


When the magnitude-6.4 earthquake on the Fourth of July was followed by an even bigger 7.1 quake Friday night, talk of the "Big One" became inevitable and Google searches for "San Andreas fault" skyrocketed. 

The Ridgecrest, California, quakes were nowhere near the San Andreas fault, but perhaps since it's the only fault line with a movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson named after it, it's a bit more top of mind. 

Seismologist Lucy Jones took to Twitter to clear things up, explaining that the first quake took place about 10 miles from Ridgecrest — "an area with a lot of little faults but no long fault."

As for whether the Big One is coming, she estimated "there's about a 1 in 10 chance that Searles Valley will see another M7. That is a 9 in 10 chance that tonight's M7.1 was the largest."

San Andreas myths debunked

The mere mention of the San Andreas fault evokes images of disaster – collapsed freeways, crunched-up buildings and chasms cutting across the earth. And while the San Andreas fault’s history includes several disastrous earthquakes, the day-to-day reality of the geographic feature is far less sensational. The Southern California section of the San Andreas fault experiences about 10,000 earthquakes per year, but a large majority cannot be felt.

The San Andreas fault is an 800-mile fault zone that cuts through much of California. It's where the Earth's Pacific plate and North American plate meet, moving in opposite directions and resulting in a net movement that has averaged 2 inches per year. At that rate, Los Angeles and San Francisco will become neighbors in about 15 million years.

The 2015 movie “San Andreas” depicted a “mega-quake” with a magnitude higher than 10 Scientists say there is no known fault on Earth capable of producing an earthquake of magnitude 10 or larger. Models show that the largest-magnitude earthquake San Andreas could probably produce is around 8.3.

Show Thumbnails
Show Captions

Contributing: Joanne Thomas, Leaf Group, a USA TODAY content partner providing general travel information. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

Read or Share this story: