Hi Petra:

Thank you for your statements reflecting current dogma:

>Not all faults can deliver a 7.0 quake. They have to be of a certain size to do so. Fault length and depth have a great role in making this determination. The Maacama Fault where the Ukiah and Willits 4.0 quakes of late have been occurring is believed to cut down to the mantle and is hundreds of miles long. Thus a 7.0 quake along there is very likely at some time in the future. But there are literally thousands of smaller, less significant faults which are in the Bay Area and throughout CA in general that never would go over a 4.0, let alone deliver a 7.0.

+ My point was that just "what if" the deductions leading to that line of thinking were somewhat convincing but still incorrect (wrt reality).

+IOW, the dogma that the length of a known fault determines the max size of a quake on the fault is not correct at all...that a mag. 7+ could occur anywhere on any fault(s) given particular conditions.

+One common approach seems to be to suppose a rift exists where strong + quakes happen where no faults seem to exist. What if this is not the correct interpretation of what's happening?

Just food for thought...

$.02

p.s. The rodgers creek fault could probably be instrumented for <$1000 (provided somebody provides power and cover to a device). The labor in retrieving and possibly distributing the data is where it would probably add up.