I sat with my wife Trish watching the movie San Andreas last night at a theater in Canyon Country, California. We both were having a great time, when about half way through the film Trish leaned over and whispered something (hard to do over the sound of San Francisco falling to pieces) to the teenage girl in the seat next to her. After the film and on the way to the parking lot, I asked Trish what was up with the patron in the adjacent seat.

“She was really upset,” she told me. “She said the movie was freaking her out.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I told her that I worked in the earthquake business and that nothing that was happening on the screen was real. I told her we would never have an earthquake like that.” That’s my wife. She is in this line of work not only to save lives, but to help people do what she calls “Embrace the Disaster.”

I work with a lot of people like Trish. We see earthquake preparedness as a life-saving endeavor, and work hard to separate out myth from reality when it comes to earthquake readiness.

Yet some folks still believe it’s better to get next to a bed, get into a doorway, run outside or even get into a bathtub in an earthquake. And so, in an effort to help separate the sense from the nonsense, here are charts to help you know where to get accurate earthquake preparedness information.

RELIABLE INFORMATION:
earthquake.usgs.gov
ready.gov
abag.ca.gov
caloes.ca.gov
fema.gov/earthquake
earthquakecountry.org
quakesmartcommunity.org
safe-t-proof.com
quakecottage.com
redcross.org

NOT SO RELIABLE INFORMATION:
The following movies
Earthquake
Aftershock
Megafault
Crack in the World
Draquila: Italy Trembles
San Andreas