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North Korean nuclear test sets off years of earthquakes
https://archive.is/xjmvA https://archive.is/xjmvA
- m0skit0 8d agoCurious how we never get articles about the harm caused by western countries nuclear tests...
- ngruhn 8d agobecause they're not doing them anymore
- pavel_lishin 8d agoWell, they haven't conducted any since 1996. > Since the treaty's opening for signature in 1996, only sixteen nuclear tests have been conducted, all by non-signatory states: Pokhran-II by India and Chagai-I by Pakistan in May 1998, and six tests by North Korea from 2006 to 2017.
- mavelikara 8d agoWhy were nuclear explosions harmless before 1996?
- pavel_lishin 8d agoThey weren't. Hence the treaty.
- ortusdux 8d agoHow long until someone attempts to diffuse a pent up fault line via nuclear geoengineering?
- mc32 8d agoSounds like a plot for a Superhero movie ;)
- diabeetusman 8d agoNot exactly a superhero movie, but The Core (2003) is kinda related
- FuriouslyAdrift 8d agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_(1978_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_(1978_film)
- sehugg 8d agoDibs on Otisburg.
- ortusdux 8d agoMore like a bond villain plot. Nefarious under the guise of altruism. And a volcano lair.
- slater 8d agoProject Plowshare says hello: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
- ranger_danger 8d agoEndless captcha loop for me, is there an archive? (archive.ph etc. has the same issue for me)
- ENOMEM 8d agosure, https://archive.is/xjmvA https://archive.is/xjmvA
- ranger_danger 8d agoThat is the same site as archive.ph with the same issue :/ Also they are known for abusing javascript on client browsers to DDoS someone they didn't like.
- Scramblejams 8d agoLeaving aside for the moment the DDoS issue, that link is currently working for me. Archived pages on that site are puzzling, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, I'm not sure what accounts for the difference.
- jakzurr 8d agoOn Chrome, blocking javascript for each of these worked for me: [.]archive.fo [.]archive.is [.]archive.li [.]archive.md [.]archive.ph [.]archive.today [*.]archive.vn Also, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidance#Why_are_we_doing_this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...?
- margalabargala 8d agoCould this be considered a good thing? The energy being released in these many tiny earthquakes was always going to exist in this location. Much better to release it slowly via thousands of tiny earthquakes than all at once. Better to have 10k magnitude 3 quakes than one magnitude 7.
- andy_ppp 8d agoIt can go either way, you might get a relief of pressure or you might get an increased destabilisation in the region.
- skeptic_ai 8d agoThere isA study about fire fighting. If you shit down every fire quickly then eventually you’ll have a major black swan. If you let fires burn a bit more then you’ll avoid black swan effect that burns down everything
- dataflow 8d agoHave you considered logarithms?
- ImJamal 8d agoAre fires and earthquakes the same?
- RugnirViking 8d agoit would appear nobody here knows. We probably ought to shut up until a seismologist decides to chime in
- monster_truck 8d agoWhat would a size scientist know about fires or earthquakes anyways
- elictronic 8d agoThis article does a very poor job of differentiating earthquakes people feel and care about versus magnitude 2 quakes that are like your neighbor dropping a book upstairs.
- RobotToaster 8d agoMakes me think of the fact that the UK officially has over 300 earthquakes per year, but any you would actually feel are unheard of.
- dopa42365 8d agoThere're like 20 magnitude 4 earthquakes worldwide every day too. Even those are rarely noteworthy.
- qingcharles 7d agoHuh. I never looked this stat up, but I assumed it was close to zero. The one time I had the house rattled in England with a 4.0 was a big surprise.
- jdw64 8d agoSo does that mean the Korean Peninsula is no longer a geologically safe region from earthquakes going forward? That's scary.
- eu-tech-tak 8d agoThere have always been earthquakes in Korea. They are just typically quite weak. Though the south region that is closer to Japan has experienced some intense ones, but nothing like the massive ones they have in Japan.
- BigTTYGothGF 8d agoNever has been: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_South_K...
- t-3 8d agoThe entire Pacific region was full of volcanoes already. It's not a place you want to go if afraid of tectonic activity.
- trumbitta2 8d agoBasically, they gave their land Atrial Fibrillation through strong extrasystoles.
- SoftTalker 8d agoIt isn't geological destabilization. They've awakened Godzilla.
- tuveson 8d ago*They’ve awakened Pulgasari: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulgasari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulgasari
- ggg011012 8d agoThe long delay is the interesting part to me. How do they distinguish earthquakes triggered by the test from normal background seismicity?
- Waterluvian 8d agoSounds like climate change induced disasters, and why it’s so easy to not take responsibility.
