Photos of the terrible earthquake today

God's way of working out the deficit? Shaking the loose change out of the pockets of the Senators and Congress Critters?
 
OMG!!!

Ban Earthquakes! For the children!
 
"Really all this excitement over a 5.8 quake??? Come on East Coast, we have those for breakfast out here!!!!" wrote Dennis Miller, 50, a lifelong California resident whose house in Pleasanton sits on an earthquake fault line.

On Twitter and Facebook and over email, people circulated a photo of a table and four plastic lawn chairs in a serene garden setting. One of the chairs flipped on its back. The mock image carried the title "DC Earthquake Devastation."

All the more laughable for some were the images of people fleeing buildings — the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do in a quake.


:rofl:
 
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There's a real mess over at the Office of Mismanagement and Bean Counting. The beans have poured out all over the floor.
 
I will say that it was a pretty scary event for most folks here, even those who've been through quakes before.

First, in the Metro DC area, your first thought is "kaboom=explosion=terrorist". When we ran out of our polling place (which shook pretty well and loudly), the first thing I did was look in the direction of DC for a smoke or mushroom cloud. Only when I DIDN'T see evidence of an explosion did I think "OK, must have been an earthquake".

Then, for folks who haven't been in a quake before, it's a traumatic event when the earth starts moving/shaking and you don't know why and are faced with your powerlessness in the face of nature, and maybe you get that "I could die RIGHT NOW" feeling for the first time in your life.
 
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Clever post from AOPA forum:


President Obama has just announced that the DC earthquake occurred on a recently discovered fault-line, which will be known as "Bush's Fault". The President also announced that House members Frederica Wilson, D-FL, and Maxine Waters, D-CA, will conduct an investigation of the quakes suspicious ties to the Tea Party. Libertarians, however, have suggested that it was actually caused by the founding fathers rolling over in their graves.

:dunno:
 
flyingriki said:
recently discovered fault-line, which will be known as "Bush's Fault".

:dunno:
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yMi7Z.jpg
 
Ooooh. 5.8 on the Richter scale. Isn't that about one-twelve-hundredth the strength of the big quake (9.0) in Japan this spring? 0.00083? Or is my understanding of the Richter a little off?

Dan
 
Dan Thomas said:
Ooooh. 5.8 on the Richter scale. Isn't that about one-twelve-hundredth the strength of the big quake (9.0) in Japan this spring? 0.00083? Or is my understanding of the Richter a little off?

Dan
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From Wikipedia:

Because of the logarithmic basis of the scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; in terms of energy, each whole number increase corresponds to an increase of about 31.6 times the amount of energy released, and each increase of 0.2 corresponds to a doubling of the energy released.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Ooooh. 5.8 on the Richter scale. Isn't that about one-twelve-hundredth the strength of the big quake (9.0) in Japan this spring? 0.00083? Or is my understanding of the Richter a little off?

Dan
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Look, when you're on the 21st floor of a large 80 year old masonry structure in Eastern Pennsylvania and it's swaying -- you're not sure if it's the whole deal or just the prep for something bigger...

Those numbers don't mean [excrement].
 
dmccormack said:
Look, when you're on the 21st floor of a large 80 year old masonry structure in Eastern Pennsylvania and it's swaying -- you're not sure if it's the whole deal or just the prep for something bigger...

Those numbers don't mean [excrement].
Click to expand...

True enough. Buildings out there aren't built for the shaking like the West Coast's are. California learned the hard way in 1906.

Dan
 
Point of clarification: Everyone learned the hard way in 1906... only California did something about it. :)
 
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