Is The Big One Coming?

by CKR

We like to think of California as the United States' sacrifice to the earthquake gods, but today we had a reminder that "The Big One" might occur somewhere else entirely.

Probably the biggest earthquake in the United States occurred in 1812, on the New Madrid fault, part of the Reelfoot Rift system. That was in New Madrid, Missouri, for which the fault is named.

So the University of Arkansas has a Center for Earthquake Education and Technology Transfer, and the University of Memphis has a Center for Earthquake Research and Information.

And, just for good measure, here's Wikipedia.

All those links are full of information and maps. The University of Memphis, in particular, is following today's quake in Illinois and is the best source of up-to-date information that I've found.

Comments

[Jim Haworth]

I slept through the quake this morning, but my wife Pat was awake and said thet our cat, Purkinjee, had acted really strangely and would not leave her side. We didn't hear about the quake until the 2:00 news.

Want to hear something really strange and serendipitous?

I'm a Hoosier poet and author. Last week I started a science fiction story about earthquakes, their prediction and prevention. I just did some research on our area last Wednesday evening and yesterday morning that I encluded in my story. Yesterday I gave a copy of it to a co-worker whose husband is a geologist to get his feed back on the authenticity of the research and the believability of the story line.

Here is what I have written so far:

The Archimedean Project

Xandor tightened his grip on the wheel, straining against the pull exerted by the plates as they drilled inexorably deeper and deeper into the earth.

Their high speed drill ship shuddered and lurched suddenly as they struck another massive rock formation at the 3.75 killometer mark, threatening to throw them off course. Filo! Trim the gimbal on those right side boring rotors before they tear us apart! Filo twisted the dial to realign the rotors that had been forced out of position by the terrible forces of their rapid descent. Drill ship Archimedes One, named for the ancient Archimedean screw, slowly came back in line. The massive ship and her sister ships were affectionately called Arkies by their crews.

Their hi-lo combo frequency radar continued to guide them down the fault line as they ground flanking pathways along the face of the Westerly thrusting mid America tectonic plate. Xandor, in a low tight lipped tense voice said “Zira, contact Arkie two and three and have them tighten up their positions relative to us on the fault line.

Within moments the one thousand ship line was again perfectly aligned as they continued their gargantuan project.

As the critical situation of alignment rapidly receded from his thoughts, Xandor reflected on the flurry of meetings with leading scientists from around the globe. They had taken so much of his time in the six months prior to the implementation of his project. These meetings had blossomed after the completion of fifteen years of grueling research work on seismological activity patterns. The pies’ de resistance had been the successful small scale test of Xandors theoretical process for relieving the earthquake producing pressures along the great earthquake faults and fissures associated with the migration of the world’s tectonic plates. If this small scale success could be repeated on actual faults, massive earthquakes could be thwarted. Thousands, perhaps millions of lives could be potentially be saved along with billions to trillions of dollars worth of homes, businesses and infrastructure, worldwide.

Xandors work had been based on the findings of a legion of historic figures in seismology, including the K class work of Rautan and Kahlturin in the former USSR,
Iberian Peninsula studies of 1739 main quakes between 1045 and 2005 done by the University of Jaen in Morocco, as well as work done in the Southern Apennines in Italy,
the Atoyac, Mexico earthquake studies, Balanced Rock measurements in the Mojave Desert in California and monitoring information from real-time systems such as the Antelope Environmental Monitoring System (AEMS) widely used in seismology (Boulder Real Time Technologies 2007). These studies as well as myriad works done by the Japanese, Indian, Pakistani, and other scientists covered world wide fault studies from the rim of fire off the Western edge of the North American continent to the deep sea rift in the Atlantic Ocean.

Taking the lead of Dr. Won-Young Kim, a seismologist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, Xandor used Ultrasound Imaging as well as satellite study data to select the site for his preliminary small scale project in the southern Indiana Wabash Valley Seismic Zone. This area had been selected because findings suggested that an ancient fault line dating back to the Precambrian era of geological history (from 4.6 billion to 570 million years ago) had become reactivated and was probably the best documented fault system in the eastern United States due to past petroleum exploration in the area.

While this area extends across Illinois, and southern Indiana, other minor tributaries extended into western Kentucky. This Caborn fault line had been associated with quakes evolving from 7 to 18.5 km deep. An isolated, close to the surface, small line east of Lexington, which had shown recent minor activity, had been selected for Xandor’s final project to test his newly developed theories. Successful earthquake prediction software, in use for 95 years had indicated that there would be a 7.5 rated quake in the next 18 months in this isolated area. (This technique had been proven to be 99.5% accurate)

Using three new prototype drill ships, his team had penetrated the short fault line and successfully installed sliding roller bearing plates into the opposing surfaces of the fault. Ultrasound and satellite image evaluation documented the gradual migration of the two sides of the fault over the next 36 months, proving that the predicted earthquake had been prevented successfully by allowing the slowly slipping fault to release its pressure over time instead of in one explosive jolt.

Armed with this success, Xandor had gathered his worldwide support of scientists who were able to persuade the major governments of Earth to provide the 1.3 trillion dollars needed to fund the next step in eliminating future quakes around the world. The San Andreas Fault had been selected, as it would prove to the rest of the world that the United States was willing to take the initial risk of installing the Xandor system. I said risk, because the process of installation had the potential for causing a massive quake before completion. As you know, another massive quake in this highly populated area would be devastating.

Xandor’s reminiscing was suddenly interrupted by his second in command, Sir Arthur Conan Clark-Smythe, who was so named to honor the great ancestors in his past. “Captain, We must pause the project for the scheduled 4 km evaluation of internal craft systems and timing of our progress.

To be continued…

By James W Haworth
AKA Simon Stargazer III
4-18-08

Now, how strange is this timing? timing??

The week before that I did a spoof on the San Andreas Fault in California and then did another story relating to the time God told Noah to build an arc, and the possible future call to a new Noah who would build a new space arc to avoid the firey destruction of Earth, when the tectonic plates finally smashed hard enough to explode into space revealing the fiery molten core and creating a new ring of asteroids circling the sun, composed of bits of the tectonic plates. Hmmm... maybe Art Bell might be intrigued....

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