Coming to your city soon: "The Big One"

We had an ominous earthquake here this morning, at 9:55 (I checked my watch by habit). A bookcase to my left creaked suddenly, and the floor rolled very gently beneath my chair for about five seconds.

The epicenter popped up almost immediately on the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program Website, which is bookmarked by many Southern Californians. It showed the epicenter to be 12 miles east-southeast of Anza, a high-plateau hamlet 65 miles northeast of San Diego, where we live. There were numerous aftershocks.

Authorities said the activity was on the San Jacinto Fault, "one of the most active faults in California, and often called the western branch of perhaps the most well-known fault in the United States, the San Andreas."

In fact the San Andreas is only a few miles east of the epicenter. This is the kind of quake which would occur in the first five minutes of an end-of-the-world movie about what we in California call "The Big One."

Toward the middle of the movie – scripted to be three or four days from now – The Big One will hit, most likely an 8.5 or 9. When it does, a monstrous fissure will open up the spine of California, from the Mexican border through the Salton Sea and Palm Springs north into the San Joaquin Valley and central and northern California.

We in San Diego will get a hell of a shaking. Almost immediately thereafter, all of the United States east of the fissure will break off and slide into the Atlantic. You guys should go ahead and prepare.