Emerging new understanding on the release of earthquakes and the earthquake cycle

Abstract

Efforts to predict earthquakes started long before seismology and seismometers. Earthquakes were like monsters hiding deep below the surface, waking up, and breaking out of their grottos when we least expected them. Often they were preceded by tremors which were felt by people or animals (which are more sensitive to tremors) or some other phenomena related to the waking up of the giant. For thousands of years stories were told over and over again about such phenomena. When people sensed phenomena like those described in the stories they feared an earthquake was approaching and sometimes reacted to save themselves from its effects. These predictions were not based on physical understanding of the causes of the earthquakes, but on observing similar phenomena as had been observed before in relation to earthquakes.