It's the unavoidable series of questions Christine Goulet gets every time she's asked what she does for a living.

"When is the next big earthquake coming? Do you know where? When should we get ready?" Goulet , director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Earthquake Science Center in Los Angeles, told USA TODAY. "It's almost without fail once they know I study earthquakes. If I received a dollar every time I'm asked, I'd be rich."

Goulet has answers, but she can't predict the future.

The ominous truth: The Big One could happen any time, and there's more than one possible "Big One."

"It's gonna happen. An earthquake could be in a matter of minutes, the next hour, tomorrow, or in a week from now, we can't predict that precisely at this time. We don't know," Goulet said. "But the point in ge

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