We are checking our earthquake mitigation systems

Those of us who live in tornado territory keep our basic systems ready to go, and when there is a high chance of tornado, just check and brush up our systems, so if it matters (and it may not) we have done what we could do. When there is high tornado risk, we can be told about wind patterns and weather fronts, but it doesn't really change what we need to do to be prepared for a possible problem. We just do what we can to mitigate problems if we are impacted.

Those of us who live in earthquake territory also keep our systems ready to go, and when there is a high chance of earthquake, we need to check and brush up our systems so if it matters (and it may not) we have done what we can do. When there is high earthquake risk we may be told about solar coronal holes, magnetic field connections to the earth, and fault lines, but it doesn't really change what we need to do to be prepared for a possible problem. We just do what we can to mitigate problems if we are impacted.

This post was written March 21, 2025. In a few days there will be higher than usual probability of earthquakes. We are checking and brushing up our systems. If you are in a high risk area, it might be worth your time to do so too, it might not matter, but if it DOES matter, you have done what you can do to mitigate problems if you are impacted.

There are some threads here on permies that discuss some aspects of earthquake impact mitigation:  
are they under your bed?
Earthquake safe ways to hang mirrors, pictures and other heavy objects?
The really big one - concerns about earthquakes

Oh cool! I'd never heard about a connection between solar activity and earthquakes. I've only done a tiny bit of reading, but this was interesting: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67860-3

Conclusions
This paper gives the first, strongly statistically significant, evidence for a high correlation between large worldwide earthquakes and the proton density near the magnetosphere, due to the solar wind. This result is extremely important for seismological research and for possible future implications on earthquake forecast. In fact, although the non-poissonian character, and hence the correlation among large scale, worldwide earthquakes was known since several decades, this could be in principle explained by several mechanisms. In this paper, we demonstrate that it can likely be due to the effect of solar wind, modulating the proton density and hence the electrical potential between the ionosphere and the Earth.

It's funny you should mention this.   I was just thinking about the equinox, the tides and how one of my professors at university was researching the correlation between them and earthquakes on The (pacific) Ring of Fire.  And there is a correlation but they, 10+ years ago, couldn't find the causal link.  

And it got me thinking how in the 1840s there was an article on exactly that.  That people have been noticing these things for centuries.  

And Voltaire (back in the 1700s), I think, mentioned in one of his works the correlation between solar activity and major earthquakes.  It was sort of a joke about the fallacy of confusing correlation with cause.  I think that kind of stuck in our culture and makes it harder to remember how powerful the sun is.  As we developed better ways of measuring these things, more and more, they are finding a way to identify the causal relationship where before we only saw a correlation (solar activity = more earthquakes).

Earthquakes are frustrating to plan for! It's difficult to keep life ticking along but still have everything bolted down!

We are in that awkward spot of knowing the house we live in is old enough that it *might* be bolted to the foundation,... but then again, it might not be. They *might* have dug down to bedrock, but they could have used fill. Fill and earthquakes are a *really* bad combination.

We know that we live in an earthquake zone, but Mother Nature doesn't exactly announce her schedule on a human time scale. There are signs and portents, but will it be this year, or 10 years or 100 years from now?

All we can do is look at our priorities, remind ourselves where things we may need are stored, and consider potential plans. Then there's that old military line - no plan survives contact with the enemy. Our important resource is ourselves - our knowledge and our ability to problem solve and adapt. That's what permaculture is all about.

Talking with the household about this, our different areas of study and life expirence show there is a strong relationship between solar weather and earthquakes.  But also other factors can increase (like the strong tides near an equinox) or decrease (mid lenth drought, which we do not have right now) chances.  So it's so difficult to predict.

But we did find two conclusions.

1. Finish updating the emergency kits.
2. Garden more.

The earthquake predicted for here is expected to be higher than we can measure. At least 40% of buildings will be flat with the first shock, and all will be damaged.  Then the after shocks...

We figure that the chance of survival inside the house is small.  But outside, in the garden, there isn't much that can fall on us, so the biggest risk there is falling down onto something. Aka, very small risk.

Gardening it is.

It's als the time of year when the garden needs us the most.  Convenient.

Ooh, this is interesting! I never knew... Here's another article that finds a strong correlation.

For supporting the idea of a possible earthquake triggering by solar flares we carried out a statistical analysis of global and regional (Greece) seismicity behavior during the solar flare of X9.3 class occurred on September 6, 2017 (the strongest flare over the past thirteen years). We have discovered a new evidence of earthquake triggering due to the Sun-Earth interaction by simple comparison of a number of earthquakes before and after the strong solar flare. The global number of earthquakes (USGS catalog, M ≥ 4) for time window of ±11 days after the solar flare has increased by 68%, and the regional seismicity (Greece, EMSC catalog, M ≥ 3) has increased by 120%.

Earthquakes and volcanos are impacted by the same forces. It seems there is an increase in volcanic activity in both Hawai'i and Italy in the last few days. Those of you who are near volcanoes rather than fault lines, keep an ear out on what happening in that department. (In between working on your garden! I'm having to do indoor gardening as we're having almost constant light rain.)

I keep dreaming of ash falling from the sky in great flakes like they had with the last local volcano (sometime in the 1990s?) near us.  There are still people who have jars of ash that they show off to kids when they get to that age that volcanoes are neat.  

Or maybe I've been reading too much mistborn

It always seemed like a good idea to have a garden & some basic supplies & emergency preparation materials ready to go. Sooner or later something bad will happen. It always does. It has been happening since the earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. Could be an earthquake, a hurricane, tornado, flood, wildfire, volcano, worldwide cooties epidemic or any number of other things. Often without much warning. Being ready might save your life or it might just make things easier until things return to normal.

Melting Ice caps are changing the weight and pressures on tectonic plates and land masses. This causes more volcanic eruptions and more earthquakes.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13583-melting-ice-caps-may-trigger-more-volcanic-eruptions/