Midwest Earthquake Hazard Downplayed

swellconvivialguy writes "Next year marks the bicentennial of the 1811-12 New Madrid earthquakes, with earthquake drills and disaster tourism events planned across the Midwest, including the Great Central US ShakeOut. But despite the fact that Earthquake Hazard Maps equate the New Madrid seismic zone with California, geologist Seth Stein says new science (especially GPS data) tells us that the hazard has been significantly overestimated, and that we should not spend billions on earthquake preparations in the Midwest."

Comments

Re:So Confused on the GPS Data and Logic

[joebagodonuts]

When we look at faults around the world, we see them storing up that energy. So when we first put markers in the ground and measured the position of the Midwestern fault lines we were surprised that we didn’t see any motion at New Madrid. We concluded that there’s no sign that a big earthquake is on the way.

I'm not a geologist so I'm very confused, if something is 'storing up energy' how does moving around equate to that? I mean, if the moving of the ground in violent ways is the releasing of that 'stored energy' then how is small movements indications that it's storing up energy? I would assume that the worse earthquake areas are those when there's a lot of movement going on deep underground but nothing on the surface releasing that energy until a very devastating movement.

Your answer is in the previous paragraph in the article:

"It lets us see the ground storing up that energy and deforming ".