My Taiwanese cab driver today in Los Angeles said the CCP made the earthquake
Where can I read/watch more about the unfalsifiable theory on an otherwise natural process
7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
161–170 of 183 posts
Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
We should set up some stone monuments to delineate the high water mark, for future generations.
The Japanese have those. A lot of the monuments are hidden in the forest in the hills above the coastal villages...
That's what parent poster was referring to. They have high tide markers showing where tsunamis have reached, and then in the past 50-100 years people started saying "Waves Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist" and building closer to the shoreline.
Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
#163I see earthquake reports (like this one) describe earthquake depth. What is the significance of it? Is it somehow actionable?
I put together a little display of the earthquake action of the first 4-5 hours after the large event using data from the USGS site. [0] You can follow the action from event to event over the course of the first 22 events (about 4-5 hours I think).
[0] https://postimg.cc/HckCRn1m
It started near Hualien City with the magnitude 7.4 and then if you folow the blue lines you can see how it rattled NE-SW mostly along the coast for the first hour (6 events) then following the pink line you can see it popped at the NE end along the coast before a series of events that curved out into the sea to the E-SE for the next hour (5 events). That was followed during the third hour by 4 events oriented roughly NE-SW in green with all but one offshore to the NE. The fourth hour saw 4 more events almost complete the square in yellow. Things were quieting by then and the fifth hour only saw two events, both offshore in light blue with the series ending red with a single event offshore.
I have a graph of activity showing the magnitude and depth versus the time of the event. You can see that the later events trend deeper and lower magnitude making them unlikely to be felt as much as the initial event and less likely to cause as much damage. [1]
[1]https://postimg.cc/zyfdWhNT
To understand the timing of the events I have displayed them in an elapsed time versus magnitude display based on the initial event timing. [2]
[2] https://postimg.cc/68w81VqG
You can see how the magnitude of the events tails off and they become less frequent with time. In the map view you can get a feel for the region's relaxation after the main quake and the other graph allows you to see how the event magnitudes decreased while the later events tended deeper.
Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
#164Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
#165The Circle line has dislodged https://www.setn.com/News.aspx?NewsID=1448651 Live stream of news about the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SydScnOrmf8 There's been pretty big aftershocks like clockwork after, it's gonna be a hard day. My dog is freaked out, my fish tanks are half empty, we're not sure if we can open the restaurant since the MRT is closed and our chef lives quite far, and that's just life in…
> Edit: I'm furious with YouTube for forcing this to be a "short" with bad-on-purpose UX but here's a video of odd water behavior in a port https://youtube.com/shorts/91Rmacvw4ho?si=d78KAUvDTeg_ovbh
Is that water receding as a form of pre-tsunami?
Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Table or bed? What they teach here locally is to get under a door frame or a pillar. I guess that recommendation has something to do with construction codes. When your walls are made out of light wood a sturdy table might protect you from fractured pieces I guess.
If I remember from Introduction to Natural Disasters in college, the door frame example is mainly for masonry buildings, and is a bit of a historical artifact. My understanding is that advice today strongly suggests getting under something sturdy in the attempt to end up in a void during a collapse event.
> My understanding is that advice today strongly suggests getting under something sturdy in the attempt to end up in a void during a collapse event.
A table is sturdy?
The doorframes here are made out of solid steel. It's literally the most sturdy place to be next to pillar. On top of that if the solid steel door gets stuck you will not leave the apartment until emergency services with steel drills or someone with welding equipment frees you from there. I'm a bit puzzled at what you were taught there.
Contrary to the US, Taiwan has had proper earthquake compliant building codes that for the most part have been enforced(and reinforced) since the last disaster stuck the island over 20 years ago. For most places in the world outside of Japan, Taiwan, and a few other places an earthquake of this magnitude would be a mass casualty event.
Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
His prediction is wrong. He buttonholed it to a few specific days, and missed that window. As for prior predictions, I went back 6 months. None of his predictions panned out. Although, admittedly, it's a bit difficult for me to figure out what actually constitutes a prediction since most of them tend to be the kind of vague generality that's hard to grade: "The Mars-Mercury-Jupiter conjunction on 22 September can res…
you went only back 6 months and he was off by a few days was to conclude your own bias to begin with...
