New Madrid MO

[AVGWarhawk]

Who can tell me anything historically or in general about New Madrid MO? Anything about the Mississippi River that flows through it?

[Dowly]

Well, according to google the river flowed backwards for a few hours due to an earthquake back in 1800's.

[Gerald]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid,_Missouri

[Jimbuna]

Here's a link to the history site Chris....don't know if it'll be of any use to you matey

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mo...y/goodsped.htm

[Happy Times]

During the ACW, Battle of Island No. 10 took place in the New Madrid bend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...and_Number_Ten

It is a strategic location also in the AGEOD game, AMERICAN CIVIL WAR – The Blue and the Gray, that i got hooked back into.
http://www.a-acw.com/english/main.html

[AVGWarhawk]

Well I do know what has happened there and wanted to see who was interested because exercises for relief work are being conducted concerning this area. In short, there is talk that another major earthquake could affect this exact same area. The river, as Dowly mentioned, did change directions from the earthquake in the early 1800s. The area that will be affected are the states if lL, MO, TN and IN. So I get the usual questions...we will need 1300 trailer/drivers in 24 hours to pick up relief supplies for delivery around the affected areas. Can you do it and what is the cost? Well sure. I love relief exercises. Some of them are extremely outlandish. I had one concerning Mt St Helens blowing her top again effectively shutting down all the surrounding airports. I needed to get urban search and rescue folks on the ground within 24 hours. This included their vehicles, personal belongings, gear and dogs. Needless to say if I can not fly I get a barge out of Oregon somewhere and run the coast! My favorite was quoting out piping to run drinking water from one HI island to another HI island. No problem. It will not be the first time we toyed with an Antonov to move tons of supplies.

[AVGWarhawk]

Now here is the wild stuff.....LOOK AT THE DATES! WE ARE DUE FOR A QUAKE!

The fault system responsible for New Madrid seismicity has generated temporally clustered very large earthquakes in A.D. 900 ± 100 years and A.D. 1450 ± 150 years as well as in 1811–1812. Given the uncertainties in dating liquefaction features, the time between the past three New Madrid events may be as short as 200 years and as long as 800 years, with an average of 500 years. This advance in understanding the Late Holocene history of the New Madrid seismic zone and thus, the contemporary tectonic behavior of the associated fault system was made through studies of hundreds of earthquake-induced liquefaction features at more than 250 sites across the New Madrid region. We have found evidence that prehistoric sand blows, like those that formed during the 1811–1812 earthquakes, are probably compound structures resulting from multiple earthquakes closely clustered in time or earthquake sequences. From the spatial distribution and size of sand blows and their sedimentary units, we infer the source zones and estimate the magnitudes of earthquakes within each sequence and thereby characterize the detailed behavior of the fault system. It appears that fault rupture was complex and that the central branch of the seismic zone produced very large earthquakes during the A.D. 900 and A.D. 1450 events as well as in 1811–1812. On the basis of a minimum recurrence rate of 200 years, we are now entering the period during which the next 1811–1812-type event could occur.

[tater]