Without warning, earthquakes strike.  They are sudden and will catch you by surprise.  Knowing what to during an earthquake will increase your chances of riding it out unharmed.

If I say the word "earthquake," chances are the first word you associate, is "California." While there's a good reason for that, the truth is, earthquakes can happen anywhere in the United States. 

Once an earthquake is over, you have to be ready to deal with potential damage as well as for what may come next.

This video, recently released by the US Geological Survey, explores a hypothetical earthquake in Southern California, based on research conducted by the government's Great California Shakeout team, designed to assess the danger of such an earthquake an ways earthquake preparedness for the people in greater Los Angeles who would have to face it. Click on the video to maximize it for full effect.

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We sometimes hear from readers who ask us questions about earthquakes, and where to go on the Internet to get up-to-date information on seismic activity. While the US Geological Survey (USGS) is the first authority on earthquakes in the United States, it's actually possible now to not only turn your own computer into a seismometer, but to share that information with scientists.

The program is called the Quake-Catcher Network (QCN), and was started by seismologists Dr Jesse Lawrence of Stanford University and Dr Elizabeth Cochran of the University of California, Riverside. The software is built using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) which is is what computer scientists refer to as a distributed computing platform.

You might find yourself on the wrong side of the news if you aren't familiar with earthquake terminology. These terms were mostly Greek to me when I first moved to California, but everyone should probably be familiar with them.