According to the BBC World News I am listening to as I type this,
Some scientists are predicting a large earthquake will strike the general area east of Los Angles in the next five months.
OK, a couple of questions:
What would a wise but not panicky resident of LA do?
What should Society do?
Drink that bottle of wine you’ve been saving and try to get some last minute screwing in.
Do you have a link to that story?
I don’t know if I believe that they can really predict that kind of time frame. I did just purchase earthquake insurance about a month ago though, and I live in an apartment. I guess I’ve had it on my mind for awhile because it’s been so long since we’ve had a “big one”.
Book a nice long Alaskan cruise.
And make sure that you don’t own any stock in California-based companies 
In my opinion…a wise and non-panicky resident would make sure they had plenty of food that could last (canned food, hard breads…and a ton of water). I’d make sure that I had an evacuation plan from my house/apartment/condo … anywhere that I live. ( I live alone so it doesn’t really have to be drawn out, this is mostly for the kids.).
I’d have emergency numbers on speed dial 1-5 and family who live out of the area on speed dial 6-9.
I’ve never been thru a ‘Big’ earthquake though. I may be reciting Atom bomb specs!
My only good advice would be to have a battery operated radio around. It may be a lifesaver.
Incredible coincidence, isn’t it, that scientific studies would be published now, just days before the release of a big budget movie about a big earthquake, and whadaya know, it’s a “well known scientific fact” that “the big one” is coming to California, real soon now.
Geological phenomena don’t happen on schedule that translates directly into human scale calendar dates. There will certainly be a catastrophic earthquake at some time in the future. Perhaps this evening, or next century, or perhaps in fifteen thousand years, or perhaps not quite so soon.
By all means drink the wine. But go ahead and lay down another one, from a more recent year. You can drink that on Doomsday Eve, if you get a heads up.
Tris
:sings: learn to swim, learn to swim, learn to swim…
Just curious, what movie??? (Thanks.)
I’d also like to read more if there is a link.
Yogini
I saw something about this on the news last night. The team that has made the prediction seems to have correctly predicted previous earthquakes to within several months. They’re not just pulling a date out of the air, they’re judging from smaller seismic activity occurring on the faultlines.
What can a wise Angeleno do? Same thing we’ve always done. Make sure shelves are bolted to the wall, make sure cabinets close tightly, keep a pair of shoes by the bed, make sure all your flashlights work, keep a small stock of food, water, and fuel if you’ve got a camp stove or sommat. Hell, we’ve been told there’s going to be a “Big One” for well over a decade now.
The area they gave for the possible epicenter of the quake was pretty large – it could easily be like the Hector quake a few years back, which nobody remembers because it happened basically in the middle of nowhere one night. Woke people like me up, but that’s about it.
Conversely, it could be like the Northridge earthquake (1994), with buildings and freeways collapsing and general destruction. There’s really nothing we can do.
State OKs data behind earthquake prediction (Apr 2, 2004)
A whole bunch of small ideas:
Keep the car(s) full of gas. In the wake of the big one, gas will likely be a tad scarce, and more expensive.
Stock up the “emergency supplies” box: canned goods, emergency medications, perhaps small amounts of your prescription meds, bandages, burn cream, water disinfectants (maybe), batteries, flashlights, battery-powered radio and clock, candles, personal hygiene stuff, and some chocolate [grin]. Have pets? Provide for them too… not just food, but extra kitty litter, etc. Keep your camera in the box, too, along with extra film; you might have to document your damage. Update your insurance policies and take lots of pics of your stuff NOW, and keep them in a safe place (or with a friend or relative in another part of the country). Make sure that your blood type is known by your family and in your personal identification somewhere. For convenience’s sake, keep stocked at all times with paper towels, T.P., and paper & plastic plates and silverware… when the water supply is nonexistent or unsanitary, and your house is wrecked, the last thing you want to do is the dishes. And last but not least, get a goodly number of gallons of bottled water, but don’t keep them alongside your other emergency provisions and materials (in case a bottle ruptures) or near electrical things that might short out or spark a fire, for the same reason.
Fire extinguishers, carbon monoxide detector, and of course, battery-powered smoke alarms. Making sure that everyone in the house knows how to shut off the gas supply (or the pilot light on the water heater) might be a good idea too, even if your house survives the initial quake (those aftershocks, after all). Remember, in the great Kobe quake, many Japanese died trapped in the rubble, unable to escape gas fumes and fires. If you can remember to do so, shutting off water supplies to the clotheswasher (and even to the toilets in, say, all but one or two bathrooms) might also help prevent some flooding, should the quake or aftershocks wreck your plumbing.
