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North Korean nuclear test sets off years of earthquakes

225 points · 181 comments · rbanffy

  1. margalabargala · · focus · HN ↗
    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.

    1. xvedejas · · focus · HN ↗
      At least naturally, faults release almost all their energy in the few largest events. You never see enough small earthquakes that you would "release slowly" that amount of energy. It would really need to be several orders of magnitude of more energy being released slowly.
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