Earthquake prediction research has been conducted for over 100 years w
ith no obvious successes. Claims of breakthroughs have failed to withs
tand scrutiny. Extensive searches have failed to find reliable precurs
ors. Theoretical work suggests that faulting is a non-linear process w
hich is highly sensitive to unmeasurably fine details of the state of
the Earth in a large volume, not just in the immediate vicinity of the
hypocentre. Any small earthquake thus has some probability of cascadi
ng into a large event. Reliable issuing of alarms of imminent large ea
rthquakes appears to be effectively impossible.