Hi EQF. First of all I would like to apologies if there are some things I say that don’t make sense as I’m still under the influence of morphine and sodium pentothal for the pain in my back and legs. For the most part the morphine did the trick, but I think a hammer blow between the eyes would have brought on sleep much quicker then the sodium pentothal did.

You’re a little behind times. The cause of most quakes became known back in the mid 60s. The cause became apparent with the acceptance of the plate tectonics theory although I will admit that I like some of the old theories better. I think the one I like the best was the one about the cause of quakes in California being caused by turtles having an argument.

Most of the quakes along plate boundaries are fairly well understood, but the quakes away from the boundaries are another subject altogether.

One such area are the quakes that occur in New Madrid, Missouri area.

The ghost of past glaciers may still rattle the American Midwest. During the last ice age, a gigantic ice sheet invaded North America, weighing down the hard upper crust of the continent for millions of years. Eventually, the glaciers melted. Freed from the heavy pressure of the ice sheet, North America slowly rose. This glacial rebound continues even today and triggers quakes in the New Madrid fault zone in Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee, says Stanford geophysicist Mark Zoback.

I first became aware of this about 4 or 5 years ago when Dr. Lowell Whiteside brought this to my attention. I think this man should be given an award or something for answering all of my questions, which by the way there were/are many. Even now I suspect I may have woken him up a couple of times with a question as I forget that the time difference between where he’s at now and where I live is 3 hours.

I don’t believe you can predict earthquakes with any degree of accuracy that would be of any help to anyone. The only way you can, or will ever be able to cause me to believe you can is to do it before the quake occurs. I know you are now looking into what triggers a quake and not predicting them. To me there is no difference between the two. If you can learn what triggers them, then you can predict them. Take Care…Don in creepy town