Millions of citizens will simultaneously drop to the floor, duck under tables and cover their heads for a minute of imagined seismic destruction in the ‘Great Shakeout’.
The ‘Great ShakeOut’ is an annual drill that happens in California, first held nine years ago in the Los Angeles area to prepare the region’s inhabitants for a catastrophic quake that experts say is inevitable and long overdue.
But this year’s event is expected to be the biggest yet after scenario experts predicted that a magnitude-7 earthquake is likely to happen in Southern California in the next several decades.
Participants are urged to “drop, cover and hold” at 6.19pm BST today – meaning they must down on hands and knees, cover their heads, hide under a sturdy piece of furniture and hang on until the hypothetical shaking stops.
To help participants get into the mood, organisers have even prepared audio recordings of quake-rumbling sounds that can be downloaded and played during the drill.
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ShakeOut organisers said: “To react quickly you must practice often.
“You may only have seconds to protect yourself in an earthquake, before strong shaking knocks you down or drops something on you.
“Practicing helps you be ready to respond.”
Such rehearsals are especially important in regions such as Southern California, where “it’s not a matter of if but when that catastrophic earthquake will strike,” said Ken Kondo, spokesman for Los Angeles County’s emergency management office.
One of the larger gatherings planned is to be held at the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park near downtown Los Angeles.
Following the drill, the city fire department, American Red Cross, police and other agencies will stage a full-scale earthquake-response exercise, setting up a medical triage area, emergency shelters and mass-feeding operation.
The drill is based on the premise of a magnitude 7.8 quake striking the southern end of the San Andreas Fault, a chasm between two massive plates of the Earth’s crust that extends hundreds of miles across California.
The scenario was devised by geophysicists and engineers who envisioned a calamity that would leave 1,800 people dead, 50,000 injured and 250,000 homeless while severing highways, power lines, pipelines, railroads, communications networks and aqueducts, and toppling some 1,500 buildings.
As of late Wednesday, nearly 53 million participants were registered for ShakeOut drills worldwide, including more than 10.2 million in California, organisers said.