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What's the 411 on Earthquakes Today?

What's the 411 on Earthquakes Today?

 

 

earthquakes today

 

I bet you did not know that earthquakes today… are happening.


In fact, they happen everyday!

WHAT?... no way.
YES

Hang in there and I’ll explain everything.

 

You want to know more, right?


Survivalists all over the world have researched the topic and if you just stick with us, we'll give you the full breakdown of earthquakes.

How about we go through all of the spectacular points there are to know about earthquakes...

 

First of all...what exactly is an earthquake?

 

Earthquakes can occur when two chunks/rock slabs of earth (or tectonic plates) suddenly move past one another or collide into each other.

The location where the plates slip is called the fault or the fault line.

 

When this happens, there are vibrations that go to the surface and essentially the earth shakes which can cause very little damage or extremely destructive damage to anything that is on the surface.

 

 

What causes an earthquake?


Stick with me.. It’s a bit of explaining..

You know how we mentioned the chunks of earth called tectonic plates before?
Well, the Earth is covered with these plates all over the surface..it’s not just one big piece.

 

These pieces are constantly moving, bumping each other, and slowly sliding against each other..

Around the edge of each plate is a fault, where that plate meets up with another plate.

These edges are not smooth, but they are actually jagged and rough.
Sometimes the edges of a plate gets stuck while the rest of the plate is moving.When that edge finally gets unstuck, that is when an earthquake occurs… generally it occurs on the fault lines (or edges of the tectonic plates)

 

Thanks for sticking with me on that lengthy description! 

 

Faults can move in many different directions.


Horizontal faults make the plates slide past each other and neither one of them are lifted.

Vertical faults will cause a plate to move upwards in comparison to the other.
Most vertical are not straight up and down. One plate will actually hang over the other.

Now, there are many different types of faults...and any of them can have earthquakes today.

 

Fault Types:

  • Reverse Fault (Vertical):
    The hanging plate will actually move up in comparison to the other plate.

  • Normal Fault (Vertical):
    The hanging plate will move down in comparison to the other plate.

  • Strike-Slip Fault:
    A plate will move horizontally past another plate

  • Thrust Fault:
    This one is similar to a ramp, but it is a reverse fault with a low angle. The lower plate is the “ramp” itself. The upper plate is pushed up the ramp.

 

How do we measure earthquakes today?


A seismometer!

 

 

And how do we read the results of this?


The handy dandy Richter Scale!

This scale measures the energy that an earthquake releases.

 

 

Want to know what this means in real simple terms?...OK

Here we have the Richter Scale.
This ranges from smallest(no damage) to largest(complete destruction)

This isn’t meant to scare you of course!

 

So we’ll break down the scale with the measurement of the size of the quake vs. how often it happens.

 

Richter Scale:

  • 2.0 or less
    Constant-Millions each year.

  • 2.0-2.9
    Greater than 1 million each year

  • 3.0-3.9
    Greater than 100K each year.

  • 4.0-4.9
    10K-15K each year.

  • 5.0-5.9
    1K-1.5K each year.

  • 6.0-6.9
    100-150 each year.

  • 7.0-7.9
    10-20 each year.

  • 8.0-8.9
    1 each year.

  • 9.0 or more
    1 per 10-50 years.

 

This brings us back to the beginning when we said that there are earthquakes everyday.

The Richter Scale Ranges from less than 2.0 to greater than 9.0

 

An earthquake on the 2.0 or less range happens multiple times everyday.
These earthquakes small little microearthquakes and they are rarely ever felt.

There are about 8,000 earthquakes that occur every single day that are recorded at 2.0 or less on the Richter Scale.


It’s unbelieveable!

 

 

Are scientists able to predict earthquakes today?


Sadly, the answer is no.

Scientists are able to say that on any fault, there will likely be an earthquake, but they don’t have a way to know when that would potentially happen.

 

They have attempted many different ways to make predictions, but as of yet, nothing has been successful enough to continue, although we definitely understand earthquakes much more and continue to learn about them daily.

All we can do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best!

 

 

Earthquakes, faults, The Richter Scale…

Look at you!
You’ve got the 411 on earthquakes today!

 

Please share your comments below! We'd love to hear your opinion.

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