Chris,

The striking part of Lynn's work, from what I remember, is that earthquakes may be more characteristic that is assumed in current hazard models. The Bay Area, as you mention, may be twice as dangerous as currently thought, given the long interval since the previous earthquakes and the consequent high stress levels in the region.

The basic thrust of Lynn's work is he thinks the risk goes up significantly with time after the previous earthquake, and some others don't; they prefer the "Poisson Process" model. He has some good points. This debate has been going on for a long time, Sykes and Nishenko had a global model of dangerous areas that was widely discussed in the 1980's.

John