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5/28/2009 9:26:22 AM
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Bill Moonroe
Posts 3308
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Thomas mentioned them on the Alien Oceans thread, and I thought that they deserve a thread of their own.
Any SF stories about earthquakes that come to mind?
We've had a fairly good one here, oh about a week and a half ago. Only about a 4.7, I think, but it was kind of a different shaking than your average earthquake. Instead of a nice rolling action, it was more of a sharp jolt, followed by a similar aftershock a few days later. Not much damage around here, though my cats were pretty scared most of the night.
Overall, earthquakes are kind of fun as long as no one gets hurt. Sort of reminds me of a roller coaster ride, only more impromptu.
For those of you who think you're safe from earthquakes because you're not near the Pacific Ring of Fire, well, maybe, maybe not.
edited by Bill Moonroe on 5/28/2009
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5/28/2009 10:40:06 AM
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Thomas R
Posts 2725
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Earthquakes appear in several disaster movies, some of which have an SFnal element. There were several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation where they had to save people from a cosmic or geologic event that caused massive earthquakes.
In print I believe one of Kage Baker's novellas set in the Company universe concerned the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Was that Son Observe the Time? I think what little "geological SF" is out there makes use of earthquakes, at least sometimes. (I feel like volcanoes are maybe more popular in print SF, but I could be mistaken) Japanese science fiction I think makes use of earthquakes a bit more frequently and I believe Chinese SF may as well.
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To God be humble, to thy friend be kind, and with thy neighbors gladly lend and borrow His chance is tonight it might be thine tomorrow - William Dunbar
I don't lend money to eight-year-olds, at least not anymore. And if you see Billy tell him I'm looking for him - Coach McGuirk
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5/28/2009 1:05:36 PM
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karlb
Posts 380
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You want an earthquake story? Have I got the novel for you:
http://www.amazon.com/Rift-Walter-Jon-Williams/dp/0061052949
I skimmed this a few years back and it's much better written than the average run-of-the-mill disaster novel.
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5/28/2009 1:12:02 PM
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Bill Moonroe
Posts 3308
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Totally unrelated to anything Karl said, but his post reminds me that Pennsylvania is actually prime for lots of tectonic activity. The whole state is full of Quakers and Shakers.
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5/28/2009 1:28:24 PM
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Alex
Posts 942
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Ayup, it takes a heap of Earthquake to rattle a CA lifer. I'm more inclined to whoop and holler, "Yippee!" than get askeert.
I actually worry more when there aren't enough of 'em. Saving up for the "Big 'Un," you know.
Up here on the Mendocino Triple Junction along the Cascadia Subduction Zone 3's and 4's are commonplace; but we expect something stronger than 6 about every ten years.
The last really good one was the great '92 Triple Whammy, a 7.1, a 6.9, and a 6.7 within 18 hours. That was a ton of fun; though third time around we began to wonder if it was going to stop. The earth was like jello, between aftershocks, for 2 weeks. Putting an ear to the ground it sounded, not like approaching Apaches; but more like your stomach after a long night of Mexican Food and Dos Equis.
That was, what? 17 years? on a ten year average...
We're also supposed to get a 9 plus every 500 years. The last one was about 550 years ago....
Uh, Oh. Think I'll go out and buy a Hat. Just in case I need something to hang onto.
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Because, anything worth doing is worth overdoing
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5/28/2009 2:50:51 PM
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dolphintornsea
Posts 297
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There was a story by David Gerrold called "In the Quake Zone", and I remember thinking it was a satisfying story, but oddly enough I can't remember whether quakes feature strongly in it.
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5/28/2009 4:11:46 PM
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gdozois
Posts 3110
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There's no place in the world that is safe from earthquakes, although the likelihood of earthquakes (particularly severe ones) goes up in some locations and down in others; they CAN happen anywhere, though.
Yes, Kage Baker's "Son Observe the Time" takes place during the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. And a good book about a really major earthquake in modern-day times is Walter Jon Williams's THE RIFT (he uses the New Madrid fault in the Mississipi Valley, not usually thought of as "earthquake country," but the site of the largest recorded earthquake ever to strike North America; fortunately, unlike today, very few people lived out there then).
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5/28/2009 4:44:15 PM
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Marian
Posts 2178
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Was that the one that rang the church bells in Boston? Somehow that little fact impressed me more than anything else - a quake that rang church bells half a continent away.
Weather Channel's It Could Happen Tomorrow has done a description of what a New Madrid quake would mean if it struck today. Summary: It would be A Bad Thing.
