Earthquakes are a cause of concern for many areas around the planet. They are difficult to predict, even in areas where known faults in the Earth's crust exist. Earthquakes happen when tectonic plates, the very beginnings of our continents, shift around underground in response to magma that gets hot. Some earthquakes are not just restless plates randomly shifting under the ocean however. Some of them are caused by human intervention, specifically drilling into the Earth's crust for oil and gas. These holes, which number in the thousands, are causing the very top layers of the crust to shift around and when that happens, quakes happen. In uninhabited places like deserts or dried lake beds, this isn't a problem, but anywhere there are buildings, there is danger from an earth quake.
Fracking, the process of injecting water at high pressure into cracks and fissures in the tectonic plates has a lot to do with earthquakes. While this process allows easier access to oil and natural gas reserves that are under the surface of these plates, continuing to drill and interfere with the mechanics and movements of these plates will result in more earthquakes. Better fuel options like solar and electric power must be developed so that fossil fuels, which are the target of most fracking efforts, are not needed as much
