In a former life I was an officer on a nuclear submarine. The ship was in a dry dock at Mare Island Naval Shipyard (not a floating dock) and the head had been cut off the reactor vessel in preparation for defueling. As I recall, it was still sitting atop the vessel but was held in place only by gravity.
On a day when I was the ship's duty officer, an earthquake hit the area. I was in the engine room, and as I looked down it appeared that the ship was moving up and down by at least one foot with each ground wave oscillation of the quake.
Most of the crew abandoned ship (a rather cowardly move), and I ran topside to retrieve them and view the damage.
The only things which had been supporting the ship and holding it upright were wooden blocks of the type normally used in dry docks. Had that ship rolled over on its side, the reactor core might have spilled out and caused one of the worst nuclear accidents in US history.
I dodged a bullet that day. We all did.
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