1906 Bay Area Earthquake Simulations

Like earthquakes? Like simulations? Like simulations of earthquakes? Well then, my friend, you're in luck! The United States Geological Survey has a really cool website where you can watch computer simulations of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The quake measured an impressive (and equally devastating) 7.8 on the Richter scale.

An overview from the site:

To better understand the distribution of shaking and damage that accompanied the great 1906 earthquake, seismologists have constructed new computer models to recreate the ground motions. The simulations show how ground moved on the two sides of the San Andreas fault and how seismic waves radiated away from the fault to produce the shaking. The earthquake, which began 2 miles offshore from the City of San Francisco, ultimately grew to cause shaking and damage along more than 300 miles of the San Andreas Fault.

There is a lot of earthquake information on this site, not only about the 1906 San Francisco quake, but also US earthquake info by state, world/region, geographic area and more!

(Via Boing Boing)