I was a kid living in Southern California during the Sylmar Quake and faintly remember it. Then I was living in L.A., Hollywood actually, during the Northridge Earthquake. You grow up in Southern California with the news specials always running series like "The Big One: What Will It Do?" And they were predicting casualties and destruction on the scale as if waves of Soviet Bear bombers carpet-bombed L.A. There was even a 1970s Irwin Allen disaster movie titled "Earthquake" that had all of L.A. in ruins and casualties all over the place. So when the Northridge Quake hit, I was like, well, this is it, this is the Big One, I'm gone.
I guess I can complain too much about the near-constant wind up here in Monument Valley, AZ. At least it ain't an earthquake.