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"Know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."
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5/28/2009 5:15:01 PM
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natipal
Posts 468
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San Diego County is rife with faults. Somewhere between 40 - several hundred if I remember correctly. Most of them range from several hundred yards to a few miles long. One even runs under one of the wealthiest communities in San Diego County- La Jolla. Several years ago, I think around 2005, there was a rather large earthquake offshore around the islands off Mexico. We felt it in downtown San Diego.
At least one fault runs under our bay and directly under our downtown area.
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5/28/2009 10:21:02 PM
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Lee S
Posts 315
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The New Madrid fault earthquake would not be A Bad Thing. It would be A Very Bad Thing. There are almost no earthquake-proofing requirements in Illinois, Missouri, or Iowa. If we had a 9 pointer today, you can figure the resulting homelessness would probably be in excess of 60 percent of the surviving population. If it happened in winter I'd guess the result would be just about as horrific as a nuclear attack, in that emergency response likely wouldn't be able to reach a significant segment of the surviving population before we froze to death. As an example why, the Interstate 80 bridge over the Mississippi river is completely closed for an "emergency" repair. Spring inspections found cracks in the vertical pylons supporting the bridge itself in addition to the roadway that "lays" on top of the actual bridging structure. Given that so many of the bridges in this part of the country are of an advanced age, I'm not optimistic on the survival rate of said bridges under the extra stress of a major quake. Nor would I predict a lot of the two-lane-highway and county-road bridges would survive through such a trauma, especially as they're nearly all old enough that they weren't designed with any such possibility in mind. Us folks living within the "smack-down" zone of the New Madrid fault are suprisingly complacent in a "it caint happen here" kind of way.
* I can't think of a single building in the small farming community where I live that I'd expect to survive a 9-pointer. I estimate I'm a couple hundred miles away from New Madrid, so a 9-pointer there might only translate to a 6, 7, or 8-pointer here in Whiteside County, IL, but I can't seriously imagine many of the structures in my hometown would survive a 7-pointer, either. (or a six-pointer, for that matter)
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5/29/2009 1:21:13 AM
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pc
Posts 1452
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Arthur C Clarke and one coauthor (I'll think of his name in a moment) wrote a novel called Richter Ten. A rich guy tries to fulfill Sakharov's idea of 'fusing' earthquake faults with deep hydrogen bomb blasts, but he stymied. At the end, southern California gets hammered by the Big One to end all big ones.
As a child I was thrown into the air, tricycle and all, by an earthquake jolt from the San Andreas Fault. (Technically a Rayleigh Wave.)
I saw it coming, like a very fast soliton wave in the solid ground, from the west. (We lived just a couple of miles from the fault line.)
All my friends came pouring out of their homes, and we walked around finding new cracks in everything. Even so, it was just a minor quake.
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The ends do not justify the means. Rather, the means build the ends.
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5/29/2009 6:26:01 AM
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jimbraiden
Posts 1755
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I was in a 5.8 quake back in the 90’s.
Odd thing was that for about an hour before it hit I found myself feeling incredibly depressed, I mean really, really down.
The feeling came out of nowhere and vanished as soon as the shaking stopped.
(Of course that might have had something to do with the fact that the tremor shook the mini bar door open and broke every miniature of scotch in it- at least that’s what I told the hotel.)
As for the noise- to me it sounded exactly like a tube train coming out of a tunnel.
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5/29/2009 8:08:25 AM
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gdozois
Posts 3110
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It's been proven that animals, dogs, chickens, cats, even elephants, react strangely in advance of a quake (in fact, that's used as the basis for earthquake prediction in China), so I don't see why a human, another mammal, couldn't react that way too, although he might not know WHY he was reacting strangely.
I was in a very minor earthquake in San Francisco, during the Nebula Banquet there. I was in a room party and bolted from the room to brace myself in the doorway; the native Californians didn't even look up.
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5/29/2009 8:31:56 AM
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Bill Moonroe
Posts 3308
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It's kind of an odd thing... pc's tricycle story seems to be the exception. Most people I've talked to who are outside during an earthquake seem to have no idea that anything happened. Even after the Northridge quake, I heard people saying that they'd been driving on the freeway and just thought they had a flat tire.
Gardner, I have to say that normally I'd have been one to have noticed the earthquake, but probably wouldn't have reacted. But the one we had two weeks ago was different enough that I did go under my desk.
