French engineers have been experimenting with a technique that could redirect seismic energy away from structures such as cities, dams, and nuclear power plants, sparing them from damage. It involves digging large, cylindrical boreholes into the ground, forming a defensive geometry of lace-like arrays that, researchers hope, could deflect seismic waves and thus make whole landscapes "invisible" to earthquakes.
At 5:42 a.m. on March 27, 1964, a 9.2-magnitude earthquake erupted 78 miles east of Anchorage, Alaska. The earthquake remains the most powerful earthquake to strike North America, and the second-largest earthquake ever measured.
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Worrying about the Big One is so passé. What you should really be worried about are the Big ONES. Yep: chances are, it won’t be a single large earthquake that takes California out, it will be multiple, large earthquakes. Or perhaps you’d prefer to use the official Sharknado-esque term: "earthquake storms."
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Have you ever heard of "earthquake lights"? I’ve spent a good chunk of my life in shake-happy coastal California and this phenomenon is news to me—but, for centuries, people have reported seeing a wide variety of illuminations just slightly before and during major tremblers. The origin of these glows have consistently baffled scientists—and no doubt freaked the hell out of eyewitnesses—but a new study seems to have found an explanation (one that doesn’t involve supernatural forces).
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When the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco in 1989, it gutted the Marina neighborhood. While part of that was due to liquefaction effects caused by the area’s underlying landfill construction, the problem was exasperated by the area’s multiunit homes, which typically either had parking or shops built into the first floor. That’s great for home values, but not so much of the building’s structural integrity during a tremor, as you can see below.
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