An earthquake is when the ground begins to shake due to slipping on a fault. Tensions in the earth's outer layer push the sides of the fault together. The stress increases and rocks suddenly slide, releasing a ton of energy in waves that travel throughout the Earth's crust and cause the shaking that every human feels when an earthquake occurs. Failures are caused by structural plates rubbing and rubbing against each other as they move slowly and relentlessly. In California, for example, there are two plates which are the: Pacific Plate which expands from western California to Japan, involving a large part of the Pacific Ocean and finally the North American Plate which includes much of the North American continent and some parts of the Atlantic . Ocean. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The Pacific Plate moves northwestward past the North American Plate on the San Andreas Fault by a distance of two inches each year. The San Andreas Fault system adapts to this flow by continuously sliding which causes numerous small stuns and a couple of earth tremors. In other parts, stress can build up for hundreds of years, producing very huge and grandiose earthquakes. Large and small earthquakes can also occur on initially unaccepted faults. The scale of an earthquake is similar to the area of ​​the fault over which it occurs: the larger the area of ​​the fault, the larger the earthquake can be. The San Andreas Fault is about 800 miles long and only about 10-12 miles wide, so earthquakes larger than magnitude 8.3 are highly unlikely to occur. The largest earthquake ever recorded by seismic instruments on earth was a magnitude 9.5 earthquake that occurred in Chile on May 22, 1960. That earthquake occurred on a fault nearly 1,600 miles long and 150 miles wide, which came to earth at a slight angle. The magnitude scale is open, which means that scientists have not yet put a limit on the size of an earthquake, but there is a limit only from the size of this earth. A magnitude 12 earthquake would need a fault larger than the earth itself. Earthquakes can strike anywhere and at any time. But history shows that they occur mostly in the same patterns over time, mainly in three large areas of the earth. The world's largest seismic zone, the seismic belt around the Pacific, is located along the edge of the Pacific Ocean, where about 81% of the world's largest earthquakes occur. That belt extends from Chile, northward along the South American coast through Central America, Mexico, the west coast of the United States, the southern part of Alaska, through the Aleutian Islands to Japan, the Philippine Islands, New Guinea, the archipelagos of the southwestern Pacific and finally New Zealand. The second most important belt is the Alpide, which extends from Java to Sumatra across the Himalayas, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. This belt is responsible for perhaps around 17% of the largest earthquakes ever experienced globally, including some of the most destructive. The third prominent band follows the submerged Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The remaining shocks are scattered across many different areas of the world. Earthquakes in these major seismic zones are taken for granted, but damaging tremors occasionally occur outside of those areas. For example in the United States, New Madrid, Missouri, Charleston and South Carolina. Many decades or centuries usually pass between destructive shocks. Although it is well known, the San earthquake 1976.