20,000 Feared Dead in Iran Earthquake

[Kuciwalker]

Oh, well, I didn't know that

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Whoha
Considering that we are sitting on the San Andreas fault, the New Madrid fault, and a Super Caldera, each one waiting to cause a catastrophe that will kill millions, the US shouldn't feel too safe.

New Midrid doesn't go off very often; once every 200-300 years. The San Andreas creaps for most of it's distance with restraining bends causing 90%+ of the big Earthquakes while the Long Valley Caldera can safely be assumed to be inactive if not extinct.

The main source for the Long Valley caldera's magma was techtonic subduction off off California but these has mostly died off in the last 24 million years. When the spreading center went under the trench the right lateral transform fault system, which characterizes the San Andreas, was set up. There's still some residual magma chambers down there but there isn't any massive new inflows of magma so don't bet the farm on there being any new eruptions.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Oerdin
New Midrid doesn't go off very often; once every 200-300 years.

And the last time it went was 1811. What year is it again?

Supposedly it shook buildings in Chicago, and rangs bells as far away as Boston.

Long waits make for a much more powerful quake. St. Louis and the surrounding vicinity, since they don't have earthquake construction codes, will be flattened. Probably millions will die.

Sweet dreams.

[Dinner]

BTW I live in California so quakes are no big thing. I've been through several and as long as your house/workplace wasn't built by a total idiot then you're pretty much safe. The only problem would be all of those brick buildings in the midwest but by and large people are pretty safe. The reason is because New Mardid is an internal plate fault system instead of being on the edge of a plate like California or a micro place like Italy. That means there is no obvious source providing the tension with in the rocks.

The fact is people in Italy, Greece, Turkey, or even southern Spain are far more likely to get a quake.

[Az]

hmmm, earthquakes,...geologically we're supposed to get a ****load of them, but *knocks on wood* we don't. We have small ones once in a while, though.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Spiffor
This is a horrible tragedy

I'm damn glad to see that every rich country offrered help so quickly. I hope the amount of victims will end up being smaller than planned.

Anyone planned this? That would sicken me even more...

This feels like the Turkey earthquake in 2000, or was it late 1999? They had heard that the World would end with the new millienum, and suddenly found out it did. And never knew what happened to them until they were trapped under fallen ruins of crappy houses

Edit: The Santa hat on the emoticon is really sick!

[Chemical Ollie]

Here's what you can do with santa hats

(Note: This is not gloating - it's just showing what Santa hats in the wrong places can do.)

We'll be finished by Christmas, back home by the fire...

[GePap]

People forget this is a thousands of year old city-some of the buildings must be centuries old, others built with local material available to the local economy. Actually, most were mud brick- which is why the city gt flattened. The other things is at at time it struck-very early morning-the worst possible time since the maximum number of people are indoors.

It's sad that Iran refuses Israeli help-they will get enough from elsewhere but still wrong to politic at such times.

O, and Iran sent its condolences to the US after 9/11 and people mpourned in the streets- showing the utter ignorance of the people eho made the "they danced in the streets after 9/11" comments. It's not the bad taste that bother me, more the general utter ignorance of most posters-ignorant and still opinionated..what a terrible combination.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by GePap
O, and Iran sent its condolences to the US after 9/11 and people mpourned in the streets- showing the utter ignorance of the people eho made the "they danced in the streets after 9/11" comments. It's not the bad taste that bother me, more the general utter ignorance of most posters-ignorant and still opinionated..what a terrible combination.

IIRC, that whole "dancing in the street" story turned out not to be true, and the video shown on some American TV "news shows" turned out stock footage from an earlier celebration. The one image I remember from the Mideast following 9/11 is one of Palestinian women lining up to donate blood for the 9/11 victims.

[Pekka]

Last I heard is that the amount of victims is much much more.. someone talked about 70 000, but it included injured ones too... someone said the city had 100 000 people in it, and 65%-70%.. who knows.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


IIRC, that whole "dancing in the street" story turned out not to be true, and the video shown on some American TV "news shows" turned out stock footage from an earlier celebration. The one image I remember from the Mideast following 9/11 is one of Palestinian women lining up to donate blood for the 9/11 victims.

The only dancing in the streets that might have happened anywere was in Palestinian areas..and you cast doubt on it.. what I am saying is that in Iran there were mass pro-US vigils in the days following 9/11, probably the most friendly response to 9/11 in the ME outisde of Israel and Turkey. So the nitwits that even think of saying there was dancin in the streets in Iran after 9/11 are truly ignorant troglodytes. Unfortunitelly there is no way to root out the halfwits from the voter rolls that would not be abused, so they remain to dull our body politic.

[DinoDoc]

Idiots

Originally posted by Zkribbler
IIRC, that whole "dancing in the street" story turned out not to be true, and the video shown on some American TV "news shows" turned out stock footage from an earlier celebration. The one image I remember from the Mideast following 9/11 is one of Palestinian women lining up to donate blood for the 9/11 victims.

How in the hell does this BS keep croping up? I thought you people were better informed than that: http://www.snopes.com/rumors/cnn.htm

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Azazel
hmmm, earthquakes,...geologically we're supposed to get a ****load of them, but *knocks on wood* we don't. We have small ones once in a while, though.

Israel is in an active continental rift zone. Ussually these rifts start shaped like a star with three arms but then on of the arms ceases to be active while the other two become the main centers of rifting. The sea on the west side of the Sini is the failed rift will the successful active rifts go down the red sea and up the Jordan valley.

Other famous failed rifts are the Hudson valley in New York (occured when Europe and North America rifted) and a valley I'm forgetting the name of in Africa (near the nigerian/Cameroon border which occured when Africa & South America rifted).

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by Sava
unfortunately, as advanced as our weapons are, the people picking the targets aren't as smart as the bombs they are dropping.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Theben


And the last time it went was 1811. What year is it again?

Supposedly it shook buildings in Chicago, and rangs bells as far away as Boston.

Long waits make for a much more powerful quake. St. Louis and the surrounding vicinity, since they don't have earthquake construction codes, will be flattened. Probably millions will die.

Sweet dreams.

About 10 years ago a psychic predicted a New Madrid quake. It received a lot of press as a general interest story. The one thing it brought to light was that Memphis sits on top of one of the largest artesian wells in the world. It is feared that a major quake could cause the entire city to be lost. Casualties there could easily approach 1 million or more.

The lateset figures out of Iran say that 22,000 bodies have been recovered and that at least another 18,000 are feared dead. Aid, thankfully, is beginning to move that way in a large way. It seems that the world can sometimes put aside its differences in the face of vast human tragedy. Perhaps there is hope for us afterall.