An Experiment in Alternative Methods of Earthquake Prediction

Big quakes often make the news, just because they're big. But it's not always the biggest/most powerful quakes that are the most deadly. The Haiti mag 7.0 Mw quake on Jan 12, 2010 killed at least 100,000 people, which is about 5 times the death toll of Japan's mag 9.1 quake and tsunamis on March 11, 2011.

How is that possible, when the Japan quake had about 125 times the shaking of Haiti's event and 1400 times its energy release? (Yes, it would take 1412 mag 7.0 Mw quakes to release the energy of just one mag 9.1 quake!)

It's not just how powerful a quake is, but where it is. Its epicentric location (a point on the ground on a map) and also the hypocentric location (its "true" location in the ground, including its depth) are both very important factors.

Haiti's quake occurred very near that nation's capital and was only 13 km deep. So, the energy only had to travel a short distance to the surface. The shaking was terrible, far beyond what most of the local buildings and infrastructure could withstand. Most people died either inside collapsed buildings or due to falling pieces of them. Also, the local people were not "quake-prepared". They didn't know what to do and doubtless some lives were lost due to panic or not sheltering better.

Japan's people are so used to quakes that they have very high standards for building and infrastructure construction. Even the enormous quake off their coast did not collapse a large number of buildings. There is also the fact that the Japan event was beneath the sea and some km off the coast. So, the energy (which radiates out in all directions) had to travel further before it reached populated areas.

Then there is the contrast between Haiti's preparedness and Japan's. Besides a very strict building code, the Japanese are possibly the best prepared in the world for major quakes from a mental perspective. They have regular drills and know how to react. They also have an excellent early-warning system, which gives many people some precious extra seconds to prepare and take cover when a big quake's shocks are on their way. Meanwhile, it even gives them time to stop their trains so they won't derail at high speed. As for tsunamis, they are well aware of them (they invented the word) and that is why many coastal towns and villages have massive, reinforced concrete anti-tsunami walls.

Yes, the enormous tsunamis that followed their March 2011 quake overtopped many of those walls, but the walls still did their job: they gave people extra time to flee and doubtless saved many lives.

I'm not saying the Japanese are perfect. There were catastrophic failures such as the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant disaster, and lives lost because protective walls gave way. But they have learned from it and will do their best to put those lessons into practice so that next time, they will be even better prepared.

Because the Japanese know for certain that there will be a next time.

And this leads me to the final part of this review. There is no question that the Pacific Northwest of the USA does not have anything like the quake preparedness of Japan. Not on any level. In the region that will be worst affected by the next Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) quake -- and experts consider it a given that there will be one -- to say that the locals are not ready for a mag 9 (or bigger) quake and its subsequent tsunamis would be putting it mildly.

The last big quake on the CSZ was on January 26, 1700. How we know the precise date and even the time (about nine in the evening) is another story. You can find details in this thread, or just search online. But those details are known by researchers.

From studying many past events by the layers of deposits left by the tsunamis, they also know that we are now "in the window" for the next quake. It could happen decades or even hundreds of years from now, or it could be today. This is a serious worry, because that quake in 1700 was probably a mag 9 or bigger, and its tsunamis cumulated up to cca 30 metres (cca 100 feet high) in places. That is, they flooded the coastal lands. These are verified facts.

The next big subduction event in the US's PNW region will likely be the same size, with similar tsunamis. And that is going to be very bad for the people who live there, because many of the coastal towns will be inundated quite soon after the quake's occurrence: the CSZ is not far offshore and so the tsunamis won't have far to travel. In some coastal regions, we're looking at tens of minutes before the first tsunami arrives.

How do you escape from a tsunami? The simplest way is to get to high ground. But bear in mind that you want to be at least 100 feet above sea level. So, you either need a hill nearby or a very solid building at least 100 feet tall.** (But see my ETA below.) There are precious few buildings by the coast in the PNW that are tall enough and also guaranteed to withstand both the shaking from an off-coast mag 9 quake and its subsequent tsunamis.

