5.9 magnitude earthquake in Virginia

[fc14159]

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/23/qu ... ngton-d-c/

I blame it for me losing that neurope game.

[Forboding Angel]

We had a good laugh in SoCal. Silly easterners. 5.9 is just a tiny shake.

[fc14159]

Wasn't there a tiny earthquake a few years back in socal that actually did some damage?

edit: 2008 Chino Hills Earthquake. 5.5. Still broke some crap. You aren't as prepared as you would like us to believe.

[KaiserJ]

man i was just watching something the other day... some stadium, maybe it was at UCLA, was built right on a fault line

earthquakes are sketchy... my city is near a major fault; earthquakes happen so seldom that we don't have the architecture to withstand one... 5.9 would have the CN tower toppling into lake ontario

[smoth]

We had a good laugh in SoCal. Silly easterners. 5.9 is just a tiny shake.

Different type of ground different type of quake. Structures largely not designed to withstand it. Largely effected the NATIONS CAPITOL. Dunno seems pretty ignorant there Forb.

It sucks that this happened right before the MLK statue.

[fc14159]

Forb was just being a Californian.

But seriously, an estimate $100 million damage to the national monuments alone. Who's paying for that?

[Panda]

We had a good laugh in SoCal. Silly easterners. 5.9 is just a tiny shake.

Different type of ground different type of quake. Structures largely not designed to withstand it. Largely effected the NATIONS CAPITOL. Dunno seems pretty ignorant there Forb.

It sucks that this happened right before the MLK statue.

Yea, we're located on a big fault line in Louisiana and have tiny quakes and usually don't even notice them because of how soft the ground is here.

[Forboding Angel]

We had a good laugh in SoCal. Silly easterners. 5.9 is just a tiny shake.

Different type of ground different type of quake. Structures largely not designed to withstand it. Largely effected the NATIONS CAPITOL. Dunno seems pretty ignorant there Forb.

Oh ffs, do you have to take everything so seriously?

Ok fine. 5.9 is a decent shake, but here in socal, a 5.9 is something that isn't particularly feared. Yeah, some shit will collapse, 5 people will die, but that happens every time. I remember when I lived out here before, there was the 6.6 quake in the 90's that hit shit hard, but 15 years later, socal is more than prepared for hardcore quakes.

Obviously back there, they aren't. Including KC where I used to live (which is sitting smack dab on a giant fault line btw). Which is why shit cracked, and the neighbors got a good story.

PPL laugh about socal ppl losing their minds when it snows or rains. That's because it rains all of 2 weeks out of the year, and snows once every 30 years. By the same token, easterners piss their pants over a 3.0 which is just enough shake to help socal residents fall into a deeper sleep.

[Jools]

5.9 is nothing, thirst is everything!

No but seriously, I was in Chile this year, and quakes of magnitude 6.0 happened daily at one time, and there was even a 7.0 quake (you know it's a logscale so the difference is actually quite large). At those magnitudes still no buildings collapsed, nor was there any risk of tsunami.

Apparently, there's a sharp limit above which tsunamis can happen, and that's 7.2 (so I was told). It frankly amazed me, because I thought 7.0 is quite close to 7.2, but the latter magnitude is actually twice the first.

If you have a historic fault line, I would assume the buildign codes include some earthquake provision?

[Panda]

I feel the apathy, which means that I must be paying too much attention to nation-wide natural disasters on news right now. I think that news casters often really do try to rile people too much. I'm sometimes surprised that there isn't more hysteria related things going on all because news casters want high ratings.

[BrainDamage]

It frankly amazed me, because I thought 7.0 is quite close to 7.2, but the latter magnitude is actually twice the first.

it's a logaritmic scale, a 6.0 grade earthquake is 10 times smaller than a 7.0 one
linear scale = 10^x
btw, it shouldn't be 7.2, but rather 7.3 ( log10(2)~= 0.301 ), 10^0.2 = 1.58 which means it's a "mere" 60% higher

[BaNa]

[smoth]

[Panda]

Lol, at Smoth and BaNa's posts.

[Jools]

It frankly amazed me, because I thought 7.0 is quite close to 7.2, but the latter magnitude is actually twice the first.

it's a logaritmic scale, a 6.0 grade earthquake is 10 times smaller than a 7.0 one
linear scale = 10^x
btw, it shouldn't be 7.2, but rather 7.3 ( log10(2)~= 0.301 ), 10^0.2 = 1.58 which means it's a "mere" 60% higher

The scale that you use depends on the magnitude and on the type of earthquake, there are several scales nowadays, each of which has its own advantages. I did the above calculation based on the moment magnitude scale, because that's the one that the USGS uses. It is defined as:



By the way, Chileans use the Mercali scale. It is not at all quantitative and is based purely on how people feel the quake.