Short answers, pulled from the story.
A fault is defined as a planar fracture or discontinuity where significant displacement has occurred due to rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from plate tectonic forces acting over vast timescales.
Energy release associated with rapid movement on active faults causes most earthquakes. When stress exceeds the strength threshold, the fault ruptures suddenly and releases accumulated strain energy partly as seismic waves.
Strike-slip faults have offset predominantly horizontal and parallel to the fault trace while dip-slip faults show offset predominantly vertical and perpendicular to the fault trace. Oblique-slip faults combine both strike-slip and dip-slip components.
The Dead Sea Transform in the Middle East serves as an example within continental lithosphere and the Alpine Fault in New Zealand represents another instance of this type.
In a reverse fault, the hanging wall displaces upward relative to the footwall whereas in a normal fault, the hanging wall displaces downward.
This period covers the last 11,700 years of Earth's geological history and new building construction has been prohibited directly on or near faults that moved within it.