- shevy-java 8d agoPeople are critical of North Korea - very understandable since the Juche ideology is absolute rubbish nonsense and North Korea remains hostile to South Korea. However had, with the USA becoming a rogue country now, I think it is time that many more countries will need a small, defensive nuclear arsenal: South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Canada, the whole EU (that is, all EU members need protection on their own; the USA can not be trusted anymore, Trump made that clear while serving Putin as agent Krasnov). One can say that more nukes are bad; that's true. However had, the big old countries CONSTANTLY abuse smaller countries. This happens again and again and again. So, since they don't stop their own nuclear abuse and blackmail, the only response that is logical is to more fairly distribute nukes. Of course a much better option would be for all countries to give up nukes; perhaps that will happen one day in the future though probably not, since when one refuses, others would have to follow suit and also get nukes. So the only viable long-term strategy is to have nukes, while also working much harder to improve diplomacy.
- alansaber 8d agoGeopolitics is very complex, but at least those bigger states have a lot to lose. Under mass proliferation I can see a small country with an ideological nemisis deciding to just nuke them.
- vharuck 8d agoI've been thinking about nukes lately (way too much, in fact). And, IMO, the only people who want nuclear weapons are national leaders. If the US invaded North Korea tomorrow, then NK has three options: 1) Launch nukes at the US. The minute those missiles leave their silos, the US will launch theirs. Even assuming the best case of no other nations joining in, most residents of NK and many residents of the US are either dead or going to die soon. The leaders of NK are probably dead. 2) Fight a conventional war. NK will probably hold out fairly well using drones. If they learned from Iran's diffuse decision-making in the military, they'll do even better. They might hold off the US long enough for peace talks. Leadership has a chance to survive, more so if they flee to China or Russia. 3) Capitulate immediately. Leadership flees to China or Russia, and the US probably lets them. The citizens aren't massacred or conscripted into a massacre, and they go on living their lives. For NK citizens, the order from best to worst is scenario 3, 2, then 1 (if NK had good human rights, the order would be 2, 3, then 1). For pragmatic leadership, it's 2, 3, then 1. For crazy leadership, it's 1, 2, then 3. In the long run, every country will have a crazy ruler. And that applies to any two countries. If Russia invaded the US tomorrow, I'd prefer we put up a good fight with conventional weapons, and then surrender if that fails. No nukes. I would rather live a mean life under Putin than watch my family suffer radiation poisoning. At least there's a chance of improvement and rebellion with the former. Thinking more about it, is there any good circumstantial evidence that nukes have deterred war? Conventional war between any major powers would be devastating to everyone's economy. When the USSR was falling apart, they knew it was because of their own system and choices. Was would have just made things worse. The US goes to war with weaker nations and still leaves before winning, because we're a democracy and wars are very unpopular.
- artur_makly 8d agoIf you keep tickling the lamp.. dont be surprised when the genie pops out. Or better put: Fuck with pachamama.. and she will have the last laugh
- willmadden 8d agoThat headline is tabloid tier bs. They haven't established anything close to causation. Do better, science.org.
- ck2 8d agoimagine the decades of quakes US will set off with the bunker buster they are now developing for Pickaxe Mountain (Iran, solid granite rock, one mile deep) billions more drained from our economy and I bet the irony is it will be nuclear somehow
- nephihaha 8d ago20 km isn't that far away but still shocking. (No pun intended.)
- BigTTYGothGF 8d agoThere's a lot of people in this thread who see "North Korea" and "nuclear test" and get fired up but would otherwise shrug if it were instead, say, "Oklahoma" and "fracking". The supplemental information is available and says: > Our earthquake catalog consists primarily of small events with magnitudes of < 2.0 and there were 1399 of them. The cited Ren&al says: > The magnitudes of these seismic events primarily range from 1.5 to 2.5 and that there were 647 of them. USGS (https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earthquake-and-energy-comparisons-updated-2025 https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earthquake-and-energy-comp...) says that a magnitude 2.0 earthquake is the equivalent energy of 56kg of explosives, which is more than I'd want to be around but I think for people who actually use the stuff it's not a lot.
- cranberryjoe 8d ago[flagged]
- throe844949 8d ago[dead]
- floralhangnail 8d agoOklahoma hasn't threatened to nuke anyone.....yet.
- QuercusMax 8d agoBut they did bomb their own people in the Tulsa Race Massacre
- kfkdmdndndn 8d ago[flagged]
- phoghed 8d agofresh account just for this bitchmade comment lmao. close call, I almost engaged with it earnestly
- aaron695 8d ago[dead]
- dzink 8d agoReminds me of a display at Chabot in the bay area. A bubbling volcano covered by a stable mass stays bubbling underneath, but shaking up the mass gives little bubbles a bath up and they break way for the big bubbles leading to a volcanic eruption. If you fragment a he soil at some point in the mantle of earth and there is pressure anywhere below, you could get yourself a new volcano.
- hackitup7 7d agoIs this safer overall? Should we give kids a day off from school and detonate a midsized nuclear device near Los Gatos?
- expedition32 7d agoI always wondered where and how my country would test nukes if it developed them. Basically there is an expectation that you have to explode at least one. It was much easier in colonial times when everyone owned a desert or remote island