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Originally Posted by strandinthewind
Very scary - it seemingly lasts a long time as well. For some reason I thought EQ's were shorter than 2:20 in duration.
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Most earthquakes are far shorter than 2 minutes in duration. That's why most earthquakes are thousands of times smaller than the December 26 quake. Remember, magnitude is related to the length of rupture along the fault. The vast majority of earthquakes don't rupture for 750 miles, which is why they aren't M9.0+ in size.
The good news is that there is no known fault that long in the continental United States.
The bad news is that there are huge subduction zone faults just offshore of North, Central & South America: one runs from Northern California to Vancouver Island BC, another one runs along Mexico's & Central America's western coastline, & another one runs in the Atlantic north of South America. There's also a subduction zone off the west coast of South America. This fault last ruptured in 1960, which created the biggest quake on record: M9.5