What is a megacenter? No, it's not a new mall or corporate office. An epicenter, as you know, is the location of a normal, measurable quake. A megacenter is the location of a quake much larger than usually experienced by man.
How big is it? Well, it's like comparing conventional explosives to nukes. The Richter Magnitude of this quake will be approximately 10! This is equivalent to a huge number of nukes. A typical nuclear test in Nevada generates a Richter 4. A Richter 10 is ten to the sixth times greater magnitude. My estimate is that it will be equivalent to over 100 megatons of TNT...
A Richter 10 is 100 times a Richter 8.0 !
The rupture will be as much as 100 miles long. It will extend from near the east side of the Salton Sea, through the the San Gorgonio Pass, along I-10 freeway, through San Bernardino and into the San Bernardino Mtns., perhaps as far as the Tejon Pass. The horizontal offset will be from 50 to 100 feet. The vertical offset will be from a few feet to 20 feet in places. Huge 1/4 mile blocks of recent gravels in the Thousand Palms area have been overturned by previous ruptures and jumbled into bizarre arrangements 1500 feet high at Edom Hill, the highest point of the Indio Hills. A biblical name for a biblical event. Many christians describe the end of the world as the rapture, where people are taken up. This rupture is similar in that people will be thrown into the air due to the tremendous "G" forces, estimated at greater than 2 "G's"! Giant ground waves will also throw just about everything not fastened down into the air. These waves will be similar to oceanic size swells, upwards of 20 feet! The duration of the event will also be much longer than expected; upwards of several minutes, not just a few seconds. These type of movements will be virtually unsurvivable...
Batten Down The Hatches And Hang on Mates!
California has already broken off Mexico. Cabo San Lucas was attached to the Puerto Villarta area. The Gulf of California has widened substantially due to the numerous volcanic eruptions along this segment of the East Pacific Rise. The mostly granitic Penninsular Ranges, from Cabo San Lucas to San Jacinto have moved northwest and forced weaker Tertiary marine sediments and some older rock sequences to fold and break up (Normal and thrust faults). Most of the western portions of Southern California have already faulted off along the Newport-Inglewood and Malibu Faults, and submerged. All that remains is Palos Verdes and a few Channel Islands. These tectonics have created some spectacular mountain scenery such as Big Bear, great beaches such as Santa Monica and some very rich oil fields, such as Signal Hill...
Just Another Sunny Day!
California has already crashed back in! Yes, Mt. San Jacinto, 11,000 ft. high at Palm Springs, the highest point on the Penninsular Ranges, is like the bow of a huge ship (Stern is at Cabo) that has run aground into Mt. San Gorgonio, also 11,000 feet high and directly acrosss the San Andreas Fault at San Gorgonio Pass. This is one of the world's greatest plate tectonic collision zones. It may also be the most narrowly focused and dangerous. Huge alluvial fans thousands of feet thick have covered the fault zone in many places such as at Indio, Whitewater and Banning. An ancient Persian saying about earthquakes really applies to this area...
"The mountains shall become sand and the sand shall become mountains!"
The fault has become locked up here because of the impact and the geometric difficulty of trying to move such a "Ship" around this bend of the San Andreas Fault. The strain accumulates to tremendously dangerous proportions before it can be relieved catastrophically. The accumulated strain is calculated by taking the estimated annual movement along the other portions of the San Andreas Fault, approx. 4 centimeters per year, and multiplying it by the estimated time since the last quake on the southern section of the fault. 4 cm. X 500 = 2000 cm., or 66 feet! The Alaskan quake, the largest ever recorded, had offsets of 35 feet horizontal and 15 feet verticle...
It was a Richter 8.6 !
An interesting speculation has been suggested reguarding this impact. The original map of California drawn by the Spanish in 1510 shows California as an island, a sea passage through San Gorgonio Pass? Did it close up during the last big quake? Peat bogs under the gravels in the pass and San Bernardino suggest at least some water. The date of this closure is actually about ...
