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.
Or not.
Recall what Yogi said: “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
Hazmat suits....................
It can happen tomorrow, or it could happen 100 or more years from now. No one knows. But you can rest peacefully, knowing that when it does occur, the scientists will be there to say “I told you so…”
When the New Madrid blows, the destruction will be massive. Government planners have done virtually nothing about it in terms of engineering standards. Insurance companies have been completely derelict. Heads should roll.
For over 40 years, I have been advocating learning how to trigger earthquakes with nuclear weapons. The advantage in knowing when they will happen would greatly reduce losses in lives and property. The increased frequency would reduce their severity. We know that fracking does increase the frequency; i.e., lube the joint. Although the initial releases would be nasty, it would eventually result in more frequent and smaller quakes.
Best we learn how to run this planet or it will kill us.
What exactly should the millions of residents at risk do? Evacuate to Kansas then wait for Yellowstone to blow after the next polar vortex caused by an atmospheric river??
Fear porn.
Sounds like “ the end of days” scenario.....in which Jesus returns....no worries.
A “good reason” to confiscate all firearms in these regions. Remember when Katrina hit New Orleans, the first thing the outside police did was grab the guns.(Sarc/off)
NCalaveras fault is the most costly. Goes right under Oakland.
Not that I care about Oakland. But, in that area are all the highways that go N & S in CaCaLand. They all funnel thru that area. It took over a year to fix the Frisco-area during the LomaParieta quake — I was there.
Used to work for a telecom. Met with the internal depts who’s job it was to ensure that all communications (cell phones, land lines, cables to hospitals, etc) would recover from a quake. Not ensure they would continue working, that is impossible. Recover.
Were trying to do a contract for offsite recovery (they store all daily data “just in case”). Needed two recovery sites. One company had just bought out its competition and offered a great deal: Their major site was on the SanAndreas and the other on NCalaveras.
Oops.
We started hearing about this crap in the 50s. Californicata still hasn’t fallen in the Pacific. So far, so good. Thanks “scientists”!
Well, there’s yer problem. Stacking all of that weight in Memphis destabilized the New Madrid Seismic Zone. /Hank Johnson
Lots of quakes may just be an indicator of gentle stress relief rather than warnings of a major stress buildup.
If stress is building, there should be evidence elsewhere; land rising, land sinking, etc.
Bookmark
The Hernando DeSoto bridge (otherwise known as the “new bridge”) was reinforced a few years back to withstand earthquakes.
The problem is after an earthquake Memphis will become The Planet of the Apes, so even getting to the bridge would be a miracle.
The ending was certainly memorable. The rest of it not so much. It was more a report on California in the 1960s than "disaster porn."
Nah..... but ya might get boosted.
Given that the earth was created ~4.5 billion years ago, the "not so distant future" could mean within the next 50 million years.
BKMRK.
Yes, with an OSHA approved hard hat.
The 1964 9.2 Alaskan quake is the largest in the USA! The epicenter is 30 miles from my house!
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