California Must Sink into the Ocean! By Charles Taylor

Prophecies of end times are being made, or it could just all be a matter of geology, but the recent Californian earthquakes have stirred up renewed interest in the coming of the Big One which will pretty much destroy California, which would be not regretted by many I suppose.
  https://www.livescience.com/65886-could-socal-earthquakes-hit-san-andreas-fault.html

“But is there a chance that these quakes could somehow transfer stress to the San Andreas Fault, potentially triggering the much feared "Big One" in one of the state's most populous cities? The San Andreas fault system is more than 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) long, and as deep as 10 miles (16 km) in some spots. Twin quakes — the biggest to hit Southern California in decades — rattled a parched stretch of the Mojave Desert on Thursday (July 4) and Friday (July 5), sending seismic waves rippling through Earth that could be felt from Los Angeles to San Jose. Thankfully, no deaths were reported, partly because the two quakes hit a sparsely populated region of the Golden State. The ruptured faults were not part of the San Andreas Fault system, which snakes 800 miles (1,287 kilometers) from north to south along the coastline, where the North American and Pacific plates meet. But is there a chance that these quakes could somehow transfer stress to the San Andreas Fault, potentially triggering the much feared "Big One" in one of the state's most populous cities? 

It is theoretically possible, though there's no known link between the two fault systems, geophysicists say. And because there's still so much to learn about the complicated fault system that ruptured, it's difficult to say whether the San Andreas Fault took on additional stress from the recent quakes, they say. The magnitude-7.1 quake on July 5 ruptured a known portion of the Little Lake Fault zone, while the magnitude-6.4 quake that hit the prior day ruptured a previously unmapped region of the fault zone, Glenn Biasi, a geophysicist with the USGS in Pasadena, California, told Live Science in an email. If you look at a map of faults, you'd see that the Little Lake Fault zone and the San Andreas Fault zone are not very close together. "We do not know of a definite relationship of these earthquakes to the San Andreas," Biasi said. That said, geologists are still learning a lot about the Little Lake Fault zone. Many of the individual faults in this zone are active, "and because they are buried, we probably do not know them all. This area does not fit the textbook picture of sides of a plate sliding past one another," Biasi said. Because these faults are so complicated and we know relatively little about them, it's hard to say how they will interact with the San Andreas. It is possible that the recent quakes added stress to the San Andreas Fault, though "we don't have a good way to assess the likelihood," said Michele Cooke, a geoscientist at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst.

"The San Andreas hasn't slipped in a long while. If the fault is loaded to the point where it is just about ready to slip, then it is possible that the recent earthquake could add just enough shear stress to the San Andreas to cause it to slip. Alternatively, the slip of these recent earthquakes could unclamp the San Andreas fault, making it easier to slip," Cooke told Live Science in an email. Another intriguing possibility is that there's a bigger shakeup underground that these recent earthquakes are unmasking. Some of the movement on the San Andreas Fault is migrating east, crossing the Mojave Desert and heading up the eastearn side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Biasi said. Three big ruptures, including one in 1992, 1999 and the recent Ridgecrest quakes all seem to be aligned, and are part of what's known as the Eastern California Shear Zone (ECSZ), Cooke said. By contrast, the southern portion of the San Andreas Fault hasn't had a major rupture in 150 years, she said. "Some suggest that we are seeing a migration of the active plate boundary away from the San Andreas Fault," Cooke said. "I'm not yet convinced of this, but I do think that this recent (geologically speaking) cluster of earthquakes in the ECSZ is very interesting."

     Thus, it is possible that the earthquakes are a symptom of something big going down underground, so to speak. Call it a rumble down under, like some sort of geological boxing match of the titans Actually, evidence from ancient quakes indicates that there is a risk of the entire dump sinking:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4336986/Ancient-quakes-point-sinking-risk-California-coast.html
  https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/12/03/Earthquake-rocked-Pacific-Northwest-1000-years-ago/5355723358800/

“The Big One may be overdue to hit California, but scientists near LA have found a new risk for the area during a major earthquake. They claim that if a major tremor hits the area, it could plunge large parts of California into the sea almost instantly. The discovery was made after studying the Newport-Inglewood fault, which has long been believed to be one of Southern California’s danger zones. The fault runs under densely populated areas, from the Westside of Los Angeles to the Orange County coast. Major earthquakes on the fault centuries ago caused a parts of Seal Beach near the Orange County coast to sink 3ft in just seconds. In total three quakes over the last 2,000 years on nearby faults made ground just outside Los Angeles city limits sink as much as 3ft. Today that could result in the area ending up at or below sea level, said Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby, who worked with the paper´s lead author, graduate student Robert Leeper. The study showed that land within major Californian seismic faults could sink by 1.5 and three feet instantly. The last known major quake occurred on the San Andreas fault in 1857. Seismologists estimate the 800 mile-long San Andreas, which runs most of the length of the state, should see a large quake roughly every 150 years. 'It´s something that would happen relatively instantaneously,' Kirby said. 'Probably today if it happened, you would see seawater rushing in.' The study was limited to a roughly two-square-mile area inside the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge, near the Newport-Inglewood and Rose Canyon faults. Kirby acknowledged that the exact frequency of events on the faults is unclear, as is the risk that another quake will occur in the near future.”

     So perhaps we may see California, or the most vibrant parts of it, sink into the ocean if the “Big One” hits.

 

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Friday, 19 April 2024

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