Even here in earthquake country, we're probably looking a lot of pancaked houses in the Big One. Even though there are stringent construction laws that take earthquakes in mind, they're not retroactive, which means that a lot of the buildings built pre-1970s are not earthquake "safe". Though pre-1970s construction actually seems much better than modern construction. I guess it'd hurt less having drywall fall on you than actual wood or concrete.
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5/29/2009 2:22:01 PM
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gdozois
Posts 3110
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I don't believe there's been a really major earthquake in the East since the Pilgrims got here, so, of course, almost NO buildings out here are built to earthquake-code standards. Manhatten, for instance, would not be a place you'd want to be during a really major eathquake, especially in mid-town--all those multi-storey high sheer sheets of glass that front most of the buildings are all going to come crashing down and fill the air with millions of flying razors, even if the building itself doesn't actually collapse (and many of them, especially the older ones, will).
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5/29/2009 5:11:34 PM
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Marian
Posts 2178
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Earthquake Safety Tip -- Don't run for the doorway. The doorway is only useful if the building will collapse and meantime you have a big chance of injury from falling (or having the door attached to the doorway slam you). I once tried to run during a moderate earthquake and found it's like running on a trampoline. The best advice nowadays is to instantly look to see if anything above you may fall on you (If so, run on the trampoline) and otherwise ride it out where you are or sit on the floor, etc. I've heard the advice that if you're in bed, stay there, it's one of the safer places to be. If you're in a movie theater, stay seated and hang onto the seat.
As for feeling earthquakes in advance, I found that I'd be sort of irritable and nervous for 48 hours before the earthquake. Not exactly any help for prediction and a real nuisance. What was really odd is that the feelings would end just before the quake. I'd be feeling fine and then Wham! And the funny thing is that I'm with Alex on enjoying the quake itself, just not what leads up to it.
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"Know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."
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5/29/2009 5:17:23 PM
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gdozois
Posts 3110
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If you're outside in New York City, particularly in mid-town where all the big skyscrapers are, you might actually be better off running INSIDE--that would at least get you out of the way of the huge slabs of glass that are going to be falling off of the buildings, and probably few modern buildings are going to actually collapse.
In most places, you're probably better off outside. Of course, a lot depends on how likely it is that the building you're in is going to collapse, or how likely it is that the nearby buildings are going to fall on you if you're outside.
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5/29/2009 8:09:22 PM
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Byron Bailey
Posts 2413
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If I recall correctly, Hal Clement's "Hot Planet" features earthquakes although they preced otherplanetary behavior.
Harlan Ellison's Slippage has the theme of "Previously Uncollected Stories, precariously poised stories" and the introduction to the collection is an essay called "The Fault in My Lines" which talks about an earthquake and a heart attack he experienced.
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Yes, I do weigh 800 pounds, but I'm not a gorilla. I'm just a grossly obese bonobo. Really.
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5/29/2009 8:25:06 PM
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gdozois
Posts 3110
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Silverberg had a story in the mid-December 1995 ASIMOV'S called "Hot Times in Magma City," about earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Los Angles--kind of like the movie VOLCANO, if you ever saw that, except it didn't have Tommy Lee Jones in it.
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5/29/2009 10:34:29 PM
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Bill Moonroe
Posts 3308
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gdozois wrote:
Silverberg had a story in the mid-December 1995 ASIMOV'S called "Hot Times in Magma City," about earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Los Angles--kind of like the movie VOLCANO, if you ever saw that, except it didn't have Tommy Lee Jones in it.
Not only did I see Volcano, but I saw the set where they filmed it. Seems there was a little problem in getting a permit to run molten lava down the real Wilshire Blvd, so they built a replica of it on old McDonall-Douglas facility in Torrance. It was really detailed, for something they had planned to set on fire, complete with real palm trees.
Actually, during the quake itself, the best thing is to duck under something solid--if buildings are coming down, probably doesn't matter if you're inside or outside, but if you're under a desk or somesuch, there's a chance of it settling in an air pocket where someone can find you later. But you're right about the flying glass, Gardner. In 1987, I was in the student lounge at college when a pretty good quake started. One person ran for the doors, the glass doors, which fortunately didn't shatter, but that was really the wrong thing to do. They could have just as easily have slammed shut into her as she went through.
As far as pre-earthquake jitters, there's a bit of speculation around here about the idea of earthquake weather, when it gets unusually hot. I'm not sure if surface temperature can possibly affect tectonic plates rubbing together a mile or more underground, though.
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