**EDITED to ADD:
I've used the figure of 100 feet because in some places, that is how high the tsunamis reached back in 1700. However, that was the extreme. The coastal regions of southern BC (including Vancouver), and the USA's Oregon, Washington and Nth California generally don't have the same topography as Japan's east coast, where the 2011 tsunamis got up to 40 metres (cca 135 feet!) in some places and commonly were over 10 metres (33 feet).

In most places along the PNW, computer modeling shows that tsunami heights are not likely to get beyond 8 metres (26 feet). So, most people will not need to find a place 100 feet above sea level. Even 30 feet will usually be good enough. Obviously, higher is better. But in any case, it will usually be far safer to get to high ground or atop a very solid structure than "shelter in place" within a typical family home. As we saw in Japan, many homes were washed away. And 90% of the deaths in Japan's quake and its tsunamis were due to drowning. END ETA

The Japanese, being aware of this problem, actually built escape towers in some places, that were designed to stay upright even in such extreme conditions. Apparently, they mostly did the job. But the problem is that in the PNW, there are very few such towers. And as for massive (30-foot-plus) sea walls like the Japanese have in so many places? I would like to know if there are any towns or settlements in the PNW that have such defenses, because I've not heard of any.

Then there are the buildings. Many of the towns in the PNW have a lot of older buildings of the type that experts call "URM" -- which means "unreinforced masonry". In other words, they're built of bricks and mortar. These URMs are likely to be major casualties in a big quake. Many modern, reinforced concrete structures should survive, but the URMs will come down like card houses.

And that's before any tsunamis arrive.

As for infrastructure, Homeland Security did a study a few years back that showed the majority of major roads and bridges in the PNW would be either damaged or destroyed by a mag 9 quake. So, most main roads would be unusable.

So, what about the sort of early warning system like they have in Japan, when as soon as a major quake is detected alarms are automatically triggered, TV and radio programs get interrupted so warnings can be given, trains are stopped, and so on?

The last I read was the authorities in the PNW were still looking at the idea. One problem is that the CSZ is so close to the coast that there would be very little time to give warnings before the shocks arrive. But seriously, that's a poor argument. Even a few seconds' warning is better than nothing.

In short, if you live anywhere near the coast in the PNW, you need to prepare as best you can. You also need to consider that if the big quake happens in the near-ish future, you will very likely be on your own. You need to know what to do to survive the quake itself, then how you'll escape the tsunamis. Don't expect the authorities to come to your rescue. They might try, but there may be very little time and far too many people who will need their help.

I'm sorry if this looks like fear-mongering. That is not my intention. If I lived in a region that could have a Japan-style quake and tsunamis at any time, I'd want to know. And the fact is, that big quake will happen one day. We just don't know exactly when. All we do know is that in terms of the number of people impacted and probably also economic loss, it will be the biggest natural disaster to ever hit the USA.

Those who live near the coast will have a much better chance of survival if they're prepared. Most people won't be. And the tragedy is, lives will be lost simply because people didn't know this could happen. Or didn't want to believe it.

originally posted by: caitlinfae
reply to post by Olivine

 

Hi everyone...

Hope you're all ok. Just logging yet another tsunami dream from last night. In my dream, I watched a huge wave sweep in to the village I was standing in flooding everything to a depth of about 10 feet. I managed to escape to a higher floor, but while I was standing on the ground, I felt water soak up from underneath, maybe symbolising liquifaction? The ground was sodden anyway, maybe from rainfall, I don't know. I felt like it was in some rural part of Scotland weirdly enough, or some small coastal village, northern place, grey skies, cold climate.

Hope that's a one off dream anyway...exhausting and upsetting.

Morning all...

It's been a while! i was trawling through this thread to find a post I made about a dream I had a good while back. I think I spoke to Mike and others about it, as it was so detailed and specific...anyway, I can't find it, but I'm certain that it was the Oroville Dam I was seeing. I recognised the slipway and the metal towers in the background straight away when I saw the footage, and it's without a doubt that the dam will break. I can't find the posts, and can't even remember when it was exactly, so I might have to just leave that one there, unless someone else comes across it.

