North Korea's nuclear test triggered years of earthquakes, and the debate is whether that's good or bad
North Korean nuclear test sets off years of earthquakes
A Hacker News discussion explores whether North Korea's nuclear test, which set off years of small earthquakes, might actually reduce seismic risk by releasing energy gradually. Commenters debate the logarithmic energy scale, noting that 30,000 magnitude-3 quakes equal one magnitude-7, and warn that the test could instead trigger a larger quake. The thread also touches on firefighting analogies and the difficulty of attributing damage to intentional acts.
It's logarithmic so you'd need more like 30,000 magnitude 3 earthquakes to equal the energy of a magnitude 7. I don't think it's clear this is better. You can also make the argument that this may trigger the large earthquake that might not have happened for a long time.
- BigTTYGothGF
There's a lot of people in this thread who see "North Korea" and "nuclear test" and get fired up but would otherwise shrug if it were instead, say, "Oklahoma" and "fracking".
The supplemental information is available and says:
> Our earthquake catalog consists primarily of small events with magnitudes of < 2.0
and there were 1399 of them.
The cited Ren&al says:
> The magnitudes of these seismic events primarily range from 1.5 to 2.5
and that there were 647 of them.
USGS (https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earthquake-and-energy-comp...) says that a magnitude 2.0 earthquake is the equivalent energy of 56kg of explosives, which is more than I'd want to be around but I think for people who actually use the stuff it's not a lot.
- margalabargala
Could this be considered a good thing?
The energy being released in these many tiny earthquakes was always going to exist in this location. Much better to release it slowly via thousands of tiny earthquakes than all at once. Better to have 10k magnitude 3 quakes than one magnitude 7.
- elictronic
This article does a very poor job of differentiating earthquakes people feel and care about versus magnitude 2 quakes that are like your neighbor dropping a book upstairs.
- ortusdux
How long until someone attempts to diffuse a pent up fault line via nuclear geoengineering?
- dzink
Reminds me of a display at Chabot in the bay area. A bubbling volcano covered by a stable mass stays bubbling underneath, but shaking up the mass gives little bubbles a bath up and they break way for the big bubbles leading to a volcanic eruption. If you fragment a he soil at some point in the mantle of earth and there is pressure anywhere below, you could get yourself a new volcano.
- ggg011012
The long delay is the interesting part to me. How do they distinguish earthquakes triggered by the test from normal background seismicity?
- trumbitta2
Basically, they gave their land Atrial Fibrillation through strong extrasystoles.
- SoftTalker
It isn't geological destabilization. They've awakened Godzilla.