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Science

Anticipating Earthquakes 138

Posted by michael from the san-andreas dept.
dnahelix writes "Science @ NASA reports 'High above Earth where seismic waves never reach, satellites may be able to detect earthquakes--before they strike.'"
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Anticipating Earthquakes More

Anticipating Earthquakes

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  • Whoah man... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hogwash McFly ( 678207 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:46AM (#6673877)
    These quakes are like, sooooo psychadelic [nasa.gov], man.
    • These quakes are like, sooooo psychadelic, man

      Yeah... but after dropping all that acid, I find myself anticipating earthquakes like, ALL THE TIME, man...

      It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't live in Michigan.

  • Satellites? Why in my day we used dogs! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Prince_Ali ( 614163 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:46AM (#6673879) Journal
    We had a small earthquake a while ago, and about a minute before it happened my miniature pinscher jumped on my back and woke me up. If a single minpin can predict an earthquake a minute before it happens then a beowulf cluster of 1024 minpins could give people several hours notice.

    • Re:Satellites? Why in my day we used dogs! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Suhas ( 232056 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:51AM (#6673906)
      "my miniature pinscher jumped on my back and woke me up"

      A Horny dog is not necessarily predicting an earthquake

    • Re:Satellites? Why in my day we used dogs! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Urkki ( 668283 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:51AM (#6673908)
      Yes, but all the animal activist groups would skin you alive for plugging network cables into dogs.

      Better stick with satellites and computers for longer warning time, much less hassle.

      • Yes, but all the animal activist groups would skin you alive for plugging network cables into dogs.

        AFAIK, they've developed wireless interconnection millennia ago;)
        • But I think wireless communication just isn't fast enough to run a Beowulf cluster on. At least not if you have a thousand dogs, like suggested. I mean, going wireless would be just a mess even for regular dog-to-dog communication with that amount of dogs in range. Beowulf on it seems like a no-go from the start. IMHO of course, please note that I don't have even one dog myself and don't have much experience with them at all.

    • Re:Satellites? Why in my day we used dogs! (Score:4, Informative)

      by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:57AM (#6673929)

      Interestingly, a 1975 earthquake in China was successfully predicted [drgeorgepc.com] due in large part to strange animal behavior. A large number of lives were saved.

      Needless to say, this is an extreme exception to the rule, and is about as reliable as grandma's old bones are at predicting the weather.

      • Re:Satellites? Why in my day we used dogs! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by JJ ( 29711 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @07:20AM (#6674016) Homepage Journal

        ". . .this is an extreme exception to the rule, and is about as reliable as grandma's old bones . . ."

        I disagree. Dogs can hear much lower frequency sounds than humans and so would have a significant advantage at detecting imminent earthquakes. Farm animals (such as detected the China quake) can be readily shown to be aware of chanegs in a wide variety of situations: Earth's magnetic field fluctuations, gravitational disturbances, minute environmental chemical changes. I was at an air force base where the CO assigned men to watch the nearby reindeer herd. Their behaviour detected (and warned the base) of several natural and unnatural phenomenon. Among them being approaching weather fronts, seismic events and approaching Soviet aircraft and submarines. They were not as good as radar but more accurate at telling changes from routines.
        • Sure maybe animals do sense many impending earthquakes, but their behavior is not interpreted as pre-earthquake behavior and goes unnoticed.

          Hence, they are as reliable as grandma's old bones are at predicting the weather.

          If that was not true, we would have earthquake prediction by animals on a regular basis (which we do not have).

