Damages from the earthquake that hit the San Francisco area this weekend are estimated to be as high as $4 billion. For many cities around the world, particularly coastal cities situated on the geologically active Ring of Fire, an earthquake could be catastrophically destructive. Bloomberg looks at the five cities that are most vulnerable to earthquakes.
As Michael Snyder rather ominously warns, the quake last weekend is just the start of the shaking in California. [4]..
[5]
Don't get too excited about what happened on Sunday. Scientists assure us that it is only a matter of time before "the Big One" hits California.
In fact, the 6.1 magnitude earthquake that hit northern California on Sunday was not even the largest earthquake along the Ring of Fire this weekend. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake [6] shook the area around Valparaiso, Chile on Saturday and a 6.9 magnitude earthquake [7] struck Peru on Sunday.
As I mentioned above, we have moved into a time when seismic activity is steadily rising. It has gotten to the point where even the mainstream media cannot ignore it anymore. For example, just check out the following excerpt from a recent CBS News [8] report…
The average rate of big earthquakes — those larger than magnitude 7 — has been 10 per year since 1979, the study reports. That rate rose to 12.5 per year starting in 1992, and then jumped to 16.7 per year starting in 2010 — a 65 percent increase compared to the rate since 1979. This increase accelerated in the first three months of 2014 to more than double the average since 1979, the researchers report.
Something is happening that scientists don't understand, and that is a little scary.
As I wrote about the other day [9], earthquake activity seems to particularly be increasing in the United States. While the west has been relatively quiet, the number of earthquakes in the central and eastern portions of the nation has quintupled [10] over the past 30 years…
According to the USGS, the frequency of earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S. has quintupled, to an average of 100 a year during the 2011-2013 period, up from only 20 per year during the 30-year period to 2000.
Most of these quakes were minor, but research published by the USGS earlier this year demonstrated that a relatively minor magnitude 5.0 quake caused by wastewater injection after conventional oil drilling triggered a much bigger, 5.7 magnitude quake in Prague, Okla.
“We know the hazard has increased for small and moderate size earthquakes. We don’t know as well how much the hazard has increased for large earthquakes. Our suspicion is it has but we are working on understanding this,” said William Ellsworth, a scientist with the USGS.
What in the world could be causing this to happen?
Oklahoma, which used to rarely ever have significant earthquakes, has experienced over 2,300 earthquakes [11] so far in 2014.
That is absolutely staggering.
And of course volcanic activity has been rising all over the planet as well. In 2013, the number of eruptions around the globe set a new all-time high, and right now persistent rumbling under Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano has much of Europe on alert [12]...
For more than a week the earth has been rumbling beneath Iceland’s looming Bardarbunga volcano. The almost continuous small earthquakes led the government to activate its National Crisis Coordination Centre this week and block off access to the largely uninhabited region around the Bardarbunga caldera.
Major airlines are making contingency plans for a potential eruption that could throw dust into the atmosphere and disrupt flight paths between North America and Europe.
Some scientists are saying that if that volcano erupts, it "could trigger Britain’s coldest winter ever [13]".
Clearly something is happening.
All over the world seismic activity is on the rise.
That means that the shaking in California (and in much of the rest of the world) may soon get a whole lot worse.
So what do you think is causing all of this?
