TEOTWAWKI 10: Earthquakes

Let’s talk about earthquakes. As we know, the Earth’s crust is
made up of tectonic plates – vast plates of rock that shift
around due to convection and the motion of fluid in Earth’s
mantle. They, roughly speaking “join together” at fault-lines.
But in reality, the plates can’t slide past each other
frictionlessly; what tends to happen is that they “catch” on each
other, stick for a while – with pressure building, because
whatever predominant force is pushing them along is building up
pressure and elastic strain energy. Then, eventually, it all
becomes too much, and they slip dramatically, releasing all that
built-up energy quickly and causing vibrational waves to
propagate, which we feel as Earthquakes. For this reason, they
occur predominantly around faultlines, like the San Andreas fault
that runs through California, and others in Japan, South America,
and the middle east.


But do earthquakes have the power to destroy the world or even
wreak major damage on human civilization as a whole? Let's find
out.