4 ms·
Okay, honest question: in what world is a magnitude 5.9 a "major" earthquake? 5.x earthquakes happen multiple times per day somewhere, and the same area had kno
by o11c 2y ago
Okay, honest question: in what world is a magnitude 5.9 a "major" earthquake? 5.x earthquakes happen multiple times per day somewhere, and the same area had known much worse earthquakes in the preceding century.
How bad do your buildings have to be to get a 3-digit death toll from something that weak? I'd expect a 3-digit toll for "number of fine-china plates broken".
- robocat 2y agoDon't be a dick. Christchurch was absolutely fucked by a 6.1 Mw(USGS) magnitude earthquake in 2011 - shallow depth and close to the city so we had severe outcomes. We have reasonably good earthquake building codes in New Zealand. Poorer countries with more fragile infrastructure could be devastated by a smaller quake - depending on local circumstances. The only thing that saved Christchurch from far far worse outcomes was that the most dangerous buildings were already empty because of damage from a larger earthquake in 2010. I admit the log scale means that 6.1 is far bigger than 5.9... However you handwaved 5.x which shows your ignorance of log scales. We had plenty of aftershocks below 6.1 - they are extremely unpleasant and have awful psychological effects on some people. And we are hundreds of kilometers away from the major Southern Alps faultline - the equivalent to San Andreas. So we were blessed with some newly discovered minor faultlines. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Christchurch_earthquake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Christchurch_earthquake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Canterbury_earthquake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Canterbury_earthquake