Living in the southern California region, close to the San Andreas fault puts us at a greater risk for earthquakes, as well as the “big one” that is said to be long overdue. This expectance is based off of previous patterns, and like much geologic activity operates on a time scale with decades of years of deviation. During the first lecture of the Earthquakes class (GEOL 240) at the University of Southern California, we are taught about the unpredictability of earthquakes due to never knowing when the “snap” would occur. Geologists may be able to detect signs prior to an earthquake rupturing, but given the speed of an earthquake it’ll be too late to take any preventative measures. Your statement about being prepared for a natural disaster “Like not paying tax, not taking medication or indulging in smoking, you may think you’re getting away with it, but after a while, it could catch up with you, and the results could, literally, be deadly.” reflect the importance of being prepared. These scientists have spent many years learning what they can to understand the Earth system, you can choose to question the authority they may have on these issues, but I am going to listen to the experts.

Seeing the weather girl on TV showing the projected path of the latest hurricane or the towns with tornado warnings for the next three hours is not the same as declaring that a hurricane or thunderstorm will probably occur at some specified date, time, and location in the distant future. We can do a reasonably good job of predicting where landslides might occur, where liquefaction might occur, or which buildings might be unsafe in a given earthquake scenario just like we can issue storm warnings once we know that a storm is going on. The problem is that earthquakes happen too fast for those kinds of specific event-specific warnings to ever be useful, hence the need for general preparedness.