Something slipped my tectonic plates... - Printable Version +- Tendo City (https://www.tendocity.net) +-- Forum: Tendo City: Metropolitan District (https://www.tendocity.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=4) +--- Forum: Ramble City (https://www.tendocity.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=44) +--- Thread: Something slipped my tectonic plates... (/showthread.php?tid=6757)

Something slipped my tectonic plates... - Dark Jaguar - 16th July 2014 I forgot to mention... Oklahoma had 7 earthquakes last weekend. Oklahoma... had earthquakes... Oklahoma doesn't really do that. I mean, rarely, but, we're not exactly on a fault line here. It's more than a little frightening, because we're quickly becoming a state with two kinds of devastating natural disaster, and woe betide us should both strike at once, in which case we'll need to get outside on flat open ground, and also inside deep within a protective stairwell or bathroom. So, here's the thing. I've never once felt earthquakes in my life, until a few years ago when I mistook my house shaking for a particularly strong wind burst (we get those now and again), only it turned out, oh hey, this one town east of Oklahoma City just got disasterquaked. Now I'm reading news reports on statistics. From 1978 - 2008, Oklahoma managed two 3.0 magnitude earthquakes a year, on average. To put it in perspective, those are really weak earthquakes. Every whole number increase on the scale isn't a flat unit increase, it's 10x the strength of the level below it. So, a 3.5 would be 5 times more powerful than a 3.0, WAY more of an increase than one might naively expect. Point is, AFTER 2008, we're now sitting at 207 of that factor, and a handful of 4.0 and 5.0s on top of it! (Such as the 5.6 (remember, that's 6 times the strength of a flat 5.0) that hit in 2011). I say 2 or so 3.0s a year average, but that's also about our TOTAL earthquake number of any strength in that period of time. So what changed? Something else happened in 2008, Oklahoma licensed gas companies to set up a lot of new drills using the new "fracking" method. No, our water hasn't been contaminated that I'm aware of, but well, I'd take flammable water and a Britta filter over everything falling over. (Fortunately, I can lack BOTH!) Now, you are right to point out that correlation does not equal causation. (My causality could be reversed... Maybe the earthquakes caused all that fracking?) However, there's more. The seismologists are saying these are far shallower earthquakes than the California standard. They clearly aren't related to any fault lines, and match up with much shallower collapses of underground rock settling into a lower place in sudden jumps. Two lines of evidence, but that's not entirely enough. There's also the simple matter that, as far as a plausible mechanism, it's kinda obvious that creating giant wide-spread gaps underground is going to destabilize things. For my part, I'd say it is a solid bet, and I await the completion of a survey being conducted which'll nail it down with greater certainty. Full disclosure, fracking has been scaled back recently. The gas companies call it "significant", and statistically that's accurate, but factually it's still FAR more fracking than there was 8 years ago, closer to the maximum level than the old level by a good margin. Also, the earthquakes are getting worse even with it lessening? That's... not good news. That means they could stop fracking altogether here and we'll still be seeing quakes for some time. (On a side note, if it really was a coincidence, clearly Satan is digging his way up from hell and thus we have NO idea what's going on or how to stop it, which is even worse.) As for mechanism, well, every earth quake destabilizes even more earth. It's not exactly far fetched to presume that quakes are going to keep happening until the rocks underground reach a stable configuration. Ugh, what a mess... Let me make something clear. Oklahoma doesn't have any real earthquake preparedness plans. We never needed them, like how your state probably doesn't have volcano drills in school (if you're Hawaiian, you probably do, next to those alien invasion drills). There's no earthquake drills in school here, no overall plans, and NONE of the buildings are coded to withstand earthquake damage. The only saving grace is Oklahoma is a flat open place, so if you can get outside, you're pretty much free and clear. Unless a tornado is also coming along... Maybe I need to get out of this place. http://www.okgeosurvey1.gov/pages/earthquakes/recent-earthquakes.php Something slipped my tectonic plates... - Weltall - 19th July 2014 Solar Solar Solar Solar Solar Solar Solar Solar can't say it enough, stop the fracking. It's scary to think that we've found a new way to ruin everything just to get more oil. I still lived in Virginia back in 2011, and that earthquake you mentioned (Wiki says it was 5.8), the epicenter right outside of my city. Everything was shuddering. It only lasted 45 seconds or so, but I didn't like that feeling. Worse, though, was that there's the North Anna nuclear plant basically right where it happened. There was some damage, but unless I've grown a few new appendages I'm not aware of, it wasn't severe. But, you know, it might have been, if it had been stronger. Something slipped my tectonic plates... - Dark Jaguar - 19th July 2014 Solar, Wind, even Fusion if the tipping point can ever be reached. Fission is clean, sure, but recent accidents show that when it fails, it fails, and the consequences are just... too big. Yeah, my opinion on fission changed recently. Geothermal's good too (actually some local buildings here are using some geothermal, but it's not for every location). I think the biggest protest against wind is "it lowers property values", which I've always considered the stupidest reason for anything. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, stop beholding them that way and it's not a problem! Something slipped my tectonic plates... - Great Rumbler - 19th July 2014 Something slipped my tectonic plates... - Dark Jaguar - 20th July 2014 Yeah, that about sums it up in visual form. Something slipped my tectonic plates... - Great Rumbler - 21st July 2014 Basically, fracking is kind of a bad thing but we keep doing it anyway because multinational corporations gotta make that scratch*. *That's slang for "money," DJ. Something slipped my tectonic plates... - Dark Jaguar - 21st July 2014 I know outdated 80's movie gang terms at least! Like, "Can you fly, Bobby?" is slang for "I have a plan".