          Maybe if we could learn the ways of Dr. Dolittle and talk with them we would be able to do better in this area. But I'm not holding my breath.
          • Under normal circumstances I would agree. The CO just happened to have noticed that the reindeer detected approaching Soviet Bear and Backfire bombers (which do have a distinctive low frequency sound profile.) He also had noticed the animals were very much in tune with the weather fronts, which cause quite a bit of havoc in the Arctic. That he ordered airmen (and one particular Lt.) to also learn, identify and report these behaviors plus sit us down and organize our reporting (we correlated and came up with

        • ...Dogs can hear much lower frequency sounds than humans and so would have a significant advantage at detecting imminent earthquakes. Farm animals (such as detected the China quake) can be readily shown to be aware of chanegs in a wide variety of situations: Earth's magnetic field fluctuations, gravitational disturbances, minute environmental chemical changes

          Why can't we develop a device that detects these as well ? So we can get a more reliable warning of an incoming quake.

          Or is it being developed alr

          • Well there is scientific equipment that can hear(?) low frequency sounds. (See tree in forest of deaf people issue.) But of course they are expensive and difficult to maintain and if you put out fifty now you keep your five or six gard students busy all day everyday changing the data tapes. In short, its cheaper to buy a dog.

      • Interestingly, a 1975 earthquake in China was successfully predicted due in large part to strange animal behavior. A large number of lives were saved.


        Needless to say, this is an extreme exception to the rule, and is about as reliable as grandma's old bones are at predicting the weather.

        Yes, the Chinese are now downplaying predicting earthquakes after 30 false alarms. See Is the reliable prediction of individual earthquakes a realistic scientific goal? [nature.com]

        I saw a TV show about fringe-scientific earthq

      • Hey, don't knock the "grandma's old bones" method of predicting the weather until you get some old bones of your own. Then you'll believe,friend. I'm a grandpa with some old, abused bones, and I didn't even have to look out the window for the last couple of days to know it was going to rain. My left knee, especially, is a dead give-away.

  • Then what? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by martingunnarsson ( 590268 )
    Sure, if you detect an earthquake before it strikes you could get lots of people out of say a city in danger. That still wouldn't prevent the city itself though. And with most people away from town, bad guys could break in to a lot of stores and so on, with little risk of being caught. Or perhaps there could be panic situations with riots where people get robbed, injured or killed when everybody finds out about the earthquake. It's a nice technology, but there are many questions around it that need to be so

    • Re:Then what? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by confused one ( 671304 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:57AM (#6673932)
      The idea is for everyone to have a (precious) few minutes to get to shelter, clear off the roads, etc. That's all. Think of it like the tornado warnings in the central part of the U.S. When the siren goes off, everyone knows it's time to head for the cellar...

    • Re:Then what? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ShadeARG ( 306487 )
      Early detection leads to prevention. I'm not sure what the ramifications would be if one could be prevented, but I have a feeling earthquakes happen for a purpose.
      • yep...just like we can detect tornadoes before they happen so we are preventing a ton of them.

        nature is not the medical profession, we can not prevent the earth from doing its thing.

    • Re:Then what? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CProgrammer98 ( 240351 )
      ummm the purpose is to SAVE LIVES... who gives a damn about property/possessions when your life may be in danger...

      • It would be like John Ashcroft's daily terrorist warnings. When people are constantly warned then made afraid and nothing happens, sooner or later they start to ignore the warnings.

        With prediction of seismic and volcanic events (Mammoth Mountain anyone?) as bad as it is, you would have a large number of warnings, followed by nothing.

        Would you like to be the USGS spokesman who had to admit they had got it wrong - again? No, me neither.

        Best wishes,
        Mike.

        • I don't think you'd just get a blanket warning, I think you'd get a statement such as "Fifty percent of the time that the sensors showed conditions such as these an earthquake in this magnitude occurred in this time period." You'd be making a technically accurate statement, backed up by past performance. I don't think I'd mind being that guy.

          If the warning period was on the order of days, there'd be a web page for Emergency Services/Disaster Assistance coordinators to check, and it'd be their responsibil
        • But the point of the project is to give better and earlier warnings with a much higher confidence factor. I don't know how good it's going to get but if, just for argument's sake, they start being right 80% of the time then people will listten and lives will be saved.

          Any technology that helps prevent large scale loss of life has to be good. Of course, there will always be the dumbasses who stay put no matter what!