Batten down the hatches: pack away the china, don’t burn candles or leave pots cooking unattended, consider taking down some artwork and the like if it isn’t securely fastened to the wall. Some bookshelves and the like can be braced or fastened more securely to walls, so they don’t tip over. (True story: in the Northridge quake, “speculative fiction” writer Harlan Ellison was almost killed when buried under an avalanche of his own books in his home. Watch for those tumbling hazards!) Remove dangerous chemicals, solvents, kerosene, etc. from the house to the garage, or from the garage to the shed, or get rid of them (in an environmentally-friendly way, of course) altogether. And don’t put off your laundry until you’re down to one ratty, too-small pair of underwear and an eight-year-old woolen business suit – 'cause, dadgummit, that’s exactly when the quake would happen, and you might not be able to do laundry for many days.
Make sure everyone in the family knows the escape drill and what to do when the ground starts rumbling, from taking cover to meeting in a predesignated spot outdoors. (This is doubly important if you are in an apartment building or skyscraper; just assume that a fire may break out on a floor below you; even if everything seems O.K., get out of the building immediately, just to be safe.) Keep insurance papers, family photos, financial records, etc. in a ready-to-carry valise or box or whatnot in a convenient place for grab-‘n-go, and keep a flashlight handy there too. Keeping a few days’ worth of clothes in a carryall might not be a bad idea either.
Plywood boards, for covering over broken windows. You get extra survivor points if you can find a can of spray paint for those “[insurance co./policy #/cell ph. #]” and “you loot, we shoot”-type messages. An air horn might be handy, for helping to scare off prowlers and looters, and serving as a neighborhood alarm or “heads-up” if trouble arises. (It would be much more effective if neighborhood “crime watch” groups promulgated this idea beforehand.) Every household should have a pair of heavy-duty work gloves, suitable for handling large shards of glass, masonry blocks, shards of twisted metal, etc. And duct tape. You can never tell what weird uses you may have some day for duct tape…
Compile a list of relevant work-related phone numbers – the better to reassure and coordinate a return to normalcy.
’Scriv, who has never experienced a 'quake, but who weathered Hurricane Andrew from the “red zone,” and its very messy aftermath, in 1992.
LA doesn’t need to worry. It’s everything east of the San Andreas that’s going to fall into the Atlantic.
One more: in addition to vital documents, store most of your bling-bling (well, we’re talking about L.A., after all) in a safe-deposit box. If your home’s structural integrity goes, you won’t be allowed to safeguard it, and looters may well get to it.
Wow, can that bottle multitask or what?
As usual and to no surprise The Scrivener also has some excellent suggestions.
My only comment of worth though is that, historically, geologists have found their longer and shorter term predictions to be easier to make. Long term, like "This earthquake shifts every *so many * years, or, short term, like The animals are freaking and it could happen tomorrow.
I’m initially skeptical of a monthly prediction but hey, someday somebody’s going to crack the geologic Rosetta. Maybe, hopefully, the science has arrived.
10.5 out this year, Real Soon Now.
BFD. The Landers earthquake of 1992 was in the same area, measured 7.3 on the Richter scale, and knocked over two books and a candlestick at my house. A 6.4 in the same area won’t even wake people in LA up. 
I second all the good ideas listed above, but really…6.4 is nothing if it strikes in the desert. If the Northridge fault slips again, it’s another story. But in the desert…it wakes up some coyotes, that’s all.
And if you have emergency canned food…
don’t forget a manual can opener.
We’re living under the same threat up here. For as long as I can remember, we’ve been told there WILL be a big one in BC. I believe we’ve already had a major quake, dated to Christmas 1799. It was up around a 9. They could figure out the date because of the accompanying tidalwave that hit Japan a few days later. Scares the heck out of me to think about it.
I tend to be a packrat and depending on which backpack I have with me, I can sometimes be carrying a pretty comprehensive little emergency kit. I’m not as worried about it as I was when I was working across the river from home, but I like to keep myself fairly prepared anyway. I’ve been meaning to add some items to my personal bag at the zoo. Right now I’ve got a change of clothes and a small cosmetic/hygiene bag. If we do get lockers (instead of a plastic bag in the staff bog) I’ll probably just stash my whole kit there. The zoo is housed in a former bank and it’s built extremely well. Most of my section is in a former vault. Kinda makes me hope I’m at work when it hits!
I intend to make an outdoor stash for the whole family too. Depending on space, I might keep it at work too. We used to keep a couple of bags of supplies in our stairwell when we lived in Burnaby, but anything outside here tends to disappear overnight.
The general feeling among people in BC seems to be “when” not “if”. I’m not in a hurry for it!
Ditto to that – I caught a blurb of this on the radio, and the moment they said it was a 6.4 “east of Los Angeles,” I brushed it off. If it hits as predicted and does anything more than knock a few of my toys over, I’ll be surprised.
Given some of the responses in this thread, I guess some Dopers figure the entire L.A. basin is made of glass and porcelain. 
What has LA County, California and the Federal governments done to prepare?
It will be such a big job that I would wonder what to stockpile to even begin the effort.
I suppose plastic water mains, lots of plastic sheeting, maybe some tented hospitals (many medicos will survive, but find their buildings wrecked). Anything else?