Into the meat of the thing.
This fault has been popping off M 7's or 8's every 5000 years for 100 million years, more or less. The displacement for each event is one tenth that of California, but 10 times more stress drop, or intensity.
Is there evidence of constant movement? Yes. The whole area is deformed with earthquake movement. We have sag ponds, and the footwall ridge. The hanging wall is busted up, and weathered down to be underwater. It's all there for the looking, but nobody does.
So, we are going to blow this thing. For 5000 years, it has been quietly moving along. Lots of stress arches, like a tunnel in rock. Nobody suspects a thing, but all the arches have lined up, and the bases are barely holding along the fault zone. It is a wide fracture zone, not iron plates.
Finally, stress corrosion undermines the first base at the southern end. This is identical to many others, except for how the dominoes have all lined up to fall. It blows. At this moment the weak fault zone acts as a wave guide for a very intense shear wave. At super-sonic speeds, the shock wave starts and blows through the next base. Base after base shears though. We do not have one M7 but 10 M6's, or maybe up a notch, 10 M7's
Different from California, we have solid rock surrounding this. The initial 'Peak Ground Velocity' in the near-field of the fault is huge. This is the only measure worth using, the phoney concept of Peak Acceleration has no physics. The wave is on its way.
The suspense is killing me. To be continued.
ps in order to reduce the blood, we are assuming everybody got the memo and are visiting relatives in Edmonton, The United States of Alberta.
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