    • Re:Then what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Captain Nitpick ( 16515 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @07:29AM (#6674056)
      And with most people away from town, bad guys could break in to a lot of stores and so on, with little risk of being caught. Or perhaps there could be panic situations with riots where people get robbed, injured or killed when everybody finds out about the earthquake. It's a nice technology, but there are many questions around it that need to be solved.

      The questions have been solved. Emergency managers on the US east and gulf coasts (and, I assume, their counterparts in other nations affected by tropical cyclones) have plenty of experience running evacuations without causing the collapse of civilization.

      This of course assumes several days notice. If only hours or minutes are available, a tornado siren approach [slashdot.org] would be more effective.

    • "It's a nice technology, but there are many questions around it that need to be solved."

      ...yes, it's nice, but since there are so many questions, we'll just post-pone all earthquakes until we get the pesky bugs worked out. PFFFTT!
    • Depends on the prediction window. If it's small, say a few hours, then you can batten down the hatches and ride it out. People who live in single family dwellings could shut off the gas and water, and go sit in the front yard for while. People who live in apartments and other such dense arrangements could get themselves out and to a safer locale. Now if the window is a number of days, it gets trickier. You would probably have to evacuate the area, which is a very different story.

  • Weather (Score:5, Funny)

    by thenextpresident ( 559469 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:50AM (#6673902) Homepage Journal
    "...with a likely chance of showers. Tomorrow's forecast also includes a 20% chance of EarthQuakes on the 7.0 scale. Watch out Los Angeles, you could have a shaky morning. Phil." "That's right Tom, and speaking of shaky mornings, here's Wolf with the sports..."
    • Meterologists have found that people ignore tornado predictions until they got into the 20% range for a couple hour, single county window. Before that the citizenry would treat these predictions as spam. Now the warnings are good enough to save lives.
      Californians are very blazee, and would ignore predictions of low probability. Scientists are happy if they can beat random probablity, which is about 1 in 20,000 of a destructive quake happening on a given day in Los Angeles. This is a far cry from a 1 in
  • Earthquakes serve as a population control mechanism, and have been for all of time.

    Advanced humans (Americans, etc.) need to stop messing with Mother Nature and just let things run their course.

    Why does Science always have to rear its ugly head? Just let things be.

  • It's only a matter of time... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hogwash McFly ( 678207 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @06:58AM (#6673937)
    Who knows when the next Quake [ravengames.com] is coming? What will probably happen is that they'll predict a date but when the date arrives the Quake will be nowhere to be seen and then the Quake people will announce another date that may or may not be accurate.

  • high above the internet (Score:4, Funny)

    by BrianUofR ( 143023 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @07:02AM (#6673945)
    'High above the internet where packets never reach, satellites may be able to detect the slashdot effect--before it strikes.'

  • What about the Panic? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dirtydiaper ( 697253 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @07:04AM (#6673952)
    If the TV comes on with the news, and the reporter says, "NASA has recored that we are goning to enter a 6.0 sized earthquake in 1 hour" everyone is going to panic. Then criminals know that people are going to run away from there home. So they go and steal. As all the scared people run (because they a lot of trust in NASA) they get in traffice jams, there are tons of car crashes, roits start on the road, and then people start to fight. But wait! NASA was mistaken. There new system had a little flaw in it..oops
    • The world needs braces to stop earthquakes!

    • sure, much better to be killed in your beds by falling masonry. By the same logic we shouldn't have hurricane warnings, flood warnings, warnings of imminent terrorist attacks...you've been watching too many movies.

      And why this assumption that criminals are any less solicitous about their own safety than other people? How many housebreakers are going to break into a house knowing that it's probably going to collapse on top of them, that they'll probably have nowhere to store the stuff they've stolen, and th
    • RTFA. They are talking about monthly warnings, not short term notices. Here's a quote...
      With some practice, says Raymond, scientists eventually should be able to use the InSAR data to infer when stresses in the Earth's crust have reached a dangerous level, issuing a monthly "hazard assessment" for a given fault. Forecasters might report that the likelihood of having a major quake on, say, the San Andreas fault during the coming month is 2%, or 10%, or 50%.

