 everything is like a bowl of jelly and there's so many additional fault lines that could be triggered into action that's one thing that geologists used to sort of laugh at they said oh earthquakes are all independent of that event except for the occasional foreshock and a lot of aftershocks the big quakes we recognize that but a quake in Southern California has nothing to do with the big one in Northern California a week later right there is however the possibility of a domino kind of effect