I did find the post I quoted however, which I had totally forgotten about, and it's shaken me quite badly. About 18 months ago, I moved to a little village in Scotland called Ballater, and in December 2015 it was flooded by the worst rains in several hundred years. My house was wrecked, along with most of the village, by what was described as in inland tsunami on the River Dee. Hundreds of houses were damaged and roads washed away...it's still not all repaired more than a year later. Fortunately, there were no fatalities, but it was a terrible day. I've since relocated. My house flooded from the bottom up...the water came up through the floor and the location is pretty accurate too. Now I feel I have to check all my other posts, just to see what I dreamed about in the past.

This is what the river was like, just feet from my house.

a reply to: caitlinfae

Hi caitlinfae.

I have been keeping an eye on this story. The Oroville Dam is California's second largest Reservoir.
www.sfgate.com...

The pictures look very bad.

The fact that the water is rising 3 times faster than what they can release at this point. If they use the emergency spillway, they will be just releasing water along the mountain side. They never finished building the emergency spillway.

I guess they are trying to clear tree's and bushes from the release area so it doesn't go into the river. But the area is very steep and hard for workers to achieve that task.

With the rain's stopping for a couple day's they are hoping this will give them some time.

To me it just seems like a dangerous situation for the residents of the area.

Hopefully the engineers are right and the water levels slow. If not this could be a disaster.

a reply to: crappiekat

I've been watching it too...very very worrying. I'm hoping that the worst wont happen and they find a way to manage the water levels. It seems to be partly down to lack of maintenance of the slipway over the last 40 years or so, which makes me wonder who many other sites will be in the same state....bridges in particular would be extremely vulnerable. Fingers crossed it all calms down a bit.

a reply to: caitlinfae

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Updates here.

a reply to: caitlinfae
You first posted about a dream where you saw a canal flooding (and towers along the route) on Feb 2 2013 in this post, just after 3 pm your time on that day.

Then in your follow-up post about half an hour later, you posted an image and said:

This is the closest I could find so far. What I saw was a wide flat shallow irrigation type canal, almost empty, with sloping sides. This one is in Dixon Valley, near Sacramento

The Oroville dam is about 70 miles north of Sacramento. Considering that your post narrowed things down to California that is pretty impressive. It's more impressive that just your second post got so close to the Oroville Dam's actual location.

BTW, the fastest way to find posts in a huge thread is by clicking on the little "person" icon below the given member's avatar and then selecting "posts in thread" to open a window with their posts all shown in sequential order. (On of the beauties of a custom-designed site like ATS!) That's how I found yours.

a reply to: JustMike

Wow Mike...thank you so much. It's kinda weird that it's the same time of year too. I've been watching Oroville very closely, and it makes me sick to my stomach...I know it's all going to flood and very badly too.

Edit to add...I really hope this is nothing, but one detail I remember very clearly from my dream is that the direction of the flood was from west to east, like it was coming in from the ocean. An Oroville Dam flood, although it may well reach Sacramento and even the town of Dixon, would be roughly north to south. I searched on Google earth like I was missing something, and there is a dam called Monticello that looks like it's no more than 20 miles west of Dixon, but I can't find anything about it being at risk. It has one of those funnel drain things that scares the crap out of me, so I can barely look at pictures of it, let alone videos. Hopefully this will be a detail that wont mean too much, but I remember it so well.

a reply to: JustMike

Im just going to throw this into the mix.


In 2009 i had a prediction that a major e quake would occur on April 4th of that year. On April 2nd a devastating quake hit Italy.

I have had a number of foresight dreams, one of which was copiloting a plane that crashed into water shortly after takeoff. 2 weeks later the hudson river plane crash occurred and i actually lived in the town that Sully lived in.

Ive had about three or four handfuls of dreams like this and another few handfuls of waking foresight visions or ideations.