I went back 6 months to see his history of predictions to see if he had any merit. If you want to be charitable and call this a hit, that's 1 for 5 in predictions. Looking at the history of M7+ earthquakes in the past 3 months, he had no prediction of occurrence for 2 of the 3 earthquakes that have happened (and this pattern of failing to predict M7+ earthquakes continues further back in 2023, I just don't have the stats in front of me right now).
You have provided, to wit, zero evidence of his track record of successful predictions. Not even a (second) example of successful prediction, much less any attempt to actually quantify over any time scale how successful prediction is. And you claim that someone attempting to do the latter is only to conclude my own bias...
Some more data: if you go back to the Wayback Machine archive of his webpage (see https://web.archive.org/web/20231001000000*/ssgeos.org), you can see that there is persistently an earthquake forecast of over 10%, and on frequent basis even 40% or 50%, chance of magnitude 8.5+ earthquakes (right now, it's a 30% chance). The last such earthquake is 2012. Simply put, even on a probabilistic basis, it's an absolute, abject failure of a prediction.
FWIW, I should also point that when I tried to drill down to the scientific basis of the predictions from the source, I arrived at pure numerology: https://ssgeos.org/articles/geometry-dynamics-solar-system.h.... Not a great look!
Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
The recommendation that I was taught when I took Chinese lessons btw is to stand either below a pillar or a door frame, and to open the doors so that once the initial shaking is over you can escape(for example the door frame might get stuck and then you cannot even escape in case of an emergency). Most of the collapsed buildings however seem to have not collapsed directly, but rather the foundation seems to have give…
It's quite impressive that this red building Hualien County is just leaning and didn't collapse. Even most of the glass panes are still in place and mirror the ground just fine. Comparing this to earthquakes in places like Turkey when the buildings just collapse into a pile of rubble, I doubt the builders in Hualien could have done much better expect for foundation piles going far deeper than code dictates.
Yeah I agree. A friend of mine in Hongkong told me that his windows (in a new construction) would fall out during smaller seismic events. What I meant though were things outside of the control of the building construction.
In 1999 Taiwan had a major earthquake where some 2400 people died. 3 months after the disaster the government released a change in building construction codes, to some extent, what you see here is the result of those policies being enforced right away. It's quite a feat of engineering, but I don't know to what extent this extends to sewage, gas, and/or other piping systems not directly related to the building construction.
Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I remember from Introduction to Natural Disasters in college, the door frame example is mainly for masonry buildings, and is a bit of a historical artifact. My understanding is that advice today strongly suggests getting under something sturdy in the attempt to end up in a void during a collapse event.
> My understanding is that advice today strongly suggests getting under something sturdy in the attempt to end up in a void during a collapse event. A table is sturdy? The doorframes here are made out of solid steel. It's literally the most sturdy place to be next to pillar. On top of that if the solid steel door gets stuck you will not leave the apartment until emergency services with steel drills or someone with we…
One is that in an open floor plan, you may not have time to find the nearest actual doorway.
I would also imagine that the strength of any given doorway would depend on if the wall it was in is load bearing. A non load bearing wall is going to get crushed to bits once an actual load falls on it.
I do think the advice is geared towards traditional furniture and not today’s IKEA particleboard crap.
Re: 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan, 34km depth
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m also in Taipei. It’s the worst one ever I’ve felt in my life. Staying on the 7th floor with noway to escape in time is probably the worst feeling
The recommendation that I was taught when I took Chinese lessons btw is to stand either below a pillar or a door frame, and to open the doors so that once the initial shaking is over you can escape(for example the door frame might get stuck and then you cannot even escape in case of an emergency). Most of the collapsed buildings however seem to have not collapsed directly, but rather the foundation seems to have give…
> and to open the doors so that once the initial shaking is over you can escape
Just to make sure to stand far away from the doors you leave open as they can swing and hit you.