  • maybe.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by selderrr ( 523988 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @07:04AM (#6673955) Journal
    they can also predict the slashdot effect [usgs.gov] then ?
    • they can also predict the slashdot effect then?

      I can already do that. It's called The Mysterious Future. Perhaps you don't subscribe? ;)
    • "Slashdot effect?"

      "Yes Captain... back in the late 20th century spanning to the early 21st century, a web news site called Slashdot...."

      "Get to the point Data..."

      "Yes Captain... if we overload the Borg's systems with excessively massive activity... it might, in theory, cause their servers to melt into charred silicon...as the venacular went."

  • Predicting earthquakes is very simple. Buy yourself a cow [nus.edu.sg] - if it gets nervous, get the hell out of town!

    Note that there might be some practical considerations having a cow in, say, L.A.

    • > Predicting earthquakes is very simple. Buy yourself a cow - if it gets nervous, get the hell out of town!

      Just like predicting Scotsmen using sheep!
    • Yah, but that relies totally on if the cows have come home, and by that time your fat lady've already sung, so you might as well just go back to counting your eggs before they've hatched.

      Or...wait for the earthquake that you couldn't predict to count the eggs after it hatches them for you...
  • Being able to detect earthquakes would be a huge boon, but you'd still need a way of getting people out of the way of the quake radius in an orderly fashion.

    So suppose you get a day's advance warning of an earthquake hitting a major city, and put a warning out? Do people get into leave the city in a calm and orderly fashion or perhaps get to some sort of earthquake shelter? Or does half the populace jam the roads, trying to take every last one of their belongings with them as flee the city, while the other

    • Re:Evacuation Chaos? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Bushcat ( 615449 )
      People don't need to leave the city. Instead, they move to evacutation zones where nothing's likely to fall on them. People die in earthquakes because (a) things fall on them and they die, or (b) things fall on them, they survive and then burn in the fires. In the Kobe earthquake a few years ago, relatives had time to bid farewell to trapped relatives as the fires approached. Get people a short way away from buildings, and they survive.

      The Japanese system envisages, ultimately, being able to give a few minu

      • People die in earthquakes because (a) things fall on them and they die, or (b) things fall on them, they survive and then burn in the fires.

        Good point - I was getting earthquakes confused with Godzilla attacks. Though while *you* may know that, I suspect a great proportion Joe Public would still want to get out of the city completely, which could cause gridlock, people stuck in their cars when the quake strikes, etc.

        • I've always said that panic is a surefire way to go about getting yourself killed. If you:

          A) Live in an earthquake zone.
          B) Panic at first warning, and flee the city
          C) Get stuck on a bridge trying to escape.
          D) Die because the bridge fell into the ocean when the earthquake hit

          I have no sympathy for you. You were WARNED for cryssakes...

    • People don't necessarily even need to get out of the city... just out of and away from tall buildings. If you live in a house you could just camp out in your backyard and be safe.
    • A [US Geological Survey] study reported a 62% chance of a major quake (magnitude 6.7 or greater) hitting the area sometime within the next 30 years--not exactly something to plan your day around.

    Any resident of California could tell you that...
    I guess with the current state of affairs, any progress would be good :)

    Makes me think, though. Ability to detect variations of 1mm over the course of a year? How do they account for, say, a satellite drifting slightly (gravity, solar wind, whatever)? How do the

  • or... (Score:2, Funny)

    by f0x 0f y0rk ( 661495 )
    You could always use sheeps bladders...
    • Sheep bladders? SHEEP BLADDERS! Everybody knows that the true augerer uses the entrails of a pig to predict the future!

      Using sheep bladders to predict earthquakes... why I never heard so much nonsense before in my life! Just goes to show how this generation doesn't know anything...
  • "The satellite earthquake forecast shows low to normal risk, with no critical crustal stresses or infrared signatures around the San Andreas fault."

