Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Midwestern Fault Zones Are Still Alive

Posted by samzenpus on from the waiting-for-the-big-one dept.

sciencehabit writes "The occasional quakes rattling the New Madrid Seismic Zone, a series of Midwestern faults named for a small town in the Missouri Bootheel, aren't aftershocks of the massive quakes that rocked our fledgling nation more than 2 centuries ago, a new study suggests. In other words, modern-day quakes are signs that the faults in the region are still accumulating stress—and sometimes releasing it as fresh rumblings."

2 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Where's the "safest" place on Earth? by turkeydance · · Score: 5, Funny

    my home town. nothing happens here. ever.

  2. Re:Anyway by riverat1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think the 1700 Cascadia earthquake off the Oregon/Washington coast probably qualifies as the largest in recorded history in the continental US. It hit at about 9:00 pm, January 26, 1700 and was an estimated magnitude of 8.7-9.2. (The reason the time is known so accurately is that the tsunami it caused was recorded in Japanese records.)