Hi Martin and All,

Let's ponder the big question and ask ourselves, Do Earthquakes Arrive by Surprise?

Here's my two cents. No, I don't think they do. From what I can see in the "big picture", nothing in the universe is random, therefore earthquakes do not occur, or arrive randomly.

The problem is to find the factor in which we determine how to "learn" the method of advance delivery. This is the complex work of our earth scientists, to seek and discover the answer. There are probably as many methods are their are earth scientists, but as of this date, there is some element or elements missing in finding the equating fractal.

Some success has been achieved along the way already when looking at these methods:

1. Seismic Gap by Max Wyss. If there have been no earthquakes in an active area and then suddenly it become active, then therein lies the probability that an earthquake equivalent to the size of the fault could arrive. Loma Prieta is a prime example and an earthquake that was not unexpected at all.

2. The Mogi Donut. Currently under study by Niran Biswass of the Geophysical Institute in Alaska, he's using this hypothesis to look for forecasting methods on Rampart Fault near Fairbanks. He's had some good success and with seismic monitors and the use of a computer, the marvels of 3 dimensional earthquakes make prediction one step closer.

3. What's Not New? People like Charlotte King. She beats out the instruments and people who hypothesize daily. She uses her natural inherent physical abilities and "knows" where earthquakes of the moderate variety are going to arrive. However, not being a scientist, she can't predict earthquakes in such a fashion that people can be evacuated without a deliver through the normal methods of protocol.

So though I don't think in the larger sense earthquakes arrive by surprise, what needs to be detected with much more repeated acuracy in the scientific realm is not here yet, but I am more hopeful than most that it will arrive sooner than thought.

Insofar as those counts on which group dies the most in natural disasters, we have to remember, in the long term, one day we are going to start having large earthquakes in major metropolitan area's and what has been the average to date will take a shift and one day deaths from earthquakes could out-number floods, hurricanes and tornadoes in one or more years.

From North of The Golden Gate...Petra Challus