "the big one" that gets mentioned occasionally? How bad would such a quake be?
- monkburger 3y agoSan Andreas is a transform fault, also known as a 'strike-slip' fault. These generally do not cause as much damage as a subduction zone event, also known as dip-slip. An example of this type of event (dip-slip) would be the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, or the violent 1700 Cascadia Megathrust Earthquake. Personally, Cascadia is /more/ dangerous than any strike-slip earthquakes like SA. We have sedimentation records of massive Cascadia tsunamis going back to about ~900CE.
- inference-lord 3y agoOne thing which isn't discussed enough is how bad the Tsunami is environmentally. The coastline of Japan is absolutely littered with crap from the 2011 Tsunami. All manner of chemicals were sucked into the nearby sea, tires, carpets, hard and soft plastics, absolutely everywhere. It almost looks unrecoverable. I know that seems like a non-issue in the grand scale of things, but Tsunami's of the past didn't do this. Most pollution was biodegradable. I can't imagine what the coast of LA would look like after a similar event :(
- monkburger 3y agoMore of a concern in the bay area, the geological composition is sand, mud, basic river delta sediments--not the most stable stuff. eg: During a hypothetical Earthquake in the Bay area, the liquefaction of sand occurs, which causes underground structures to move upward due to buoyancy (think of a lower level parking garage), and the soil mass from the structure collapses. the liquefied sand diffuses to the surrounding area after the earthquake, causing the sand beneath the underground structure to be lost, and the building will return to its original position or even collapse.
- Eliezer 3y agoDescribing this as "on San Andreas" seems deceptive. It's a particular unpopulated location.
- andrewflnr 3y agoIt's "on San Andreas Fault", in the usual "the"-dropping style of headlines. The fault is named after the town of San Andreas but extends well beyond it.
- Rebelgecko 3y agoThe town motto of San Andreas explicitly disclaims responsibility for the geographic feature.
- mogadsheu 3y agoI sat in on a lecture by a Stanford geophysicist, and he said that seismologists have every legal incentive to communicate that a large earthquake is imminent in the Bay, even if their work is inconclusive or suggests otherwise. They might get sued or prosecuted if they say it’s safe and a big one strikes.
- Calvin02 3y agoThat seems odd. What would be the basis of such a lawsuit?
- colinb 3y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/oct/22/scientists-convicted-manslaughter-earthquake https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/oct/22/scientists-c... perhaps.
- Modified3019 3y agoWow that’s fucked up Edit: looks like they eventually were saved in appeals court https://www.nature.com/articles/515171a https://www.nature.com/articles/515171a and finally completely cleared after their Supreme Court ruling https://www.science.org/content/article/italy-s-supreme-court-clears-l-aquila-earthquake-scientists-good https://www.science.org/content/article/italy-s-supreme-cour... Still a lot of time and money wasted on absolute bullshit.
- shiroiushi 3y ago[flagged]
- peterleiser 3y agoThat was Italy, not the US.
- nextaccountic 3y agoAre there any other professional category that gets sued if they don't predict disaster within tight timing? Imagine suing epidemiologists because they didn't predict Covid-19 in a timely manner.
- ww520 3y agoThe earthquake might cause unexpected damage. The Crystal Springs reservoir sits right on the San Andreas fault line. The reservoir supplies drinking water to the SF county and San Mateo county, all the way to Palo Alto. An earthquake might drain the water underground, disrupting water supply to a million people.
- misja111 3y agoEarlier warnings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23823917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23823917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24116552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24116552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23823917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23823917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11634338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11634338
- RowanH 3y agoI think this line is (a) most accurate and (b) rings true to your list "as is always the case with earthquakes, everyone will just have to wait and see what happens" Oh well, off to watch a B-Grade disaster movie then ..
- pavelstoev 3y agoShould I be worried ? I just landed at SFO
- vasco 3y agoI wonder what happens if someone hits the fault with an explosive while it's in this state of "near-earthquake". Would it make it better by relieving pressure or make it worse by triggering the main event?
- southernplaces7 3y agoBasically neither really. the energy unleashed by even moderate earthquakes through natural tectonic tension release is proportional to the degree of accumulated tension getting released, and in all such cases, these tensions contain a potential energy that is far, far greater than what any normal nuke generates. In other words, a nuke placed in the San Andreas fault even with extreme care to have maximum impact, would probably do almost nothing against the much bigger energy, and resistance to its release, already going on. A key thing is that with nukes or any large artificial blast, the energy is pretty much released in a compact area right out into the open. With earthquakes, energy is spread across large areas and often starts far underground, yet still causes damage over a very extensive area. This is part of why earthquakes are much more energetic then man-made blasts. Large explosions (especially nukes) do produce earthquakes and minor seismic movement, but it just doesn't compare to the comparative megaton-equivalent forces that natural tectonic movements create underground during really notable earthquakes, just like the one being "predicted" in the article above.
- monkburger 3y agoThe energy released by an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 on SA is approximately 6.31×10^16 joules. When converted to an equivalent in terms of TNT, this energy amounts to about 15,080 kilotons of TNT. (About the same as the Castle Bravo nuclear test) Now, to use such a weapon to cause a stress-relief earthquake, some factors need to come into play: Depth at which the device should be detonated to optimize stress relief without causing surface damage. detailed seismic imaging and rock mechanics studies. Geometry of the fault zone. Even w/ a Castle Bravo type test, massive radioactive fallout would occur in groundwater as well as air. There's also the chance that such an event would cause local volcanic activity.
- andrewinardeer 3y agoReading this article it says that scientist expect an earthquake because every 22 years it pops and it's due, however, there are no signs indicating that it will soon so therefore scientists won't make a formal prediction. Am I reading this incorrectly?
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