8 Facts about Earthquakes And Their Aftermath That Will Shake You To The Core!

1. According to the United Nations, 8 million people were affected by the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. The 7.8 magnitude quake is believed to have affected 8 million people across 39 districts, with 2 million of them in 11 severely affected areas. The quake also resulted in Mt. Everest shrinking by an inch, while Kathmandu moved about 10 feet south. 2. Each year, about 20,000 earthquakes are recorded by The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) around the world. That’s about 50 a day! Millions of earthquakes go unrecorded each year because they are too weak; in fact, it is estimated that some part of the world is affected by an earthquake once every thirty seconds! 3. Japan earthquake A selection of some of the startling facts and figures from the Japan earthquake and tsunami, which was one year ago this month. 4. The world is becoming a very unstable place, and the pace at which things are changing all around us has become absolutely mind-numbing. 5. He name “Earthquake” is only applicable when the quake happens on Earth. For instance, a quake on the moon is called a “Moonquake”, one on Mars is a “Marsquake”, and so on. A quake is the result of seismic activity, which leads to the surface of a planet, moon or star to shake. 6. Moving at a rate of about 2 inches a year – the same rate at which fingernails grow – the San Andreas Fault could lead to San Francisco and Los Angeles being next to each other in 15 million years. As a result of this plate movement, Los Angeles City Hall is now 9 feet closer to San Fransisco than what it was originally when built in 1924. Give it 15 million years more, and they’ll be right next to each other! 7. On March 11, 2011, Japan was struck with the worst earthquake in its entire history. The 9.0 quake also induced a tsunami with waves as high as 30 feet and caused severe damage to nuclear power plants. So severe was the earthquake that even Antarctica’s ice sheets felt the impact. Even today, debris from the earthquake continues to wash up on US shores. Following the earthquake, most of the country’s nuclear plants were closed; the 230,000 people who were rendered homeless still live in temporary housing arrangements. 8. The earthquake of 2004 in the Indian Ocean generated 1500 times the energy of the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima. he energy released on was about 26 megatons of TNT. But this was just on the surface; underground, the energy released was over 9600 gigatons of TNT equivalent, or about 550 million times the energy released at Hiroshima. To give you a better idea, the energy then released would be equal to 370 years of energy use in the U.S. at 2005 levels.

Murtaza Rangwala

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