Common Myths about Earthquakes

The "Triangle of Life" refers to a claim that the safest place to be if you are indoors during an earthquake is flat on the floor next to a large object that cannot collapse, like a couch or bed. The claim is that, if the ceiling collapses, a person can avoid being crushed if they are in the space under a piece of the ceiling that falls to rest leaning against the non-collapsible object.

Seismologists have observed that for every magnitude 6 earthquake there are 10 of magnitude 5, 100 of magnitude 4, 1,000 of magnitude 3, and so forth as the events get smaller and smaller. This sounds like a lot of small earthquakes, but there are never enough small ones to eliminate the occasional large event. It would take 32 magnitude 5's, 1000 magnitude 4's, or 32,000 magnitude 3's to equal the energy of one magnitude 6 event. So, even though there are many more small events than large ones, there are never enough to eliminate the need for the occasional large earthquake.

No, there are different earth processes responsible for volcanoes. Earthquakes may occur in an area before, during, and after a volcanic eruption, but they are the result of the active forces connected with the eruption, and not the cause of volcanic activity.

Contributing source: USGS

No. The San Andreas Fault System, which crosses California from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north, is the boundary between two tectonic plates — the Pacific Plate and North American Plate. The Pacific Plate is moving northwest with respect to the North American Plate at approximately 46 millimeters per year (about the rate your fingernails grow). The strike-slip earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault are a result of this plate motion. The plates are moving horizontally past one another, so California is not going to fall into the ocean.

Shallow crevasses can form during earthquake-induced landslides, lateral spreads, or other types of ground failures. Faults, however, do not open up during an earthquake. The two faces of a fault move along each other, not away from each other, and it is the locking together and releasing of the two fault faces that causes earthquakes. If faults opened up, no earthquakes would occur because there would be no friction to lock the two faces of the fault together.

Contributing source: USGS

Earthquakes are equally likely to occur at any time of the day, month or year. The factors that vary between the time of the day, month, or year do not affect the forces in the earth that cause earthquakes.

Contributing source: USGS

There is no connection between weather and earthquakes. Earthquakes are the result of geologic processes within the earth and can happen in any weather, in all climate zones, and in all seasons of the year. Earthquakes originate miles underground. Wind, precipitation, temperature, and barometric pressure changes affect only the surface and shallow subsurface of the Earth. Earthquakes are focused at depths well out of the reach of weather, and the forces that cause earthquakes are much larger than the weather forces.

There is no scientific explanation for the symptoms some people claim to have preceding an earthquake, and more often than not there is no earthquake following the symptoms.

Contributing source: USGS

So far, scientists have been unable to find consistent and reliable animal behavior patterns before earthquakes. Scientists have also had trouble finding any sort of "signals" that animals might detect to alert them — if they had, you can bet that scientists would be vigilantly detecting those signals, too! Most, but not all, scientists pursuing this mystery are in China or Japan.