Posted on 12/20/2025 4:23:11 AM PST by Red Badger
Will 2026 be a year of great shaking for the United States? Coming into 2025, I thought that seismic activity would be a major global theme, and that has certainly turned out to be the case. This has been an extremely unusual year for earthquakes along the Pacific Ring of Fire, and volcanoes that have been dormant for ages are suddenly roaring to life all over the world. Here in the United States, we have been experiencing lots and lots of little earthquakes, but thankfully we have not been hit by a really bad one yet. Will our luck run out in 2026?
According to the Daily Mail, the dozens of earthquakes that have been rattling the New Madrid fault zone since the middle of November are “renewing fears of a catastrophic natural disaster soon”…
A giant seismic zone in the heart of the US has seen dozens of tiny earthquakes break out in the last month, renewing fears of a catastrophic natural disaster soon.
Since mid-November, the US Geological Survey (USGS) has detected at least 38 low-level seismic events along the boundaries of the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) in Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee.
The threat that the New Madrid fault zone poses should not be underestimated.
In a previous article, I discussed the series of catastrophic earthquakes that occurred along that fault zone in 1811 and 1812. Everyone agrees that they were the most powerful earthquakes in the entire history of the continental United States…
The New Madrid earthquakes were the biggest earthquakes in American history. They occurred in the central Mississippi Valley, but were felt as far away as New York City, Boston, Montreal, and Washington D.C. President James Madison and his wife Dolly felt them in the White House. Church bells rang in Boston. From December 16, 1811 through March of 1812 there were over 2,000 earthquakes in the central Midwest, and between 6,000-10,000 earthquakes in the Bootheel of Missouri where New Madrid is located near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
In the known history of the world, no other earthquakes have lasted so long or produced so much evidence of damage as the New Madrid earthquakes. Three of the earthquakes are on the list of America’s top earthquakes: the first one on December 16, 1811, a magnitude of 8.1 on the Richter scale; the second on January 23, 1812, at 7.8; and the third on February 7, 1812, at as much as 8.8 magnitude.
Scientists tell us that it is just a matter of time before another great earthquake strikes this region.
Six years ago, the USGS determined that a magnitude 7.7 quake would shake major cities all over the Midwest…
In 2019, USGS scientists modeled what a 7.7 magnitude earthquake would look like if it erupted along the Arkansas-Tennessee border, in an area near Memphis.
The shockwaves of this hypothetical mega quake spread for hundreds of miles, reaching cities including Kansas City, Indianapolis, Louisville, and Birmingham.
Buildings in that area of the country are typically not constructed to withstand an event of that size, and so the USGS is projecting that hundreds of thousands of buildings would be damaged and the economic damage would run into the hundreds of billions of dollars…
Since this region is not well equipped to deal with a massive seismic event, studies of such an earthquake projected that a magnitude 7.7 earthquake would cause over 86,000 injuries or deaths, damage 715,000 buildings, and knock out power to 2.6 million homes.
That report, by the University of Illinois, Virginia Tech, and George Washington University, also estimated that the cost could hit $300 billion directly, with indirect costs due to lost jobs possibly taking the damage to $600 billion.
An earthquake like that could hit us at any time.
But when the “really Big One” finally arrives, it will be much, much worse than the USGS is anticipating.
Experts are also urging us to keep an eye on the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
We are being told that when it finally goes, “the Pacific Northwest could change in a matter of minutes”…
Beneath Cascadia’s forests and coastlines lies a 600-mile fault capable of producing a magnitude-9 earthquake. The last one struck in 1700, shaking the region for minutes and sending a massive tsunami all the way to Japan. Today, nearly 17 million people live on top of the same silent threat. Scientists warn that when it breaks again, the Pacific Northwest could change in a matter of minutes.
The reason why the Cascadia Subduction Zone is so dangerous is because it has the potential to produce “megathrust” earthquakes…
At depths shallower than around 30 km, the two plates of the CSZ are locked together by friction. Strain (deformation) slowly builds as the subduction forces continue to act upon the locked plates. Once the fault’s frictional strength is exceeded, the rocks slip past each other along the fault in a “megathrust” earthquake.
A large enough “megathrust” earthquake could cause a tsunami that is hundreds of feet high to violently slam into the west coast.
In such a scenario, the death toll would likely be cataclysmic.
So that is why any seismic activity in the region gets so much attention.
On Monday, a magnitude 2.9 earthquake not too far away from Seattle caused quite a stir…
Reports of a massive explosion in Washington state sent residents in the Pacific Northwest into a state of confusion Monday morning.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) sent out an alert just before 11.30am ET, warning that an explosion with the force of a magnitude 3.0 earthquake has just taken place near the town of Concrete.
USGS quickly retracted the false explosion warning and reclassified the seismic event as a magnitude 2.9 earthquake, less than 70 miles north of Seattle.
Scientists assure us that a “megathrust” earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone is in our future.
And when it finally occurs, it could also trigger the San Andreas fault system…
Successfully predicting earthquakes sounds like a dark art.
However, new research hints it may be possible: Sediment cores extracted from the Pacific seafloor suggest that two major fault systems along the western coast of the United States and Canada might be partially synchronized. After an earthquake on the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone, an earthquake soon after on the northern part of the San Andreas fault appears to occur roughly half of the time, the new findings reveal. These results, published in Geosphere, provide evidence of stress triggering, which has long been invoked to explain how activity on one fault might lead to activity on another nearby.