One I am particularly concerned about is about a ideation i had in 2010 or 2011. It was about the next big quake in California. The notion was that it would occur in spring 2017.

Subsequent events lead to a few things. The day of the 29th kept sticking in my head.

As the years have gone by, ive had a few dreams. One of which i was driving on the bay bridge when a massive quake hit. The whole bridge rolled and swayed and buildings high rises were crumbling, not like demo'd buildings, they were falling sideways and wonky.

I also had a dream about a canal too and people running down it from a structure at the end of the canal.

Pondering further to isolate the prediction, i came up with these numbers and points:

March 2017 on a wednesday (March 29, 2017 7:00-8:00 am)
Magnitude 7.3 - 8.5
Epicenter San Mateo Burlingame Millbrae area
Devastating damage to high rises and bridges in SF downtown
Billions of dollars in damages, worst natural disaster in us history?
Casualties unknown


I checked what day the 29th of march is as mentioned earlier (29th) and it happens to be a wednesday as i guessed.

Recently i was spending time on the peninsula. I wasnt thinking about the quake at all, i dont even think its neceasarily a correct prediction, but there was this uneasy feeling i couldnt shake over there. As if something bad is coming up.

My friends and I...we all have been having trouble sleeping recently. Its almost a sense of impending disaster.

Also, a phrase has been going through my head for the last several months "The pendulum doth swing." Just the other day i realized, what has a pendulum that swings? A seismometer during an earthquake. Possibly just a subconscious thing i suppose.

I really hope I am wrong, but living in a quake prone zone you dont ask if, you ask where and when.

If this does turn out to be relatively accurate, i pray for all those affected and for absolute minimization of casualty and damage.

a reply to: CreationBro

For you numerologists, regarding my above post:


March 29, 2017 is the 88th day of 2017 leaving 277 days in the year.

a reply to: CreationBro
Thank you for posting! Before getting into the specifics of the California prediction, I'd like to ask you a couple of general questions and will also give you a little of my own take on things so we can compare notes, as it were.

You seem to have a mix of precognitive dreams, and some waking visions / ideations. With the dreams, what kind of perspective do you recall? Were they always first-person-experiential (ie, you were "there"), as seems the case with the examples you mentioned, or were some different?

Also in regard to the dreams, do they otherwise seem like typical dreams, with the usual shifts in time and place, etc, or are they more like experiencing everything in real time? For me, this is one thing that helps me identify these dreams. I get them very rarely -- like a handful in the past few decades -- but in each case they have been utterly real in all respects, in real time, with no sudden (and physically impossible) perspective or time shifts.

In the case of the waking visions / ideations, can you describe how you perceive them? For example, though I only get these events rather occasionally, I tend to "see" such things as if I am watching a smallish screen/monitor a couple of feet or so away and at eye level. I am well aware that nothing is really there and am able to view the events in a rather detached way. On some occasions these visions also included sound, for example when people were talking.

Just as an aside to that, I have an atypical epileptic condition. Though there seems to be some link between my very rare epi attacks and major quakes, tests with a consultant neurologist and a follow-up MRI (brain scan) showed nothing of any concern. I recall after my MRI, the doctor came into the room and smiled, "Mr ______, I am happy to tell you there is nothing going on inside your head."
"Thank you, doctor," I replied. "People have been telling me this for years, so it's good to have medical proof of it."

Anyway... Beyond the epileptic condition (which is well controlled), I have no physical/functional brain abnormalities, nor do I have any psychosis or other mental illness. So, the "visions" I get are not what would otherwise fit with a diagnosis of audio-visual delusions or hallucinations.

So, I'd be interested in your responses. I'll address the specific California prediction in my next post.

a reply to: CreationBro
Okay, moving on to your quite detailed prediction of a California quake.

You wrote:

March 2017 on a wednesday (March 29, 2017 7:00-8:00 am)
Magnitude 7.3 - 8.5
Epicenter San Mateo Burlingame Millbrae area
Devastating damage to high rises and bridges in SF downtown
Billions of dollars in damages, worst natural disaster in us history?
Casualties unknown

You have been very specific with date, time, location and magnitude. It's pretty rare to see that much information given so precisely, so I thank you for that.

