How big of an earthquake will it take for the san andres fault to break?

Question

It came up in a convesation a few friends I were having. we mentioned the Discovery channel and how on a show they were decoding the bible. They mentioned how Los Angeles would have a huge earhquake in 5/2012. Just curious to see if any one know if California would be going under water...

Answer 1

The largest earthquake that is possible on the fault is about 8, though it has smaller earthquakes all the time. This will move LA about 20 feet closer to SF but that's it. This happens every 100-200 years on average, aznd LA had the last one in 1857 and SF had its last one in 1906.

There is no California falling into the ocean. That will never happen. Here is some info about earthquakes, you seem to have a lot to learn:

Earthquakes follow NO predictable pattern. People have tried and tried, with no luck. They may have accidentally predicted one, but they can not predict anything consistantly.

Earthquakes fall into 3 categories. Some do behave well, they have foreshocks, they show subtle signs, and have aftershocks very nicely. They are still not predictable, but they are closer to being predicted. Some have no warning at all and never show any signs of going. The third group follow no pattern at all, they go seemingly randomly, and they can not even be estimated. It is very hard to tell which fault will be in which group, and this is why prediction is still several breakthroughs away.

Earthquakes all come down to stress and strain from the interaction of different tectonic plates, chiefly at the boundaries. It is not 'the plates rubbing together' as many people say; or at least that's a very simplistic view.

Plate tectonics causes stress on the continents and oceans, all over the surface of the earth. In some places, the stress is very small (usually within the plates). Elsewhere, the stress is high, usually where the plates meet each other. Since each plate moves, when two come in contact, the stress each other. They can push on each other and cause compressional stress, they can pull with extensional stress, and they can slide past or shear each other with tensional stress.

Faulting, causing earthquakes, comes from the fact that this stress is building up all the time, but rocks and continents are strong materials. Just like hitting a rock with a small hammer, you do put stress on it, but a small amount. It would take a sledgehammer to put enough strain (effects and accumulation of stress) to build up and cause breakage. In the earth, the area around an active fault builds up strain from the stress of plate tectonics. Most faults become locked, because of this strength, and thus can not release their strain. Away from the fault, the stress produces very small and slow movement of the rock masses as a whole. Eventually, the strain is too much and the rest of the plate has moved too far and the fault releases the strain build-up all at once in a big stress release called an earthquake. This is called the elastic rebound theory, and it explains most (but not all) movements.

This is why an earthquake's size is relative to the fault size. The bigger the fault, the bigger the strain build up, and the bigger the release in an earthquake. Subduction zones and collision zones, where large portions of plates actually can rub together as a whole, have the really big earthquakes, like the 2004 Sumatra earthquake. In other plate boundaries, the entire plate boundary does not act together, so the faults become spread out and many faults take up the strain from the tectonic stress, like with the San Andreas Fault in California (it only takes up ~3/4 of the stress between the plates).

Earthquakes are really tricky things; there is still so much we need to learn. As of now, there is no way to predict them, but we can say where the danger is highest and about how long between events.

Answer 2

The San Andreas fault is energetic, and destiny earthquakes are inevitable. even nonetheless, guy or woman quakes won't be able to be predicted in boost. the terrific obtainable forecasts are possibilities that an earthquake of a definite length will impact a definite fault interior of a definite form of years. See link for the main present day sturdy forecast estimates for earthquakes in California. for lots of the state, the San Andreas fault isn't the biggest earthquake threat. Smaller quakes on interior of sight faults can do greater injury than an tremendously super quake on a fault 50 miles away.

Answer 3

I don't know about California falling into the ocean, but I heard on the television that if there's a big Tsunami, the waves could go from California all the way to Colorado, go over the mountains and could make it to Kansas. I heard about this even before the Tsunami that struck Thailand, Indonesia, etc. Those tectonic plates are on land and sea, in fact, they are close to the coastline of California, and the San Andreas fault line, and several other places on Earth, if they have too much friction, then it will get to the point where it could be too stressed , they said it's like a rubberband that has been stretched too long, too far, they have to give somehow, and the result would be an earthquake, on the television it said it could happen at any time. I put these websites on here so that you could read for yourself. It is fascinating to me to learn about this, and it causes some of the worst dread I've ever learned about this planet we live on. I threw that last website in because I didn't have a clue about all of those, and thought it may help to see what's really happening in our world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Andres_Fault
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/last30.html

Answer 4

California can not fall into the ocean, this is an old wives tale. Its impossible for it sink or slide off into the ocean. On a different note, I just love it when I see answers that have been copied and pasted right out of someone's web site. ~A~

Answer 5

Its not the earthquake that causes the fault -- its the fault that causes the earthquake. It would take a tremendous shift in the plates to result in California gaining two more coastlines. I have heard that scientists have predicted this would eventually happen, though it does not appear that it would happen in a short-term event.
California doesn't need any more earthquakes -- but they would LOVE to add coastline!

Answer 6

I lived in Cal it will take 8-9 on the Richter Scale.