Earthquake shakes up the midwest

[Sithdarth]

If you live on land chances are you live close enough to a fault line to feel a significant quake should it occur. Everywhere you see a mountain range there are fault lines of significant size. Seeing as there are mountain ranges on either coast the Midwest is pretty screwed fault line wise. If I'm remembering my geology right the big one runs right down the Mississippi river and if it went all at once it'd be in the 9s and very bad.

[Mike McC]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Umm, since I never took any earth sciences, is the midwest even on a Fault Line?

There are actually numerous faults or Seismic zones throughout the midwest. The ones recently, as I have stated, are in the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone, and the really big bad mother is the New Madrid Fault Zone (the one that lies along the Mississippi). Noone is entirely sure why the faults are there, though a theory is that it is actually a failed tectonic rift that remains as a point of weakness. And that is still pretty active. Earthquake activity since 1974:


And the earthquakes produced in the midwest are a bit different than those you find along the ring of fire. For one thing, they retain thier strength over larger distances. A comparison of quakes with similair magnitudes:


FUN FACT! The 8.0+ quake that the New Madrid Seismic Zone produced in 1812 was felt moderately over 1 million square miles.

Originally Posted by Lady Cygnet

Oops, it did it again. Today's aftershock was a 4.5.

While I can appreciate your desire to get up early, Fencer, why can't you use an alarm clock like everyone else? :p

Now, I didn't feel this morning's (which is reported by the US Geological Survey as a 4.0 now), and I was still up at the time, but my sister probably did. She lives around some coal mines, and they act almost like an amplifier for the quakes.

Also, Here's a list of all the recent Earthquake activity in that area.

As for the New Madrid Seismic Zone, the only recent activity was a 1.7 on Saturday.