‘Swarmageddon’ of over 1,000 earthquakes rocks California

A “swarmageddon” of more than 1,000 small earthquakes rattled parts of California over the past three weeks, according to a new report.

For some, the bout of seismic activity affecting San Bernardino and Riverside counties was simply business as usual, because they didn’t feel a shake.

But for others, it triggered concerns of a much bigger threat on the way, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Half the people are saying, ‘Oh, they’re having a lot of earthquakes — it gets rid of the energy, it makes us safer,’” seismologist Lucy Jones told the paper. “And half of them are going, ‘Oh, my God, we’re having earthquakes. We’re going to have the Big One.’ ”

Neither of those theories is necessarily true, she said.

“The idea that little earthquakes make the Big One less likely doesn’t work. And the idea that it makes it certain to happen doesn’t work,” Jones said. “Any earthquake has a slight increase in the chance of having something [worse on the way]. But mostly, it’s really small.”

There’s only a 5 percent chance that any single earthquake will be followed by a large one, according to the report.

Small quakes are nothing new for the Golden State, with one magnitude 3 every day, on average, the outlet reported.

Experts generally agree that the recent swarm won’t lead to a massive quake — but told the paper that other small shake-ups, especially those near fault lines like the San Andreas, could be warning signs.

In September 2016, a rapid succession of small earthquakes — including a trio above magnitude 4.0 — occurred under the Salton Sea near the San Andreas Fault. Experts worried that the quakes could reawaken the fault, which has the ability to produce a magnitude-8.2 quake, the paper reported.

Luckily, that didn’t happen.

But “any time you have an increase in the number of small earthquakes,” according to Andrea Llenos, a research geophysicist with the US Geological Survey, “you’re likely to increase the likelihood of a slightly larger earthquake happening.”

“I would redefine normal as: You should still be prepared for a large earthquake,” Llenos told the paper. “We do know a big earthquake is going to happen.”

The only question, she said, is when and where.

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