    Critical Crustal Stresses? Did that make anyone else laugh out loud? "Today's CCS Index has been brought to you by your good friends at Entenmann's. Experiencing Critical Crustal Stress? Satisfy your craving with Entenmann's Ultimate Crumb Cake, available now at your neighborhood supermarket."

  • I wonder if similar technology can be used to predict impending volcanic activity?

    • Re:Volcanos (Score:5, Informative)

      by mikerich ( 120257 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @11:26AM (#6676390)
      Already done to an extent.

      A good number of volcanoes - such as those on Hawaii, are fitted with tiltmeters and laser-ranging reflectors.

      As magma moves up towards the surface, some volcanoes start to 'inflate', bulging outwards. By measuring changes in tilt, and the geometry of the mountain, vulcanologists can get some warning of the changes under the mountain.

      They usually combine this with seismic evidence (that moving magma creates swarms of tiny 'quakes), changes in gas production and the like to try and predict eruptions.

      However, volcanoes are just as unpredictable. The USGS made a series of predictions about the Long Valley Caldera in Eastern California. It is an ENORMOUS crater which is underlain by an active magma chamber. The last volcanic activity in the region was about 400 years ago, and it is likely to continue into the future. Slap bang in the middle of Long Valley is the Mammoth Mountain ski resort, built around a dormant volcano.

      In the early 1980s, the area around Mammoth Mountain began to bulge, molten rock was being forced upwards, there were swarms of 'quakes, trees began dying as CO2 bubbled up from underground. The USGS cautiously announced that they expected Mammoth Mountain to become active in the near future.

      It didn't. The area remains highly active, but doomsday was put off for now.

      BTW. if you ever get a chance to go to Mammoth Mountain, Long Valley and the Inyo Craters, do take it - the landscape is simply awe-inspiring.

      Another example is Pozzuoli, which lies West of Naples in an area known as the Phlaegrean Fields. This is another colossal caldera with an active magma chamber. The last eruption was in 1538 when a new mountain (called Monte Nuovo somewhat unoriginally) was formed, the crater of Solfatara is still somewhat active, disgorging water and sulphurous fumes.

      Pozzuoli is in the the middle of the Fields, a nice seaside town with some Roman ruins. However, during the 1970s, the area began to be shaken by hundreds of 'quakes a day. Even more worryingly, the area began to bulge upwards, sometimes by a centimetre a day! The Italian government ordered the evacuation of the entire city for several years, fearing another massive eruption. Eventually, the bulge subsided, the 'quakes faded and the people went back. But millions had been spent and enormous social dislocation caused.

      It's quiet there at the moment, so everyone is looking East, over Naples to Vesuvius, which has been suspiciously quiet for far too long now.

      Best wishes,
      Mike.

      • BTW. if you ever get a chance to go to Mammoth Mountain, Long Valley and the Inyo Craters, do take it - the landscape is simply awe-inspiring.

        Yes, but is it a`a-inspiring?
        • Yes, but is it a`a-inspiring?

          OUCH!

          Best wishes,
          Mike.

          • Thank you very much. I'll be here all Epoch.

            BTW, that's exactly what I said when I sprained my ankle hiking on it during a field excursion. A mile and a half from the damn truck. Ah, my old ig-pet days...
            • BTW, that's exactly what I said when I sprained my ankle hiking on it during a field excursion. A mile and a half from the damn truck. Ah, my old ig-pet days..

              Nasty, almost as nasty as me slipping on an obsidian flow near Mono Lake. Yep, that stuff sure is sharp.

              Best wishes,
              Mike.

