Tree of Bees? Hills that move? A reflective humorous post about living in Southern California via mockable.org
posted by will wait 4 tanjents on Apr 7, 2009 - 65 comments

GenDisasters is a genealogy site, compiling information on the historic disasters, events, and tragic accidents of Canada and the U.S. that our ancestors endured, as well as, information about their life and death. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Dec 9, 2008 - 12 comments

Is Oakland supposed to...ripple like that? [more inside]
posted by rtha on Nov 12, 2008 - 63 comments

U. S. Geological Survey Photographic Library [more inside]
posted by sleepy pete on Oct 9, 2008 - 8 comments

A Jared Diamond-like theory of history - did earthquakes contribute to the rise of ancient civilizations? Thirteen of 15 major ancient civilizations were clustered mostly along tectonic boundaries. "It's not a connection that seems to make much sense at first glance. But you can't ignore the pattern--look at a map, and it just jumps out at you." (Abstract). [more inside]
posted by stbalbach on Aug 26, 2008 - 46 comments

Natural disasters are good for the economy. No, they aren't. Yes, they are. Well, maybe sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't. (pdf) It helps if somebody makes a movie or a television show about it. The Broken Window fallacy.
posted by anotherpanacea on Jul 8, 2008 - 17 comments

728 ton pendulum in action: Taipei 101's tuned mass damper during the Sichuan earthquake. [Via The Long Now Blog]
posted by homunculus on Jun 26, 2008 - 51 comments

ShakeMovie The Near Real Time Simulation of Southern California Seismic Events Portal. Earthquake animations from Caltech.
"These movies are the results of simulations carried out on a large computer cluster. Earthquake movies will be available for download approximately 45 mins after the occurrence of a quake of magnitude 3.5 or greater."
posted by thatwhichfalls on Aug 9, 2006 - 2 comments

San Andreas primed to "explode." Growing up in SoCal, we constantly practiced earthquake drills in anticipation of the "Big One." Now, new evidence suggests that the Big One will be even worse than we all feared. At the moment, everything looks calm though. People say we're crazy for living in either San Francisco or Los Angeles, of course we think living in New Orleans is crazy too. But cities are rebuilt. And no matter where you go, you really can't escape natural disasters. Besides, some of the biggest earthquakes in the United States were in Missouri! In any case, Forbes compiled a list of the safest and least safest places to live in the U.S. in regards to natural disasters. Apparently... we should all move to Hawaii!
posted by RockBandit on Jun 23, 2006 - 48 comments

Where were you 16 years ago at 5:04 pm PST? I was in this building in downtown San Francisco, one of the City's oldest skyscrapers. In our office, we had turned on the radio to listen to Game 3 of the World Series between the A's and the Giants, known as the "Bay Bridge Series". We didn't know the Bay Bridge was about to collapse. [More inside.]
posted by trip and a half on Oct 17, 2005 - 72 comments

Eyewitness accounts of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812. The fault is still active, and one day it will let rip again.
posted by dilettante on Sep 29, 2005 - 28 comments

Hundreds killed in Iranian quake On a smaller scale than the December tsunami, but no less a disaster to the people this quake hit.
posted by davy on Feb 22, 2005 - 13 comments

This is an odd way to find out about an earthquake in California.
posted by eriko on Sep 28, 2004 - 23 comments

4.5 magnitude earthquake hits Chicagoland.
posted by whoshotwho on Jun 28, 2004 - 40 comments

10.5 If you're like me, you probably just finished watching 10.5, and are still giggling at the "disastrous" screenplay and campy drama. Well, the science is in: Magnitude 10.5 is impossible, brick buildings would collapse long before the Space Needle, fault lines don't follow train tracks, California will not slide into the sea, bottomless pits do not swallow up unfortunate red-shirted extras, and for crying out loud, Lex, don't use nuclear warheads either to blow the tectonic plates apart or weld them shut.
posted by brownpau on May 3, 2004 - 28 comments

Quake to hit LA "by September 5," predicts a geophysicist at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. Some skeptical, while others say it's not junk science.
posted by valerie on Apr 15, 2004 - 34 comments

The Three Sisters have developed a bulge in recent years. Earthquake activity has increased significantly in recent days. The level of activity doesn't approach that of Mount St. Helens. Yet.
posted by quonsar on Mar 25, 2004 - 20 comments

Iran considers moving capital away from Tehran. Tehran lies on a major seismological fault and experts have long warned that a strong earthquake in the city would be devastating. A professor of geophysics at Tehran university, has warned that if a quake of similar magnitude hit Tehran it would kill more than 700,000 people. Government buildings would be destroyed.
posted by hoder on Jan 5, 2004 - 14 comments

4.5 earthquake in Virginia.
posted by SuzySmith on Dec 9, 2003 - 28 comments

The Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network Live in Washington or Oregon? Felt a little rumble recently (like I did)? Want to see if it was an earthquake? You can even check out the live seismographs, including some on Mt. St. Helens.
posted by doorsnake on Jan 31, 2003 - 5 comments

The Earthquake as Artist
"A shop in Port Townsend, Washington had a sand pendulum going when last week's earthquake struck. One usually thinks of earthquakes as resulting in a net increase in entropy, but in this instance the outcome was something akin to fine art". via TBTF
posted by lagado on Mar 19, 2001 - 3 comments

Map of world wide seismic activity. [via. The pocket belonging to rebecca. BIG image]

You can also check out Near-real-time Seismic images.

Rethinking that move to Portland . .
posted by alan on Mar 4, 2001 - 6 comments

This and this aren't exactly what you'd call urgent breaking news. (Respectively they're about the Ring of Fire and historical earthquakes.) So why couldn't the BBC take enough time on them to get their facts right? [More inside]
posted by Steven Den Beste on Jan 13, 2001 - 8 comments

Earthquakes hit off of Sumatra, Indonesia
Successive earthquakes measuring 7.9 and 6.7 have killed at least 25 people in Bengkulu, Indonesia, on the island of Sumatra. The epicenter of the quakes was in the Indian Ocean east of Sumatra. The quakes were so storng they could felt as far away Singapore.
posted by rschram on Jun 4, 2000 - 0 comments

This is pretty cool, a map based on frequency of people saying they felt the recent earthquake in Southern California. It's clearly non-scientific, but interesting that the USGS is collecting 'community data.'
posted by mathowie on Oct 17, 1999 - 0 comments