Indie-Resource.com

There was just an earthquake where I lived and it scared the SHIT out of me...

How close were you to the epicenter (which if I have heard and remembered right, was about 87 miles southwest of D.C.)?

You know what is crazy though? Each number up on the scale is 10x stronger than the previous number, so..

The earthquake today that is making the news was a Mw 6...
An Mw 7 earthquake is 10x strong than the Mw 6...
An Mw 8 earthquake is 100x strong than the Mw 6...
An Mw 9 earthquake is 1000x strong than the Mw 6...and that is what hit Japan this last March.

Scary stuff...

I was up in philadelphia, 2-3 states above Virginia, not very far considering the states between are small. But my whole house shook and our pool had like little waves in it. It was scary and the scarier thing is my parents weren't home so I didn't know what to do. Also so many people were calling others that you couldn't even get your calls through so I had no idea what just happened or what to do because the last strong earthquake along the east coast was in the 1800s, not in our lifetime. So yeah it was pretty scary

Yeah, earthquakes can be pretty scary. In the future, if you start to hear the house really shaking, the best thing to do is go outside and get away from any structures. If your are in a suburban area or less populated, the best place is usually the middle of the street (if you can stand in it, that is). The only real danger from an earthquake is falling objects, building collapse, or from falling down (and it takes usually Mw 7 or higher to knock you off your feet).

One thing that is neat if you can think about it, is if during a small-ish earthquake when you know you are safe, put your ear down to the ground, and you can often hear the actual plate grinding very clearly, even though you can tell it is way down in the ground.

Yeah I went outside (im in a suburban area so I live in a neighborhood with no big structures around), but can you really hear it through the ground? That's so awesome!

In a larger quake (about 4 and up), you can hear distinct details if you put your ear on the ground. You can even sometimes hear rocks breaking off and falling into cracks. It is really strange, as I did it in Tennessee one time (an area known for occasional and perplexing earthquakes, as it is not on a major fault), and heard it very clearly. I heard rocks falling and huge rocks grinding together. I have heard on a fault you can hear them even better, since you have major inter-plate activity.

we had to evacuate some sites.

They were asking us if everything was ok...but wasn't felt here in Arkansas

My cup fell over... when i read the news.

Thankfully nobody was injured though.