When an earthquake happens. Could it affect the other fault lines like madrid?
If the earthquake happened in the New Madrid seismic zone, then yes – it could trigger other quakes there. However, the idea that a big quake in California or some other far-away location could trigger a quake in New Madrid is totally absurd. If that were the case, then recent great earthquakes (Magnitude 8.0+) like the 2004 Sumatra EQ or the 2006 Peru EQ would have triggered other faults all over the world. An earthquake will cause redistribution of stresses within the crust in the immediate vicinity of the ruptured fault. That’s why there are always aftershocks following a large earthquake. However, the stress redistribution appears to attenuate rather quickly as you move away from the hypocenter. That’s why aftershocks tend to be located very close to the location of the main shock. The only way that you could get stress redistribution over a very large area is if the fault rupture itself occurred over a very large area, such as in the case of the 2004 Sumatra earthquake. But even t
