I thought I had posted a few days ago from the SCEC meeting about people seeming just a little nervous about a little swarm near the end of a San Andreas fault segment in Salton Sea off of Bombay Beach, but I guess the post did not take.

There was a session on "extreme" or rare events, except some (state?) person said that was a bad term to use for the public. Events discussed included 8 or 9 m uplift events near Ventura above the Ventura-Pitas Point fault, that could be almost M8 events similar to the deadly quake in China a couple of years ago. There was even a little discussion of whether a M8.6 quake like the one in the Indian Ocean this past year would be possible, and whether large quakes can rupture through the San Andreas creeping segment. After the Japanese quake March 11 2011 I posted that a M9 was not possibe south of Cascadia subduction zone.

But, I've been thinking for some time that discussing the worst case events, even if extremely improbable, is a good idea. Not considering this did not turn out well before the Japanese M9 (Tohoku).

Chris