The struggle to understand why earthquakes happen in America's heartland

There are earthquakes on the Canadian shield, and the reasoning is that it is due to Earth deformation recovery.

Essentially, the ice age's massive glaciers deformed the ground, and it is slowly rebounding over 1000s of years. The result is minor tremors, sometimes larger quakes.

I am in southern Quebec, and there is a LOT of water here. Personally, I suspect there are glaciers underground which are still thawing, which would also cause additional land movement.

Some supporting thoughts...

* one year, after a lot of snow (record snowfall, where some people's 1st story windows were covered entirely), it took until July for all the snow to melt. This was in areas around my house, and in my forest, where sun didn't shine.

* if you look into how we used to store ice for the summer, we'd cut it out of lakes in massive blocks (eg, Lake Ontario or some such), and then store it in warehouses covered with sawdust. Such ice was even used residentially, delivered every once in a while, and used in a refrigerator like 'ice box'. This ice would last the whole summer, it takes time for that much mass to melt, especially with some insulation.

Which is what underground glaciers have... they're insulated.

Even a decade ago, we'd see -40C regularly here in Jan and Feb, which would counter 40C in the summer I suspect.

Anyhow, this could all be simple post-ice age land reformation.

> In Tennessee, jurisdictions can decide whether to opt in to building codes with earthquake provisions, while other states — like Missouri — don’t have state-wide building codes at all, though there are efforts to change that.

I live on the other side of the state from New Madrid and can tell you, there's a 0% chance the Missouri state legislature passes a bill requiring earthquake proofing of buildings. You'd have an unending stream of people from outstate explaining how their little country town just can't afford to meet such codes, that it's government overreach, that the next quake could be hundreds of years from now... it'd never end. They're far, far more likely to pass a law saying cities like Kansas City and St. Louis can't force seismic-aware building codes on citizens.

This stereotype of people in “flyover states” as being uneducated and dense really needs to stop.

EDIT Reader heads experiencing flyover - read: "The struggle to understand why sunrises happen in America's heartland"

It looks like earthquakes can occur irrespective of fault lines and still be quite large and that fault lines can occur without earthquakes of concern.

https://www.beg.utexas.edu/texnet-cisr/fault-maps

I have relatives in West Tennessee, and they claim their area has "rolling hills"--gentle swells like the earth moved in waves before resettling (unlike the author's claim of "flat as Kansas"--though maybe hen only saw the farms and didn't realize the geoengineering).

Old folk there claim they use that metaphor because that's not metaphorical, but actual what happened in 1811/12.

The Arkansas side is flatter, but possibly because that's mostly in the Mississippi River's ambit (until you reach Crowley's Ridge. The article shows a picture of the mirror structure on the east side of the Mississippi called Chickasaw Bluffs which is very close to the current course of the river)

What does it take to convince people to take risks like this seriously? The challenge is that hypothetical risks 'sometime in the next 50+ years' don't convince people to do things, at least in the US. The pacific northwest is at a much higher risk from an array of faults (not just the cascadia subduction zone) and volcanic hazards but even there, where the risks are very well understood, getting a large region to take it seriously looks to be a near impossible task. Most people I have talked to don't even know that there is a risk in the PNW much less the magnitude of it or how to prepare. What are steps that actually work to actually educate and convince people?

uh is it ? Doesn't america have an active super volcano?

Fracking is believed to be a major source of (minor) earthquakes. This article didn't even mention it.