The magnitude range you have cited: those are very scary numbers. The April 18, 1906 San Francisco quake (which was a Wednesday, as it happens) is estimated by UC Berkeley to have been around a mag 7.7 - 7.9 Mw. (Viz their 1906 Earthquake page.)

A note for readers: "Mw" is the notation for the Moment Magnitude scale, which is the most common standard used today and for the past few decades for larger events. The reason for its use is that it is more precise with larger quakes than the "Richter Scale" that MSM journos still refer to all the time, even though in the vast majority of cases with bigger quakes, the Richter is not the scale actually used by USGS or almost anyone else when they publish their data.

I am suspecting you (CreationBro) are aware that there is a very big difference between a mag 7.3 and an 8.5, but for readers who might not know, as modern earthquake magnitude scales are logarithmic, even seemingly small differences can be very significant.

For example, let's consider the lower-end estimate for the 1906 SF quake, at mag 7.7 Mw, compared with your low-end figure for the predicted quake as mag 7.3 (with Mw assumed for your figures).

A magnitude 7.7 Mw quake is 2.511 times bigger than a mag 7.3 Mw in terms of shaking, but 3.981 times stronger in terms of energy release. In other words, though the magnitude difference is "only" 0.4, it would take almost four mag 7.3 quakes to release the energy of one mag 7.7 quake.

Anyone who wants to check these figures can use the on-site calculator at USGS. Just go to their How much bigger page then click on the blue "Try It Yourself" Calculator, which will open a new window with the calculator all set up.

So, with your range of 7.3 to 8.5, we get:
A magnitude 8.5 Mw earthquake is 15.848 times bigger (shaking) than a mag 7.3 Mw, but is 63.095 times stronger in energy release.

Thankfully, magnitude 8-plus quakes are very rare. We average less than one per year, world-wide. But also, in the case of the San Andreas Fault System, I've not read any studies by experts that suggest an 8.5 Mw is possible there. They believe the fault system simply does not store up that huge amount of energy. It's a strike-slip fault and they tend to let go well before then. I did read a report a few years ago that suggested a low mag 8 Mw was possible. Not an 8.5, but perhaps up an 8.2. Even so, that would be a horrific event.

However, scientists and other experts are not always right. There is still a level of very informed guesswork involved.

The other factor here is location. Studies have shown that the fault tends to let go in sections, with each section having a big quake about once every 150 years or so. The last really major quake in the southern section of the SA fault was in 1857, so it's more likely that part could let go with a really substantial quake, even pushing around a mag 8 Mw.

The Bay area section of the fault, on the other hand, having had a big quake only 110 years ago (okay, almost 111 years), has probably not built up enough to produce a quake that big. But it could still get into the low to mid 7 range, which would fit with your lower-end prediction of 7.3.

The worry is if the southern section lets go in a big way, it might make the "Bay" section (and north of it) go as well. That would be a very bad day indeed. It wouldn't make a Bay region quake bigger, because quakes just don't really work that way: it's localized energy release, not transfer of energy from another place. But it would create problems with infrastructural failures over a much larger area than if "only" one section let go. This would make it harder to bring emergency personnel and resources into the hardest-hit, densely-populated areas from outlying regions.

Re the suburbs you mentioned as possible epicenter locations: they are all right by the fault where it runs down through the peninsula, so they are not without likelihood.

Damage: Fema / Homeland Security have done studies for these kinds of events, and also for a CSZ event (which would be far, far worse than a San Andreas fault quake). On the plus side, a lot of buildings in the Bay area have been retrofitted to make them more secure in a major quake, and ditto a lot of the transport infrastructure's key components. However there would still be structural collapses, damage to rail and tram lines, bridges and interchanges, power outages, water and gas main leaks/breakages and so on.

