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 (<a href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earthquake-and-energy-comparisons-updated-2025" rel="nofollow">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.
This threw me into a rabbit hole for a bit. Apparently there is good evidence that a lot of historical earthquakes in california were due in part at least to the oil industry, which early on would not replace pumped out oil with water.
Now a days they claim they replace the oil with water and all is well. However, as anyone who has owned an ancient used car and has switched from conventional to synthetic motor oil would tell you, there's no way that would work. The assumption is that these voids the oil are in are these hermetically sealed vaults such that one can simply pump in more volume of liquid and balance out pressures. That seems like a big assumption to me. Water is obviously not nearly so viscous as crude oil. It will seep in situations where crude will not. It's probably leaking out like a sieve if its really choss all the way down in California. The oil as it is isn't even very well contained given how common tar seeps are.
Agriculture probably also plays a role. Central valley has sunken what is it 20-25 feet now from historic ground levels? Same issue as a void generated by an atomic test or oil extraction, one would imagine. Mining probably also plays a decent role. Really anything involving removal or non like for like replacement of structural substrate from the ground is probably liable to be associated with seismic activity.
Kind of depressing a realization if this is the case, like we've screwed ourselves with not just the air but the ground we stand on too. You can't really get that stability back without all this new potential energy leaving the system in the form of stuff falling down and new quakes and plates breaking loose and budging a bit more.
>like we've screwed ourselves with not just the air but the ground we stand on too
I'm reminded of something Margaret Atwood once said which boiled down to the fact that there is no starting civilization over, ever again, if we fall back into the Dark Ages. the metals for copper tools and iron-making are in forms that require a lot of technology to even re-smelt, and all the easily accessible mines that don't require heavy machinery and engineering are long mined out
we either get it right this time around or it's over for us
it largely depends on the metal but the issue is with quality, not amount. plus, you don't have much in the way of just iron items these days - you have steel which requires temps quite a fair bit above what's possible in a charcoal/coal-based forge to work. early copper metallurgy utilized ores that were 10%+ metals - much softer, more malleable. these days we work with less than a single percent (but from much larger veins). much smarter people have written about this than me: <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025GsGe....400323M/abstract" rel="nofollow">https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025GsGe....400323M/abstra...
a better focus would probably be on the fact that there's no longer really easily accessible coal anymore, much less oil. there also are far less trees by which you can make charcoal and firewood (except in certain areas) and that's actually fairly important when it comes to crafting and technology: <a href="https://www.postcarbon.org/can-civilization-survive-these-studies-might-tell-us/" rel="nofollow">https://www.postcarbon.org/can-civilization-survive-these-st...
If human society collapses, our cities and landfills will become ores. Strange ores filled with unnatural mixtures of metals, but ores nonetheless.
The sources you've linked discuss mostly the recovery of additional metals on top of what we have already recovered. That's a different and much harder problem. It's worth remembering that historically, the amount of metal obtained was much smaller — the vast majority of the copper that has ever been mined was mined in the last century, even though humans have been using copper for thousands of years. But historically, that copper was mostly used for consumer products, while today it becomes electrical cables, so it's less obvious how much copper we all use. There's surely enough copper in the walls of my apartment for everyone living here to cook in a copper pan, even though we think of copper pans as being too expensive nowadays.
BigTTYGothGF · · focus · HN ↗
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 (<a href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earthquake-and-energy-comparisons-updated-2025" rel="nofollow">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.
asdff · · focus · HN ↗
Now a days they claim they replace the oil with water and all is well. However, as anyone who has owned an ancient used car and has switched from conventional to synthetic motor oil would tell you, there's no way that would work. The assumption is that these voids the oil are in are these hermetically sealed vaults such that one can simply pump in more volume of liquid and balance out pressures. That seems like a big assumption to me. Water is obviously not nearly so viscous as crude oil. It will seep in situations where crude will not. It's probably leaking out like a sieve if its really choss all the way down in California. The oil as it is isn't even very well contained given how common tar seeps are.
Agriculture probably also plays a role. Central valley has sunken what is it 20-25 feet now from historic ground levels? Same issue as a void generated by an atomic test or oil extraction, one would imagine. Mining probably also plays a decent role. Really anything involving removal or non like for like replacement of structural substrate from the ground is probably liable to be associated with seismic activity.
Kind of depressing a realization if this is the case, like we've screwed ourselves with not just the air but the ground we stand on too. You can't really get that stability back without all this new potential energy leaving the system in the form of stuff falling down and new quakes and plates breaking loose and budging a bit more.
paimapi · · focus · HN ↗
I'm reminded of something Margaret Atwood once said which boiled down to the fact that there is no starting civilization over, ever again, if we fall back into the Dark Ages. the metals for copper tools and iron-making are in forms that require a lot of technology to even re-smelt, and all the easily accessible mines that don't require heavy machinery and engineering are long mined out
we either get it right this time around or it's over for us
Loughla · · focus · HN ↗
I have to believe we would be able to make due with the available mountains of metal that is already in use in things?
paimapi · · focus · HN ↗
a better focus would probably be on the fact that there's no longer really easily accessible coal anymore, much less oil. there also are far less trees by which you can make charcoal and firewood (except in certain areas) and that's actually fairly important when it comes to crafting and technology: <a href="https://www.postcarbon.org/can-civilization-survive-these-studies-might-tell-us/" rel="nofollow">https://www.postcarbon.org/can-civilization-survive-these-st...
scythe · · focus · HN ↗
The sources you've linked discuss mostly the recovery of additional metals on top of what we have already recovered. That's a different and much harder problem. It's worth remembering that historically, the amount of metal obtained was much smaller — the vast majority of the copper that has ever been mined was mined in the last century, even though humans have been using copper for thousands of years. But historically, that copper was mostly used for consumer products, while today it becomes electrical cables, so it's less obvious how much copper we all use. There's surely enough copper in the walls of my apartment for everyone living here to cook in a copper pan, even though we think of copper pans as being too expensive nowadays.
lazide · · focus · HN ↗