Welcome to the Utopia Forums! Register a new account
The current time is Thu Mar 28 05:12:53 2024

Utopia Talk / Politics / Cali hit
Sam Adams
Member
Fri Jul 05 22:48:05
7.1 very shallow strike slip. Its in the middle of the desert so its damage will be limited but these kinds of quakes are the most vicious by far.
McKobb
Member
Fri Jul 05 23:26:56
We shot some video in the desert a few days ago.
obaminated
Member
Fri Jul 05 23:30:11
Yeah it's fun to feel them and nice to know they arent likely to cause any major earthquakes near La.
obaminated
Member
Fri Jul 05 23:41:57
looks like pretty intense house fire going on in ridgecrest, im wondering if it is a gas leak.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jul 06 07:56:34
To the scientific experts here, what are the odds that this is a portend of Cali's imminent sinking into the sea?
Sam Adams
Member
Sat Jul 06 11:23:49
Any given quake has about a 5% chance of being a foreshock to a larger quake.

Also there is some thought this quake was not actually that shallow. The damage caused is much less than a shallow 7 should have been.
Hrothgar
Member
Sat Jul 06 12:13:39
Rugian, I remember some articles after the Japanese tsunami incident explaining that there is a theoretical maximum amount of potential energy a fault line can build up to given Earth's composition. That's why it's so rare to get really large earthquakes, and why it's an impossibility to go much beyond a 9, MAYBE somewhere in the range of 10. But beyond that the plates we are 'floating' on just can't withstand more pressure and they will slip.

And thus it's an impossibility to see an event of the level of entire chunks of continents breaking apart in moments or moving miles from where they were all at once. Even the quickest/most violent of the crusts movement is a very slow moving event from the human lifetime perspective.
Sam Adams
Member
Sat Jul 06 12:38:37
That, i think, is a good answer hrothgar. If an entire large fault moves at once its maximum amount, I think that gets us near a 10. For a larger quake than that we would need some sort of extraterrestrial impact. The dinosaur killer for obvious example exceeded 10 by a lot.
Sam Adams
Member
Sat Jul 06 12:39:49
Anyway it looks like USGS revised their depth calcs down to 17km... a bit more pedestrian.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jul 06 14:27:47
Hrothgar,

Why must you dash my hopes and dreams with your cold logic?
Forwyn
Member
Sat Jul 06 19:49:51
To summarize, even nuking the faultline would be unlikely to get them any further than a short swim?
hood
Member
Sat Jul 06 20:25:32
a 7.0 is roughly equivalent to a 2kt nuke. An 8.0 is about a 6 mt nuke. Nukes don't get all that much bigger, certainly not enough to rival a 9.0 earthquake.
show deleted posts

Your Name:
Your Password:
Your Message:
Bookmark and Share