Very nice. I like both of those links. I’m going to have to check them out in more detail in the morning.
BTW, if a 4.0 gets things going like that, imagine a full bore New Madrid shaker. I don’t like the idea at all.
I know this is going to be a bit of a stretch, but I also have some concerns for regions in Missouri and nearby states where mining was really big over the last century.
Around Galena, Kansas and the Joplin, Missouri area the ground was honeycombed with mining. What happens when those areas get a big shaker? Is there going to be massive settling?
Earthquake lights
Earthquake lights have been seen since ancient times. 1811-12 New Madrid quake eyewitnesses saw them possibly from as far away as Savannah GA. They were first photographed in 1968 in Japan. USGS admits their existence.
Records of earthquakes that were accompanied by sky lights can be found in 373 BC in ancient Greek writings, that “immense columns of flame” foretold the earthquake that destroyed the cities of Helike and Bura.
However, even in the early 20th century they were still considered a myth, until photographs of actual lights were taken in Japan in the 1960s.
William Leigh Pierce, a traveler on the Mississippi, observed, “On the 30th of November, 1811 about one half hour before sun-rise, two vast electrical columns shot up from the eastern horizon, until their heads reached the zenith” — from Feldman book
more info here...
http://showme.net/~fkeller/quake/maps.htm#lights