Controversial Prediction Site Claims Massive Earthquake 7.0 Or Higher Expected Any Moment?
The controversial site EarthquakePrediction claims a 7.0 earthquake may hit California in the next 48 hours.
The controversial site EarthquakePrediction is claiming that a powerful earthquake of at least 7.0 magnitude could occur in central California in the next 48 hours, according to its Twitter account. EarthquakePrediction is widely regarded by the scientific community as alarmist and unfounded in its tendency to issue independent and highly dramatic earthquake alerts. Many media sources also critique the site and warn against taking an earthquake alert from it seriously.
In the above Twitter post, the earthquake alert warns of an allegedly high probability of an event of 7.0 or higher on the Richter magnitude scale (which essentially measures the amount of energy released along a fault line, rather than destructive capability). The images indicate that it may occur northwest of Los Angeles and southeast of San Francisco Bay, which is an approximately 350 mile area.
If such an earthquake were to occur, an alert would be extraordinarily helpful to citizens in the area. A recent 5.4 magnitude earthquake in Humboldt County, CA was enough to send shockwaves around an area of at least nine miles; that event does not appear to have been predicted by EarthquakePrediction. However, the Twitter account did send out an earthquake alert that a 6.5 magnitude event would likely occur between December 25 and 28 of 2022 in the same area as it is currently predicting. This did not occur.
EarthquakePrediction appears to be run by Texas-based man Luke Holmquist (reported as Luke Thomas in some media), who admits he does not have a scientific background and that the vast majority of scientists disagree with his findings and methodology. According to Holmquist, an earthquake alert is generated by his research in “thermal temperature changes, ULF or Ultra Low Frequency sounds, micro earthquakes, animal behaviour, human behaviour, moon phases, seismic gaps and satellite earthquake clouds.” On the website, EarthquakePrediction states several times that it is not affiliated with the United States Geological Survey, the government agency that monitors and analyzes earthquakes.
According to Holmquist (via Alaska’s News Source):
If [people] get scared, they need to look at that 99 percent of people out there in the scientific community that disagree with me. If you want to feel comforted then listen to them. If you want to see the latest in earthquake forecasts, take it with a grain of salt or watch how accurate it is.
However, it is fair to note that California is particularly known for its seismic activity, largely due to a geological structure known as the San Andreas fault system. It is actually very likely that there will be a very large earthquake in that general region of California sometime in the next 30 years, according to actual U.S. Geological Survey data. Depending on the timing, that could actually make an earthquake alert from EarthquakePrediction accurate at some point, though scientists would likely point out, not through research of its own.
All of this being said, earthquakes are a highly destructive and dangerous natural phenomenon that cannot be accurately predicted by anyone, not even Dwayne Johnson.