    • Re:Volcanos (Score:2, Informative)

      by GeoGreg ( 631708 )
      At Yellowstone, one of the world's largest volcanoes, there are indications that something is going on [denverpost.com]. There's a big bulge on the bottom of Yellowstone Lake, but nobody is sure how long it's been there. It's emitting lots of hot water, though, and there is plentiful evidence of large hydrothermal (i.e. superheated steam) eruptions in Yellowstone's recent past. Also, trails in Norris Geyser Basin have been closed because the ground temperature is near 200 degrees Farenheit. While this is probably hydrot
    • I don't think it was the same technology, but ISTR that the USGS did a pretty good job predicting the eruption in the Phillipines that destroyed Clark Field a few (less than 10) years back.

  • Before They Strike? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Root Down ( 208740 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @07:58AM (#6674284) Homepage
    ...before they strike.

    This is a follow up to a previous program that was predicting them after they struck. Just last year they managed to predict the 1906 San Francisco Quake with amazing accuracy, and results like that are money in the bank for further research.
    • You hit it on the nose. After any large quake a hoarde of people come out the woodwork from astrologists, to psychics, to pet-owners, and an occasional scientist claiming they've predicted the quake. This is routine in Usenet sci.geo.earthquakes.
  • "the Global Earthquake Satellite System (GESS)"

    If I want money from Congress to deploy a constellation of satellites to detect earthquakes, would calling it GESS be my first choice?

  • Phone: Ring!

    Mayor Of Los Angeles: Hello?

    Voice On Phone: This is NASA! You're about to have-

    (Five minutes of rumbling, cracking and breaking glass and then silence).

  • Watching the stress build... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Cytotoxic ( 245301 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @08:24AM (#6674457)
    The nice moire pattern in the photo showing changes in elevation was from after the quake. It does a nice job of showing how the stress along the fault was released at this point during a quake, but isn't directly a lot of help in predicting anything. However, one would assume that if you looked at similar photos along a known fault for long enough, there would be areas that did not show any colorfull moire patterns, surrounded by lots of color (indicating movement in the fault). Pretty cool, but I think most of the major faults already have this information from ground measurements.
    The "60% chance of earthquakes in the next two days" portion of the prediction seems to rely on some piezo electric effect detected via magnetometers and thermal imaging. This has been speculated about for at least a couple of decades now, but I guess the signal to noise ratio is pretty bad since they haven't declared success yet. Maybe QuakeSat, mentioned at the end of the article, will provide enough comprehensive data to make some useful predictions. Predicting 12 out of the last 3 earthquakes isn't going to win you any friends!
    • "Pretty cool, but I think most of the major faults already have this information from ground measurements."

      Traditional methods involved in-situ gauges and periodic levelling and surveying lines. But these only provide measurements at a few points or along a few lines. Converting this into a picture of the strain field over an area is quite fraught. The survey lines are also quite expensive to do right (satellites are expensive too, but usually they are up there for more than one reason) but most importan

  • Fiction First (Score:2, Interesting)

    by f8xmulder ( 588686 )
    I read about a system very similar to this before in a book called, of all things, The Illuminati, by Larry Burkett. Burkett didn't go into the science behind it, but one of his characters utilizes satellites and their orbits to monitor seismic anomolies. By working in gravity and nice computer simulations, he is able to predict earthquakes several months in advance. Of course, no one listens to him, so its usefulness is somewhat mitigated by human stupidity. At any rate, I thought this a very interesti
    • What exactly was up with that book? The whole trilogy for crying-out-loud... I've never before read a book written by a dyslexic with ADD before. The way those paragraphs and thoughts just blended together hurt my brain... :-/
      • Dude, I think you're thinking of the "Illuminatus Trilogy" by Robert Anton Wilson. If you're not, then let my know - I quite *like* books written by ADD-suffering dyslexics, and if there's another one out there that I haven't read, I'd like to know. Cheers.
        • Ah, thanks for the correction. Yes, I was referring to the Illuminatus Trilogy. I actually enjoyed myself up to Book 3, but then took a three month breather, and tried to come back and finish. Not an endeavor I recommend. So how's it end? ;-)

          • How's it end? With, like, a whole bunch of crazy shit... so no surprise there.
            There's actually a sequel - the Schroedinger's Cat trilogy, set in a variety of alternate universes, each one more confusing than the last. I actually preferred it to the original, but wouldn't recommend it if you get hug up on things like "plot" and "structure".