50 to 100 thousand years ago!
West of the Salton Sea, the old white calcareous Gulf shoreline along the base of the dark colored Santa Rosa Mtns. is a very distinct warning. The Gulf of California was cut off about 800 years ago by a (Quake related?) shift of the Colorado River Delta, and the Imperial Valley dried up. (The Salton Sea was created by accident during construction of the All American Canal at the Colorado River in 1904, otherwise the valley would still be dry). The megaquake could cause enough liquifaction of the delta, combined with a Gulf tidal wave, to reflood the lower desert. The Salton Sea has many geologic and geothermal features similar to the ones that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah on the Dead Sea...
Remember, Don't Look Back!
All sides of the southern portion of the San Andreas Fault have given away. There is not much left to come loose structurally. The geometry of these structural blocks is very complex. The patterns of faults in Southern California, (See Geologic Map at end), indicate that tremendous forces have been at work to readjust the upper continental rocks which ride on top of the East-Pacific oceanic volcanics. This created the Transverse Ranges. The Landers quake moved that portion of the high desert northward 20 feet, making it easier for the Penninsular Ranges to move northwest again. This was perhaps the most important locking wedge.
On the map of S. Calif. Seismicity 1932-1991, as shown on the Quaking Home Page, (See link below), there is a distinct white "Quake cluster" in the San Gorgonio Pass area. This area will probably be the megacenter. The white "Quake cluster" S.E. of the Salton Sea is indicative of the complex fault couplings of the San Andreas Fault with the Imperial Fault. Very little is known about how the San Andreas Fault System connects to the East Pacific Rise in the Gulf. Most of the other white "Quake clusters" are along the other active peripheral faults such as the San Jacinto Fault. Another cluster occurs in the Penninsular Ranges south of the border. In fact, the whole region appears to be...
Rockin' And Rollin' !
Sound recordings of quake rumblings ( The sound of granitic, basaltic, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks grinding past each other) are facinating. The orgasmic groans of Mother Earth coming. Birth and death of a continent in each creative pelvic thrust. Her final climactic scream will be heard soon. When played backwards, friends say that they can her cosmic warning...
"Leave My Valley!"
The megacenter near San Gorgonio Pass will send waves of destruction outward in irregular elliptical zones over 250 miles. These waves will travel rapidly to Las Vegas, to Santa Barbara, to Tijuana and to Yuma. All of Southern California will be destroyed. The kill radius will be similar and overlap the destruction zones. Differences in geology, depth of soils, slopes, population densities, structures, civil engineering and time of day will combine to cause numerous specific catastrophies and causes of death. Almost all structures, utilities, railroads, airports, roads and cars will be destroyed. Most dams could fail, including Parker and Davis on the Colorado River.
The San Onofre
and the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plants could be destroyed or ruptured, injuring or killing just about everyone...Slowly! Dust and fires will black out the sun. Emergency systems will also be history. Escape through the passes will be unlikely. Tidal waves will finish off the coast...
Surf's Up!
You will probably be killed by the first shock wave. Tremendous (Richter 8) aftershocks will finish off many initial suvivors. Those still remaining will wish they had died when the pain of injuries, thirst, hunger and despair set in. Outside forces may not be able to enter the area for a considerable period of time, and they won't be coming to your aide. Triage is a medical necessity, not a choice. They may just simply seal off the entire region to prevent looting, like they do around smaller disasters. Survival will probably be hopeless anyway...
Got Milk? !
Attempts to hang on to civilization will fail. Anarchy will set in as different factions fight for survival, supplies, water and means to escape (Horses and Dirt Bikes?). There are so many guns around that hundreds of gun battles are inevitable. All hell will break loose without law and order and media mind control. It will be the end of this civilization as we know it...
Crack City!
It's similar to the end of "Babylon The Great" as in Revelation (16:18, 17:5 and 18:1-24), and the end of the "Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth". God may have very little mercy on a society with so little respect for Him and Mother Nature...
It Will Be Biblical !