For generations , denizens of Southern California have awaited “ the Big One”—anearthquakethat would decimate their sunbaked Babylon . Downtown Los Angeles is 30 miles from the San Andreas Faultline , where two architectonic plate grate against each other . By some estimates , each of the faultline ’s three segment should produce a gamy - magnitude quake every 200 to 300 years , and L.A. seems due [ PDF ] . According to a major2008 paperfrom the California Geological Survey , a 7.8 - order of magnitude quake in the southerly segment of the fault would get 1800 deaths , 50,000 injury , and $ 200 billion in damage .
In a less scientific appraisal , things were somewhat bad in that 2015 Californiaearthquake disaster moviestarring The Rock . But grant tonew researchfrom a distich of geophysicist at San Diego State University , the Big One might not be as destructive as past geologist and film writer have thought .
Their paper , publish on an open - origin site and not yet peer - retrospect , hypothesize that the web of coordinated sedimentary river basin around Los Angeles , acting as “ waveguides , ” would actually absorb seism movements and reduce the ground gesture by maybe 50 percentage .
The two researcher , Kim Bak Olsen and Te - Yang Yeh , aimed to updatea modelfrom the 2008 study , which was prepared for the California Geological Survey for a massive earthquake preparation project calledthe Great Southern California ShakeOut(a name surprisingly not already claimed by a luxuriously - priced euphony festival ) . The “ ShakeOut manakin ” incorporate Southern California as a childlike flatland . Yeh told the websiteLive Sciencethat computer modeling has improve since then , allow them to incorporate more complex geologic feature .
The newer model presents right news for the inland region , which was the worst strike in the ShakeOut predictions . Yeh and Olsen write that the particularly abstruse San Bernardino and Chino basins would “ well impact the long - period waves . ”
Yeh secern Live Science that , though their findings are “ not as horrifying as what was antecedently predicted , ” the ground movement in the new scenario “ are still heavy . ”
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