Beware of small earthquakes too !

English Reducing risk
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"Just as cows :cow2: kill 10 times as many people a year as sharks :shark:, small earthquakes cause more damage than large ones. "

I really liked the comparison that I found in this paper : https://temblor.net/earthquake-insights/when-preparing-for-earthquakes-dont-forget-the-small-ones-12241/

And that’s true we always get worried about the big one ! I guess we should pay more attention to small ones too ! But also… we don’t want to be scarred for each small earthquake we feel :expressionless:

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Is that true that small earthquakes prevent big ones from happening though ? :thinking:

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Actually, it’s not that simple :point_down:
Magnitude is not a linear scale. Each magnitude level represents about 30 times more energy released. It thus takes 30 magnitude M3 to equal the energy released in a magnitude M4 earthquake !
It takes 900 magnitude M3 to equal a magnitude M5 … and 729 billion magnitude M3 to equal a single magnitude M9. :scream: :scream:

So yes, a small quake may temporarily ease stress on a fault line, however, it does not prevent a large temblor from happening :worried:

(Source: Earthquake Myths and Facts | Emergency Management | CSUSM)

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