LAist: 3.5 Earthquake Quickly Jolts Valley

LA MapNerd

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:24:15 -0800

Wait, I think I've actually tracked down the source of this one: Alice: I don't see the connection. Jerry: You don't see the connection? Come on. Six major earthquakes in the last three-and-a-half years, and the space shuttle up in orbit for every single one of 'em. Don't you think that's a little strange? Alice: Testing some top-secret seismic weapon? Jerry: No, not testing. Using. Nukes are passé. We're talking weapon of the future. Alice: Okay, but I still don't see what it has to do with the president. Jerry: The president is in Europe at the moment, and tomorrow he'll be, uh, in Turkey. Right here, along this fault line. And they sent up a space shuttle yesterday. Alice: Motive? Jerry: Motive? How about fifty billion dollars, how's that for a motive? The president's cutting funding for NASA, the milk-cow of the aerospace industry. And that's a lot of milk. Alice: Um, so... you're telling me that NASA is going to kill the president of the United States with an earthquake? Jerry: It's not the kind of thing a Secret Service agent can, like, just throw himself on top of, is it? ----- That's from Conspiracy Theory, a Richard Donner film starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts. Brian Helgeland wrote the screenplay, but I understand that a lot of the "conspiracy theories" in the film were ad-libbed by Gibson.

LA MapNerd

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:42:56 -0800

Has anyone heard the theory that all of the major quakes of the last two decades coincide with the space shuttle being in orbit?I hadn't heard that, but it seems unlikely. Why? Well, to begin with, large earthquakes are more common than most people realize: there are, on average, 18 quakes a year of Magnitude 7 or greater. That's an average of about one every three weeks. And that wouldn't include a lot of quakes that we tend to think of as "major quakes", for example, the 1994 Northridge quake (6.7), the 1995 Kobe quake (6.9), the 1989 Loma Prieta quake (6.9), or the 1971 San Fernando quake (6.6). If you define "major quake" as "Mag. 6.0 or above", it gets even more daunting: there are an average of 152 quakes of Mag. 6+ every year. That's roughly one every 2 or 3 days. We tend to think of "quakes that get a lot of press coverage" as "major quakes", but that only includes moderate-to-large quakes that occur in reasonably well-populated areas. Large quakes happen all the time in areas like the South Pacific that get virtually no attention at all in the US press. I'd be curious to see if any reasonable definition of "major quake" could produce only quakes that happened during shuttle flights - but even if it did, I can't imagine how it could be anything but coincidence. Do you happen to know where that rumor came from, or remember where you first heard it?

guest

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:24:59 -0800

Has anyone heard the theory that all of the major quakes of the last two decades coincide with the space shuttle being in orbit? I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but it's kind of wierd...

LA MapNerd

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:57:03 -0800

Bear in mind that we may now be coming out of the "seismic shadow" of the '94 Northridge quake -the period following a major quake, after the aftershock sequence dies away, marked by a relative absence of smaller quakes. I've lived in LA for almost thirty years, and I can tell you that minor mag. 3-4 quakes were a lot more common in the years that preceded Northridge than they have been recently. I was a bit startled, in fact, after last week's mag 4.6 in the Valley, by how many people remarked afterward that it was the first quake they'd ever felt while living in LA. I must say, though, that I think these more-frequent minor quakes are a good thing. They do little or no damage, and they serve as constant reminders to keep one's quake supplies up-to-date. [Speaking of which, I need to go swap out the canned food and bottled water in my own stash for something a bit fresher. And don't forget to check the expiration date on your caffeine tablets! What, you don't have caffeine tablets in your kit? Take a tip from a veteran: after a major quake, you're not going to want to mess around with brewing coffee, Starbucks won't be open, and - once the adrenaline wears off - you're going to really need your caffeine. :-) Do yourself a favor and toss a bottle of No-Doz or Vivarin or the like in your kit, right now while you're thinking about it.]

Zach Behrens

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:06:49 -0800

thanks! I added it.

Franklin Avenue

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 12:58:17 -0800

The big island of Hawai'i was also hit with one a few days ago...