            Glad to be of help.

  • How Will You Warn The Public? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aerojad ( 594561 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @08:57AM (#6674703) Homepage Journal
    Yeah, an early warning system for earthquakes sounds all well and good, but how exactly do you go about warning the public? If you go on TV and say "tomorrow there will be a 7.5 Earthquake under downtown Los Angeles", you run the risk of causing a panic in which people will die trying to get out of the city in what could only be described as the traffic jam from hell to get west or north.

    If the earthquake occurs, you're a hero; you saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands. If the earthquake doesn't, or is much smaller than predicted, you caused lots of people to die for no apparent reason, and you've lessened the public?s readiness to believe you the next time you make an earthquake prediction like this.

    This is nothing like trying to evacuate the shoreline of a major city for an approaching hurricane, because when those evacuations are issued they are in fact for the shoreline. You would be, in theory, proposing the evacuation of an entire metropolis, which no city in this country, or the world for that matter, has the proper infrastructure to handle such an evacuation unless you gave a lead time of a week or so.
    • Living on the east coast I know next to nothing about earthquakes, but for even a modestly strong earthquake I qouldn't think you would need to evacuate an entire city. If you could just warn people to stay out of high risk areas (bridges & underpasses for example) I would think you would eliminate most fatalities.
      • Exactly where on the East Coast?

        I ask since the Atlantic Seaboard does have quite severe earthquakes from time-to-time. In 1755 there was a submarine 'quake about 270km off of Cape Anne, Massachusetts. Estimates put it at Richter 6 to 6.5. It caused massive damage to Boston.

        Then in 1886 there was big 'quake centred near Richmond, Virginia. Estimated at Richter 6.6 it levelled most of the city.

        And the East was heavily shaken by the trio of awe-inspiring New Madrid 'quakes of 1811-1812. Each was between

    • Mexico City is both cursed and blessed by its earthquake situation. It is built on old lake mud which amplifies seismic waves, making buildings collapse. However, the worst quakes occur on the west coast, which takes seismic waves about five minutes to propagate through the rocks to Mexico City. They've used this delay to install a siren warning system for quakes, so people could leave buildings and turn off power. The first few years it issued too many false alarms, but has worked OK for recent west coa

  • Extra-terrestrial seismology? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aaaurgh ( 455697 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @09:39AM (#6675142)
    "High above Earth where seismic waves never reach..." ...except perhaps for the solar ones.

    Only two weeks ago my current boss invited me to accompany him to an evening lecture... on solar seismology! Turns out the guy is not just a paper pusher but actually has some serious qualifications in nuclear physics (of the solar, not bomb, sort - albeit a fine line between). Gave me a fascinating insight into more of the complexities of our sun, how its quakes make ours seem like mere trembles and its potential effects on us.

    Unfortunately, coming to Oz from an eastern european country meant he had little opportunity to use those skills, so now he's a frustrated project manager - there ain't no justice, eh?
    • The ailing SOHO satellite in a parallel orbit to the earth measures vibrations by the Doppler method at 700,000 solar locations several times a minute. This is over a hundred times more locations than earth-based seismographs, where the oceans which make it hard to measure 65% of the earth's surface.
      Solar data is "cleaner" and more complete than earth measurements. They dont have soil-coupling problems, nor man-made noise interference. The mathematics of solar seismic waves is the same as earth seismic

  • Piezoelectricity? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've always wondered why there hasn't been more research into piezoelectricity generating output which could be picked up by radios (or some other equipment) due to the sheer stress.
    • Many people living near the mountains before the Kobe earthquake (Kobe is sandwiched between the sea and mountains 1.5km inland) reported that their houses filled with a blue glow shortly before the earthquake.

