General Earthquake Models (GEM's) are being constructed to investigate the statistical and stochastic physics of earthquake fault networks from a dynamical systems point of view. Earthquake faults occur in networks that have dynamical modes not displayed by single isolated faults. Using simulations of the network of strike-slip faults in southern California, we find that the physics depends critically on both the interactions among the faults, which are determined by the geometry of the fault network, as well as on the stress dissipation properties of the frictional physics, similar to the dynamics of other nonlinear networks, including integrate-and-fire neural networks. In this talk, I shall give an overview of our recent progress, and summarize current and future directions.
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