[StoneColdGOP]

Indeed. We at least know what we're dealng with in L.A. People in the Midwest, and in NYC, they've just not built in preparation for an earthquake. Sure it may be hundreds of years, but when it hits... ouch.

[Phsstpok]

I had a friend who worked for the USGS when I lived out in the Bay Area. He was working on his doctorate. His thesis was about the Ramapo fault and how it hadn't released pressure in a very long time, therefore when it let go he was predicting a 9+ earthquake.

The image he was trying to work into his paper (which wouldn't work now) was of the WTC towers as a new bridge to Staten Island.

I'm terrified of a big quake here. The kind of soil we have will not abate the earthquake in any way. In 1811 a dome cracked on a building near Washington DC and church bells rang in Boston. The liquifaction and related structural damage here is going to be intense and very widespread.

Whenever seismologists refer to the New Madrid fault they mostly call it a "failed rift zone." How the heck do they know it's failed? Might it just have paused a bit?

What's the biggest you've been through? While I lived out there we had one 5 and one 5.8, and several smaller ones, but that's the biggest I've had. My Parents and sister's family still live in Palo Alto and my nephew is an LAPD officer and I always worry about them.