  • Most import prediction: construction standards (Score:4, Insightful)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @09:55AM (#6675315)
    Sort-term earthquake prediction- hours to weeks- is pyschologically comforting, but not that important in saving lives or property. One needs to predict the maximum likely earthquake force in a neighborhood in order to properly contruct buildings and roads to last for at least 30 years and save lives. In this area the USGS and State Geologic Surveys have made great progress. Case in point: The 1994 Northridge, California earthquake and 1995 Kobe, Japan were the same magnitude, yet the second killed ONE HUNDRED TIMES more people than the first. The success of the Northridge quake was partially attributed to luck and partly to that Los Angeles had more newer buildings than Japan that had implemented the more serious construction codes. It is tragic that M5 quakes that barely spill coffee in San Jose, California, but level mud-brick buildings and kill hundreds in some third world country.

    I've been in three near M7 quakes in California and I can testify how psychologically traumatic a sudden quake is. Short term prediction would be comforting. It would also save some lives in large buildings like schools and stadiums (even though the 1989 San Francisco quake happended during a Wolrd Series baseball game without fatallity). And in reving up rescue crews.
    • In the 1995 Kobe earthquake, many buildings collapsed at the 4th floor, because they followed the building regulations extant at that time: there was a step reduction in column strength at that point. The breaks were clean enough to be notable. For example, Kobe City Hall collapsed at the 4th floor, and the break was so clean, they cleaned away the debris and re-joined the building. So it looks the same as before, just 2 floors shorter. Building regulations don't always get it right.

      Some people might look t

    • Note, too, that two quakes of the same magnitude can cause different amounts of damage depending on their depth. A recent, relatively high magnitude Seattle quake (the Nisqually[sp?] quake) would have done a lot more damage had it been shallower.

  • The problem of isolated quake precursors (Score:3, Informative)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @10:06AM (#6675443)
    Short term earthquake prediction (hours to weeks) has not been unsuccessful due to lack of effort. After some promising hints in Russia and China in the early 1970s, scientists around the world looked for a systematic precursor. All kinds of things happen before A COUPLE of large quakes: well-level changes, radon gas burps, scared animals, magnetic anomalies, heat anomalies, foreshocks, and so on. The problem has been they have not been systematic and repeatable. Is is not clear whether a GENERAL THEORY OF PREDICTION is even possible then. One hypothesis is that each seismic region may have its characteristic precursors. However, even the most active seismic areas like the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles experience large quakes tenty years apart, so its not easy to these this second hypothesis.

  • Good book on quake hazards (Score:3, Informative)

    by GeoGreg ( 631708 ) on Tuesday August 12, 2003 @11:03AM (#6676145)

    If you are interested in knowing more about earthquake hazards, but you're not a seismologist, check out Earthshaking Science [amazon.com] by Susan Hough. She works for the U.S. Geological Survey. She first discusses the basics of determining earthquake hazard, then discusses the currently estimated hazard in various regions in the United States. She's not optimisitic about specific earthquake prediction, but she thinks that we can improve our estimates of longer-term hazards. These estimates are critical for guiding hazard-mitigation efforts (building codes, for example).

  • ...read the article. You'll see they are talking about releasing monthly hazard assessments, NOT "earthquake in 1 hour/1 day" warnings.

    Here's a quote from the article...


    With some practice, says Raymond, scientists eventually should be able to use the InSAR data to infer when stresses in the Earth's crust have reached a dangerous level, issuing a monthly "hazard assessment" for a given fault. Forecasters might report that the likelihood of having a major quake on, say, the San Andreas fault during the c

  • ... since there are several hundred earthquakes (and aftershocks) everyday. Like in the SoCal-NV area, there are dozens quakes [usgs.gov] just today. Yes, we get that many quakes and everyone is very much blase about it since it is much ado about nothing. :-)

    They can prove if the system works (or not) in no time. The interesting is how the organization of evacuations and prepareness can be trickled down to people. Truth to be told, many SoCal residents still do not know that to do when an earthquake hits. Many ho

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