Good points. Another big factor in earthquakes that doesn't get captured in the richter scale is how much the motion is side to side versus up and down. Buildings fair a lot better in side to side quakes. I think it was the haiti quake that was extremely high magnitude and up and down motion. Nothing stood a chance.Smeghead4761 said:
I grew up in California, and even in a rich, industrialized country where earthquakes are common and planned for, like the U.S. West Coast or Japan, a 7.8 is big. Very big.
The Loma Prieta quake (the 1989 World Series earthquake, for those that remember) was a 6.9. The Northridge quake in 1994 was 6.7.
Since the Richter Scale is logarithmic (each whole number increase on the scale is 10x increase in magnitude), this quake is about 9x as powerful as Loma Prieta.
Even somewhere like California or Japan, with long established and well enforced building codes, the effects would be brutal. In a less wealthy country like Turkey, a big quake like that will be devastating.
Also, if you're building is on waterlogged soil versus rock. water logged and water level soils will go through a separation process called liquifaction that can turn the once solid land into soup at the right frequencies.
