[Zeke]

Well, we could digress into another subject here. Speaking of "subject," this topic of seismic bolting is subjective. As I said, a bad job is tantamount to no job at all. It all depends on the structure being considered. Many SoCal homes are built on a cripple wall, raised floor design. just bolting such a design w/o shear paneling the cripple portion would be bassackwards. FWIW, the stucco is all that's holding these houses in place. Once the force hits enough magnitude that the stucco begins to break, the house is going to fall down in areas or move off the foundation. A home constructed of all wood is more "fluid" as you say. Perhaps making one portion too rigid as opposed to the rest would cause the house to react in 2 different ways tearing it apart. The Northridge event produced solid evidence that short nailing and other short cuts taken during the framing stage made fro very dangerous structures. The bigger and crappier they were, they fell down.

Having just built a large addition to a very large home in Westwood, I'm up to speed on what the City of LA is looking for in retrofit and new construction. I can only say this: you are in disagreement with the entire structural engineering community, at least the many that I dealt with.

Anyway, the case is usually that a quake relieves pressure at the fault(s) and we won't have to worry for awhile now.