The Earthquake That Made the Mississippi Run Backward | New Madrid 1812

In the winter of 1811-1812, three of the most powerful earthquakes in the recorded history of the contiguous United States struck the geological center of North America — twelve hundred miles from the nearest tectonic plate boundary, in a region where, by every model of plate tectonics, large earthquakes should not occur. The Mississippi River ran backward for several hours. Bells rang in Boston. Entire islands vanished overnight. A new lake formed in a single morning, drowning a cypress forest that still stands beneath the water today. This is the story of the New Madrid Seismic Zone — and the catastrophe the central United States chose not to remember. CHAPTERS 00:00 The River Ran Backward 01:30 A Megaquake Where None Should Exist 03:28 December 16, 1811: The First Shock 05:25 Aftershocks and the Second Quake 07:05 The Ancient Reelfoot Rift 08:50 Bradbury, Brooks, and the Eyewitness Record 10:47 Tecumseh's Comet and Frontier Memory 13:03 Evidence of Earlier Earthquake Cycles 14:07 February 7, 1812: The Largest Shock 15:55 Reelfoot Lake Is Born 16:42 The Widest-Felt Quake in U.S. History 18:01 Collapse, Relief, and Forgotten Disaster 19:46 Modern Science Reopens the Case 21:19 Could It Happen Again? 22:07 The Risk to Modern America PEER-REVIEWED SOURCES Johnston, A.C. (1996). Seismic moment assessment of earthquakes in stable continental regions — III. New Madrid 1811–1812, Charleston 1886 and Lisbon 1755. Geophysical Journal International, 126(2), 314–344. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-246X.1... Johnston, A.C., & Schweig, E.S. (1996). The enigma of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811–1812. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 24, 339–384. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.earth... Nuttli, O.W. (1973). The Mississippi Valley earthquakes of 1811 and 1812: Intensities, ground motion and magnitudes. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 63(1), 227–248. https://doi.org/10.1785/BSSA0630010227 Tuttle, M.P., Schweig, E.S., Sims, J.D., Lafferty, R.H., Wolf, L.W., & Haynes, M.L. (2002). The earthquake potential of the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 92(6), 2080–2089. https://doi.org/10.1785/0120010227 Mueller, K., Champion, J., Guccione, M., & Kelson, K. (1999). Fault slip rates in the modern New Madrid Seismic Zone. Science, 286(5442), 1135–1138. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.286.5... Hough, S.E. (2009). Cataloging the 1811–1812 New Madrid, central U.S., earthquake sequence. Seismological Research Letters, 80(6), 1045–1053. https://doi.org/10.1785/gssrl.80.6.1045 Calais, E., Camelbeeck, T., Stein, S., Liu, M., & Craig, T.J. (2016). A new paradigm for large earthquakes in stable continental plate interiors. Geophysical Research Letters, 43(20), 10,621–10,637. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL070815 Craig, T.J., Chanard, K., & Calais, E. (2017). Hydrologically-driven crustal stresses and seismicity in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Nature Communications, 8, 2143. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01... INSTITUTIONAL REPORTS Federal Emergency Management Agency & Mid-America Earthquake Center (2009). Impact of New Madrid Seismic Zone Earthquakes on the Central USA. MAE Center Report 09-03, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. U.S. Geological Survey (2014). Earthquake Hazard in the Heart of the Homeland. USGS Fact Sheet 2014-3026. https://doi.org/10.3133/fs20143026 HISTORICAL PRIMARY SOURCES Bradbury, J. (1817). Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811. Sherwood, Neely & Jones, London. Bryan, E. (1812). Letter to Lorenzo Dow describing the New Madrid earthquakes, 22 March 1812. Reproduced in Dow, L. (1849), History of Cosmopolite, Joshua Martin, Cincinnati. Drake, D. (1815). Natural and Statistical View, or Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Country. Looker & Wallace, Cincinnati.