On of the main concerns would be fire, because with many water mains out of action, firefighters would struggle to contain outbreaks -- even assuming they could get their trucks on-site in the first place. So, while the next "big one" in Cali might not match Katrina in terms of total $$ losses, it could still be well up there.

a reply to: JustMike

Excellent, thank you Mike. I pm'd you.

Everything you mention is correct as far as i know.

CSZ and rainier...three sisters...multi eruption. You just reminded me of a dream about blackened cindery skies and numerous eruptions in Oregon!

a reply to: CreationBro

Ok, update...

I just awoke shaking from a dream.

I was at a school and an earthquake hit. It was like a bunch of p waves instead of s waves.

From what i can remember, people were saying multifracture in LA and nor cal. 8.0 magnitude my friend tells me in the dream.

I cant believe i remember this too, but it was 8 days before my prediction. March 21, 2017. I think it was around 5pm and it was overcast.

Wanted to log that I had a craving for popcorn this evening. I think I fixed it around 7 PM, EST.It's been a long time, maybe six months to a year, since I last felt it. Not really any other symptoms yet. Tired, but not unusually so.

See if it means anything. If I remember right,
I used to crave it about 12 hours or so before a quake. I sure miss my old quake cat! He used to validate what I was feeling by hiding under the desk about an hour before one!

WOQ

Just want to mark these two quakes:



M 5.1 - 74km WNW of Ferndale, California

and

M 4.6 - 106km WNW of Eureka, California

As potential foreshocks. Usually, an aftershock is 1-1.5 magnitude less than the main shock, but there is only a .5 difference between the two quakes. They also happen to have happened near the notorious triple junction.

Was also told yesterday in TrueAmerican's spectro stream, that Dutch had predicted a 7.0 off the coast of California. This was done by a person obviously shilling Dutch and trying to get all of those of us watching TA's stream to watch Dutch and subscribe to his channel; I don't think a single person did so, but could be wrong. I am personally not a fan, don't care for the sensationalism, but that is not the point.

Anyway, point being is that this area could indeed produce a larger quake and these two quakes happening in quick succession and outside normal aftershock parameters kind of makes my ears perk up.

Most likely nothing will happen, but I did want to make note of this on the off chance something does.

Just checking in ...how are you all doing?

Nothing much to report apart from a general feeling of tension and uneasiness that's building steadily. No particular physical symptoms and definitely no dreams, which seems to be how I get reliable information sometimes, but have fibro anyway, so it's hard to tell what's what anymore. My fibro symptoms have been near the top of the scale the last few days though, with very painful legs and feet in particular. Suddenly I'm watching certain places again, like Cumbre Vieja and the Aleutians....although the Aleutians give me very specific symptoms for big quakes which are unmistakeable, so I will definitely post if I get those. And the New Madrid zone....I'm always watching that. No dreams, but my waking attention seems to be repeatedly drawn back to it this last week or so, which I hope is meaningless. And Gibraltar. Don't know if it's seismically active but it's come up as a focal point since yesterday. I found very old postcards of the island that I bought there on holiday as a teenager, and was surprised at how sheer the rock actually was. Something about it was has stuck in my head today.

Anyway....hope all is calm, but you're prepped regardless. As you were.

originally posted by: caitlinfae
And Gibraltar. Don't know if it's seismically active but it's come up as a focal point since yesterday.

Not really, but that general area has some active faults, one of those was the responsible for the huge 1755 Lisbon earthquake.

Fighting to stay awake tonight even though I'm not tired! Not succeeding though. Keep falling asleep like someone slipped me a sleeping pill. That's usually one of my symptoms lately.
Checking in just in case.

WOQ

These are longer after my symptoms than usually happens, but logging them to see if it happens the same way later.

6.4
50km WNW of Fais, Micronesia
2017-12-08 09:51:10 (UTC)
20.3 km

6.2
74km NNE of L'Esperance Rock, New Zealand
2017-12-08 02:09:59 (UTC)
10.0 km

6.5
52km NW of Fais, Micronesia
2017-12-08 00:22:54 (UTC)
13.7 km

WOQ