Earthquakes in the west and around the Ring of Fire have been in the news for decades, but scientists warn that the New Madrid seismic zone is equally as dangerous. What may have been a foreshock rattled the town of La Center, Kentucky, Sunday morning with the tremor being felt 267 miles away.
The New Madrid seismic zone of southeast Missouri and adjacent States is the most seismically active in North America east of the Rockies. During the winter of 1811-1812 three very large earthquakes devastated the area and were felt throughout most of the Nation. They occurred a few weeks apart on December 16, January 23, and February 7. Hundreds of aftershocks, some severely damaging by themselves, continued for years. Prehistoric earthquakes similar in size to those of 1811-1812 occurred in the middle 1400’s and around 900 A.D. Strong, damaging earthquakes struck the southwestern end of the seismic zone near Marked Tree, Arkansas in 1843 (magnitude 6.3), and the northeastern end near Charleston, Missouri in 1895 (magnitude 6.6). Since 1900, moderately damaging earthquakes have struck the seismic zone every few decades.
The history of this earthquake zone is fascinating, though it gets less attention than that of the San Andreas.
Those earthquakes in 1811 and 1812 tore thousands of very deep fissures in the ground, they caused the Mississippi River to actually run backwards in some places, and they caused sidewalks to crack in Washington D.C. and church bells to ring in Boston.
In our time, the U.S. Geological Survey has admitted that the New Madrid fault zone has the “potential for larger and more powerful quakes than previously thought“, and we have seen the number of significant earthquakes in the middle part of the country more than quintuple in recent years.
Perhaps all of the United States is just going shake into oblivion due to the predicted activity of the San Andreas, to the Cascadian subduction zone, and the New Madrid seismic zone, this nation is a doomed.
Most think of the San Andreas fault line that runs through California when they think of potential earthquake activity in the West. But the newly discovered “Cascadia subduction zone” is 30x greater than the San Andreas. It runs for seven hundred miles, beginning near Cape Mendocino, California, continuing along Oregon and Washington, and ending around Vancouver Island, Canada, reported Truth and Action.
This zone sits within the Ring of Fire, which is a horseshoe-shaped area in the basin of the Pacific Ocean where about 90% of all earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. The scary thing is, the Ring of Fire has been VERY active lately with earthquakes and volcanic activity – currently we are well above the yearly average of 35 volcanic eruptions in one calendar year.
According to a report on Truth and Action, “the Ring of Fire is going through an alarming uptick in activity right now with 34 volcanos erupting at the same time. The Ring of Fire a is 25,000-mile, horseshoe-shaped string of volcanoes and seismic activity sites around the edges of the Pacific Ocean. About 90% of all earthquakes and 75% of all active volcanos are on the Ring of Fire.”
Yet with this Ring of Fire activity and quakes on the New Madrid, one must not only prepare for the worst but also question the why behind it. Michael Snyder of The End of the American Dream writes:
One day, I believe that a major seismic event in the area of this deep scar will literally divide the United States in half.
What that will do to our country is the kind of stuff that apocalyptic novels are written about.
And it is also important to keep in mind that there are 15 nuclear reactors along the New Madrid fault zone, so if a massive earthquake did strike the region we could be looking at Fukushima times 15.
So yes, I am always concerned whenever a significant earthquake hits the New Madrid fault.
Source: End of the American Dream
Mean
We have lived right on this fault line for 7 years…..nothing