These bent rail tracks from Kobe, Japan, provide a vivid reminder of the power of the magnitude 6.9 Hyogo-ken Nanbu earthquake that struck on Jan. 17, 1995 and caused more than 5,000 deaths. Japan has seismometers aboard its high-speed "bullet trains", designed to bring the trains to a stop before they encounter any rails distorted by an earthquake. Linear features built by humans, such as rail tracks, painted lines on highways, fences, and crop rows, provide excellent markers for fault displacements following strike-slip (horizontal-motion) earthquakes.

Photo courtesy of Earthquake Engineering Research Institute Reconnaissance Team