They evacuated a lot of buildings in DC (I work in one of them).

I definitely felt it. First time I've experienced an earthquake.

I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland... and yeah... I felt it. First time I ever felt the effects of an earthquake. Just not normal around here.

My daughter said they emptied the school because of it.

Quoting CalebAndCo:

Quote:
Check out the pic that ZDNet put with a blog post:



(Only funny since no one apparently was hurt.)

We were laughing about that earlier. Well played.

the blog post is quite correct. A 5.9 is quite strong, but you'd have to be at the center of it to "appreciate" its power.


One time my father called me and asked me if I was o.k. I said sure, why...? Apparently there had been an earthquake in Taiwan of 6 or so, which had him worried. The news report failed to say it had happened quite some miles away from the coast.

I've lived my life in California... and I won't make obvious comments. Any scary natural event can overwhelm us. Much of the nation's news media is on the East Coast, so this will gain international attention quickly. The damages appear to be minor at worst, but the immediate feeling of dread can consume your emotions. When I was stationed in Biloxi right after Hurricane Camille, I was horrified by the devastation. I had never encountered hurricanes before. When a few tornadoes ripped through my present county a few months ago, the local media was all over it... about the same damages here as the Virginia quake had there. I'm glad we can joke about this potential disaster so quickly.

I live near the New Madrid fault, which had a series of violent earthquakes back in 1811-1812 — now marking the 200th anniversary. These were the most violent series of quakes to ever occur in the recorded history of America. And there were literally over 15 major quakes above 6.5 (several were well above 8.0) ... not to mention several thousand smaller quakes that were all able to be felt across the midwest. That all happened within a span of a few months. The population was sparse at the time, so there wasn't too much human damage. Some of the historical eye witness accounts of the time are downright apocalyptic. Some of the quakes even rattled windows and rang bells over a thousand miles away. The Mississippi river changed it's course, entire new lakes were formed, etc..

We're well overdue for a major one, but when it does strike... St. Louis and Memphis would probably be history. We have a rumbler occur here every so often, and there's still hundreds of small quakes registered every year. Earthquakes are more violent and able to be felt over a greater land area in the midwest/east than California due to the terrain being older/rocky and colder/drier. A 7.0 quake would be far more violent here than if it hit California for instance.

Quoting Silence_of_Lambs:

Quote:
Just wait until the world's largest active volcano blows up, this may wipe all of North America of the maps and will most likely cause severe damage all over the rest of the world.

It may take another 640.000 years for this to happen though, so don't hold your breath.

If you take a look at this Google Map viewing the terrain around Yellowstone National Park and zoom out far enough, you'll notice a flat area leading from Twin Falls on the Southwest side heading North East to Idaho Falls and into Wyoming.  As the North American Tectonic Plate moves southwest, the area over the Caldera moves and leaves a trail.

I read this line once: "Volcanoes create mountains.  Super-volcanoes erase them."

Quoting VirtualScot:

Quote:
Should be more worried when Yellowstone finally blows. No pun intended.

That's the "world's largest active volcano" Silence_of_Lambs was talking about...the Yellowstone Caldera.