Dynamic Planet B/C

[ahsettle23]

right, so previous larger earthquakes haven't been felt, but this year, they seem to be striking in populous areas.

I'm not sure how earthquakes striking populous areas could possibly be caused by anything other can coincidence. You also say they "seem" to be striking in populous areas, which is exactly what it is. Earthquakes are daily occurance, and anything less than an 8.0 earthquake is nothing extraordinary. The truth of the matter is no one "chooses" where Earthquakes strike, so the fact that they strike populous areas means nothing

Coincidence with what? There have been a number of large earthquakes recently, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

yes, of course it was out of the ordinary, as far as I know, because it is rare to have such large magnitude earthquakes in a short period of time...
so YES, IT WAS OUT OF THE ORDINARY (as far as I know)

"As far as I Know". There is the root of your problem. You also said you haven't been studying earthquakes so you wouldn't really know the history of earthquakes, because if you did you would know that this nothing special.

Sorry if that was kinda mean, but as Randall Monroe says (http://xkcd.com/386/), duty calls.

[zyzzyva980]

In related news, did anyone even notice that a 7.7 earthquake hit Indonesia yesterday? I searched four major news sites and it took a while to find any mention of this earthquake that was even larger than the west coast one.

[ahsettle23]

Well, you know, Indonesia, not too many people.



Except it is one of the most populated places on earth.... Funny how the news media doesn't bother with them.

[zyzzyva980]

This year I started checking the USGS real-time earthquake map daily. It's amazing how many large earthquakes (6.0+) get ignored by the media.

[Celeste]

We were actually talking about earthquakes in my AP World History class today during current events. My teacher thinks that we've been hearing so much more about them because the media has started scaling up their coverage of natural disasters, and will continue to do so over the next couple of years, as a conspiracy to make people think the world really is ending in 2012 and it's starting to end now. He says this will make them panic, so then the media can cover that and make more money. Yeahhhh, he's a weird, paranoid teacher, but I do think that there's been more media coverage of these past few major earthquakes, most notably the Haiti and Chile ones.

EDIT - I just found this: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/seismic_waves.png It's sort of relevant, and I thought you guys might appreciate it.

[zyzzyva980]

...My teacher thinks that we've been hearing so much more about them because the media has started scaling up their coverage of natural disasters, and will continue to do so over the next couple of years, as a conspiracy to make people think the world really is ending in 2012 and it's starting to end now. He says this will make them panic, so then the media can cover that and make more money...

I wouldn't put it past the media. There are some twisted people there. The trick is getting all the news networks to cooperate, which I'm pretty sure would take some effort.

[smarticle13]

...My teacher thinks that we've been hearing so much more about them because the media has started scaling up their coverage of natural disasters, and will continue to do so over the next couple of years, as a conspiracy to make people think the world really is ending in 2012 and it's starting to end now. He says this will make them panic, so then the media can cover that and make more money...

I wouldn't put it past the media. There are some twisted people there. The trick is getting all the news networks to cooperate, which I'm pretty sure would take some effort.

if that is REALLY the way it is percieved, take the years 2007, 2008, and 2009
name 5 MAJOR earthquakes that have devastated large cities with large magnitudes

[ahsettle23]

2007 - Fiji 7.8, Chile 7.7, New Zealand 7.4, Indonesia 7.9, New Zealand 7.4 again, 8.0 Peru, 8.1 Solomon Islands, and atleast five 5+ earthquakes in California

2008- New Zealand 7.0, Japan 7.0, Sichuan China 7.9(remember that one, pretty big deal),Indonesia 7.4,7.5,7.2.

2009 - October 7th, there were three earthquakes on the same day, 7.3,7.4,7.9 two in the same place. California 6.9, Honduras 7.3, Tonga 7.6, New Zealand 7.8.

[zyzzyva980]

Thanks for saving me the time of digging those up, ahsettle. Smarticle, I'm afraid you're in the minority here. I certainly don't think that it's the end of the world. Or at least, I don't think they're related.

[smarticle13]

Thanks for saving me the time of digging those up, ahsettle. Smarticle, I'm afraid you're in the minority here. I certainly don't think that it's the end of the world. Or at least, I don't think they're related.

awww...oh well
i just was not aware there were so many earthquakes with such large magnitudes before...