Fault zones persist across wide swaths of our planet, but the one that stretches onshore and offshore from California to British Columbia, Canada, is particularly complex. The vertical strike-slip San Andreas fault, in the south, intersects the Cascadia subduction zone off the coast of Northern California at a point known as the Mendocino Triple Junction.
When the San Andreas fault system finally rips wide open, the geography of the state of California will be permanently altered.
And it won’t just be Southern California that is affected.
Over the past couple of months, Northern California has been getting pummeled by literally hundreds of sizable quakes…
While California ranks second in the US in seismic activity, most quakes are small and go largely unnoticed. That has changed in recent weeks with two swarms impacting the Bay Area: one is east of San Francisco near San Ramon; the other is north of San Francisco near The Geysers.
Over the last 30 days, USGS has reported 1,470 earthquakes around The Geysers; in just the last 7 days, there have been 286. Most of these have been weak, with only 5 earthquakes rated a magnitude 2.0 or higher intensity over the last week. While the volume has been eyebrow raising, the intensity hasn’t.
The opposite has been the case near San Ramon. There, over the last 30 days, there have been 139 earthquakes reported by USGS; over the last 7 days, that number has been 25. But the intensity of these earthquakes have been greater, with 39 rated magnitude 2.0 or greater and 6 rated 3.0 or greater over the last 30 days.
This is definitely not normal.
San Ramon has been getting shaken so frequently that one social media user has compared it to “a massage chair”…
“Wee bit nervous,” one person wrote on Threads, adding that she planned to stock up on water and earthquake supplies.
“San Ramon is basically a massage chair today … but like, the stressful kind,” another person wrote on the social media site. “Dear Earth: we get it, you’re active. You can stop now.”
The Calaveras Fault is a major branch of the San Andreas fault system.
This is the fault that has been causing so much shaking in San Ramon lately, and it has the potential to produce very large earthquakes…
Historically, the southern half of the central segment of the Calaveras Fault has been the most seismically active segment of the fault.
It produced the 6.2 Morgan Hill earthquake in 1984. The 5.9 Coyote Lake earthquake in 1979 ruptured slightly to the south of these other earthquakes.
When you are driving your vehicle and one of those little warning signals on the dashboard lights up, what do you do?
Hopefully you take it to a mechanic or you fix it yourself.
Ignoring a warning signal like that is a really bad idea.
Similarly, the New Madrid fault zone, the Cascadia Subduction Zone and the San Andreas fault system have all been sending us lots of warning signals lately.
Sadly, it appears that most of the population will continue to ignore those warning signals until it is too late.
The threat that the New Madrid fault zone poses should not be underestimated.
That's OK. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission found a centrally convenient place in the middle of the United States to maintain and store its emergency nuclear reactor equipment for rapid deployment to all states in the Central US.
Near the airport in Memphis TN.
(We can just hope all of the bridges and interstate highways nearby are fully up and safe when they have to convoy out of town to an emergency somewhere else. )
How can we blame this on global warming?
They’ve officially given up on the global warming scam. And only 5.16 years left. So close. That’s a shame. Any updates on our interplanetary friends flying in from other galaxies?
Or Trump.....
Michael Snyder... the man has a sixth sense for seeing apocalypses. I always know who the author is just from the headline.
Trump’s fault.
or Trump.
None of this would ever happen if Harris successfully scammed herself into the Oval Office and we all owned EV’s that self destructed via bad batteries.
Or not🤔
Sounds biblical. And if it wipes out the current population and leaves most of the stuff intact, it could turn California red.
Not sure what would happen to Portland and Seattle with this one.
In any event, no need to worry about it until somebody starts a cable TV show about it and my wife switches to that from "The Secret of Hoax Island".
It’s NOT TRUMP!
It’s NOT TRUMP!
It’s NOT TRUMP!
It’s NOT TRUMP!
It’s NOT TRUMP!
It’s NOT TRUMP!
It’s NOT TRUMP!
It’s NOT TRUMP!
It’s NOT TRUMP!
It’s MUSK!
/s
Seismic scenarios demonstrate possible earthquake events that could strike Washington state. There are 20 seismic scenarios presented here that Washingtonians should be aware of. No matter where you live in Washington, you could be impacted by a future earthquake. These scenarios can help you plan and prepare for earthquake hazards.
There's one specifically for Seattle.
Exactly. Time to raise taxes.
Of course, the groypers will whine about how the JOOOS are causing this, Candace Owens will most likely do a string of podcasts about it, but we all know SOMEthing like this is coming down the pike - a black swan, not a black flag.
Are you ready for it?
Whenever I see “experts” in an article, I can smell the Authority Bias.
“Scientists” is a good fear pr0n trigger word, to boot.
You know someone is a scam artist when they preach economic collapse yet accept payment in fiat currency.
You mean that the West Coast will be purged of DEI leftist politicians who cannot cope with emergency without playing the race card?
Sounds good.
Just to make things worse, consider all of the systems that would be affected impacting the rest of the country. In the PNW, Amazon has a ton of data centers that would affected. Microsoft is there are well.
Consider that a huge quake in the Midwest would effectively cut off highway and train service that travels west to east. Conduits crossing the Mississippi would be dislocated, severing data, telecom, and natural gas/oil pipelines.
These would not be “local” events, but would severely impact the entire nation for more than a few hours. Some impacts would last months or years.
We used to “war game” this stuff in some of my Emergency Management drills.
I tend to agree with the article—a cataclysmic event is bound to happen in the not so distant future.
What can anybody do about it?
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