Could it happen here?

After Japan's horrendous 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, Californian citizens are concerned about what similar disasters might occur in their own quake prone state. People are also running scared over the threat of traveling radiation from the still besieged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan.

So, how prepared is California for a 9.0? Well, according to Dr. Rob Rogers, Assistant Professor of Geology in the Department of Physics and Geology at California State University, Stanislaus: we aren't.

The type of fault that causes 9.0s and up are only observed at subduction zone boundaries such as those in Japan. Here in California, the boundary between the Pacific and North America plates is the San Andreas fault, which extends from near Cape Mendocino southward under San Francisco and from there to east of Los Angeles.

So the most we can expect here would be around an 8.0, which is on par with the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. U.S. Geological Survey seismologists are certain that a quake near that magnitude will occur in California within the next 30 years.

If we did ever experience a 9.0, MJC Geology Professor Garry Hayes says it would occur at the Cascadia Subduction Zone in northern California, Oregon and Washington ,which can produce a 9.0.

Fortunately for us it wouldn't likely affect the highly populated parts of California, except the low coastal areas that will be subject to tsunami damage.

The likelihood of such an event happening is extremely slim, says Hayes. When discussing the printout of his own seismometer from the period of the Sendai earthquake, he said "it was off the charts." However, we in California did not feel it because "we were slowly moving up and down," meaning the quake had dissipated to the point where our movement though not extreme in nature, was apparent enough to register on the machine.

To put things in perspective, the difference between a 7.0 and an 8.0 is about 10 times. So if a magnitude 7.0 moves the needle on the seismometer one inch, a magnitude 8.0 moves it 10 inches, and the 9.0 moves 100 inches. So one is looking at a difference of 1000 between a magnitude 7.0 and a magnitude 9.0.

And considering that four weeks after the Sendai earthquake, Japan was hit with another, magnitude 7.1 quake, which caused severe damage and killed three as well as injuring many others, the prospect is rather -- jarring.

How prepared was Japan? Along with stiff construction codes, advances in building materials and techniques, plus a highly advanced earthquake and tsunami warning system, they had just about every advantage, but it still wasn't sufficient protection against a 23 foot high wave of water reaching six miles inland.

Concerning radiation from the Fukushima nuclear reactors, Kory Raftery of PG&E External Communications, and a representative of the two nuclear power plants in California, stated in a March 17 article by John Upton of the Bay Citizen, that we won't really be affected much at all.

What radiation does get here through high altitude wind and storm systems will be so dissipated it would be barely detectible, they allege.

We might as well eat a banana (which contains a minute amount of natural radiation, as do most living things) for all the radiation we'll be hit with. Better bananas than radiated fish caught in the Pacific.