Is it about to blow?
While it would be pretty devastating, because of the distance, it wouldn’t affect LA as much. The one I worry about is a smaller one, like a 7 on the Newport-Inglewood, just a few miles from the house. That was the one that did a lot of damage in Long Beach in the thirties.
I believe it was in a James Bond movie that the villain’s big plan was to detonate an explosion in the San Andreas fault, which would set off a massive earthquake that would cause California to drop off into the Pacific Ocean. Does anyone here know if that’s scientifically possible? Not necessarily triggering off the destruction of California, but if it’s possible to trigger an earthquake by setting off an explosion in a geological fault. (Don’t worry: I don’t have any terroristic plans. I was thinking of using that gimmick in a novel I’m writing, albeit on a much smaller scale than in the Bond movie. Thanks.
Yes. I worked in the deep gold mines in South Africa, and blasting would often trigger seismic events. So, all the mines in a region would do their blasting at exactly 2 PM, and all mines would ensure that no people were underground if it was a blasting day.
It was a good way to know when lunch was over. You’d hear the building thump when the longitudinal (P) waves arrived, and grab your monitor as the building heaved from any transverse (S) waves caused by triggered events. Events were in the magnitude 2 – 6 range, but usually very short. A lot of thought went into blasting, to try to keep the events small and predictable, by relieving stress. Any stress buildup meant a possible large magnitude event happening during mining, rather than during blasting.
You would need a fault that had built-up stress, and then would have to trigger it with enough energy and in the right place so that releasing that stress would cause a runaway stress release in the rest of the fault.
“grab your monitor as the building heaved”
Interesting (and I use the term loosely) place to work.
Nah, it was Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor in the first (and best) Superman: “Everyone has a fault…mine’s in California”.
Humor aside, time to fix the water heater strap I’ve been neglecting.