They will have to bring the structural geologist’s mantra into consideration: “stress - strain - shear”. They are good at telling us what happened but like volcanologists, they haven’t got near term predictions yet. It can be mapped out as to how the current land masses came to be and what it’s likely to look like in 20/40 million years but the day to day is hard to predict in a manner that saves lives. They are definitely working on it though.
Excellent point. Prediction is getting better but nowhere near ready for prime time yet. As close as they have gotten so far is something is going to happen, but nobody can say whether it will happen next month or next year.
As far as San Andreas, I’m surprised the mother of all earthquakes hasn’t happened already. Same for Yellowstone, it’s a caldera volcano and overdue for a major eruption. I didn’t know much about Yellowstone until recently, but I Wouldn’t be surprised to see San Andreas set off Yellowstone, or the fault in Oregon that started rumbling not long ago. If Yellowstone is triggered by San Andreas, the word disaster won’t even be appropriate any more...