Both of them had very widespread effects due to east coast geology, nowhere did I imply that you were wrong about that. I also merely suggested that you were thinking of the Charleston quake because it actually occurred in the late 1800’s and caused damage in Boston, since the New Madrid quakes occurred in 1812.
Try not to be so sensitive. I was trying to be helpful, not everybody’s out there trying to embarrass someone else with a gotcha.
I was just teasing myself.
Of course I started looking at the New Madrid fault news, and while the past cycles have been about 500 years, new research may indicate that it is “shutting down”. But that is based on surface deformation in the area - which may not tell the entire story. Or - the action has just moved along the fault zone to another region that they aren't monitoring.
I saw some other sites in my google search that had predictions of the next New Madrid quake (ushering in the Apocalypse too). So I'm not sure what we need all of the scientists for!
Same here -- that's why, in discussing seismic "tele-effects", (effects at a distance) I posted the Richter Scale graph.
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When comparing tele-effects along different "propagation paths", (between different locations) it's imperative to use the same energy input (magnitude and waveform and depth) for both paths.
Comparing the distant effects of DoughtyOne's "I experienced four or five 6.5 to 7.0 (roughly) earthquakes in Southern California " with the New Madrid event is like comparing effects of McVeigh's truck bomb in OKC with one of our biggest thermonuclear devices!
Take a look back at the seismograms I posted in #32. None of the aftershocks would have even been detectable on those seismometers -- even if there hadn't been the 7.2 that "wiped out" the plots for several hours. A 6.0 at the same Mexican location would have had the same ~15 minute "travel time" delay, but would have barely produced a blip. A 7.0 would have produced a ~half-scale deflection on the other side of the Pacific...
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Because of the complexity of our earth's internal structure, this seismology stuff can get frustratingly complex, folks! Without mega-time on a supercomputer, I don't know of any way to compare distant effects of a 7.2 at 24.6 km depth -- in western Mexico -- with the same event at the New Madrid coordinates.
Well, I guess we could wish for a matching 7.2/24.6KM event at the New Madrid coordinates -- but, I'm sure none of us really want that to actually happen!!! :-|
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Bottom line: this seismology stuff is just too complex for intuitive guesswork.
However, largely because of mankind's interest in seismically prospecting for oil (and detecting nuclear tests) the seismology of our (relatively stable) earth is amazingly well calibrated (and modeled).
But seismologists are still very wary of making predictions...
OTOH, the same is definitely not true for our hyper-complex, unstable, and chaotically ever-changing atmosphere. That's why seismologists (among other real scientists) consider the models and predictions of Gorebull Wahruming to be anything but "settled science" (or real "science", for that matter...)
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So -- when comparing damage in Mexico to California, "different building codes" is probably the most workable explanation -- for now... :-)