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Hollywood is obsessed with its own destruction. Think about it; every decade or so, we’ve got a movie about an earthquake destroying some aspect of California. In the worst case scenario, most of the state becomes cool, calm Arizona Bay. In the best case, every major city is essentially decimated, but love and/or hope is unshakeable.
But could this actually happen? Well, sorta. But it wouldn’t happen quite the way you see it depicted onscreen.
First, you need to understand the geology. The San Andreas fault is a right-lateral strike-slip fault; that is, when there’s an earthquake along the San Andreas, it’s not because the ground opens up and separates. It’s because the entire coast of the state is forcibly yanked a few inches towards Alaska.
To illustrate just why this is a bad thing, balance a few objects on a tablecloth and then give said tablecloth a hard pull. Now imagine those objects are buildings. Therein lies California’s problem; it’s not giant chunks of the city ripping out of the ground, and it probably won’t cause a tsunami, but it’s still pretty nasty.
Weirdly, San Andreas seems to be geologically accurate in the sense that San Francisco will be crushed by vengeful Earth gods at some point; it’s got six freaking fault zones. So, that whole “storm of earthquakes” thing Paul Giamatti goes on about in the movie could theoretically happen, although it’d be limited to the Bay Area and unlikely to turn it into a Mad Max-esque apocalypse.
Beyond that, though, there is the question of the “big one.” Every year, we hear that California is overdue for a “big one” and in fact, it was argued in 2006 the fault is under enough strain for a quake 7.0 or higher on the Richter scale. Geology is slow but inevitable; a big quake is going to happen, and it’s pretty much all down to timing.
The irony is, although it’d definitely cause damage in L.A. and San Francisco, the skyscraper-collapsing worst of it would actually be elsewhere. That’s not to downplay the results: an area bigger than several American states will likely be severely damaged, affecting everything from food production to Facebook. And just because they’re further away from the worst doesn’t mean there’s not incipient disaster looming for California’s major cities. Los Angeles, for example, won’t make landlords reinforce their buildings and most Californians don’t have earthquake insurance.
So, yes, actually, a lot of buildings would probably collapse. Then again, considering California is currently in the process of being killed by dehydration, by the time the “big one” strikes, not many people may even be around to notice.