2200 year old Gazintap Castle destroyed:

Before:


After:

This is going to cause a lot of political instability given Ergodan's history, the likely corruption that led to these collapses and slow pace of aid and essential services given the scale of this.

Ergodan has shifted Turkey from being a NATO/USA ally to Russia and sometimes China. Doubt Russia will help much right now so China or the USA will likely help for future favors.

Bad timing hitting a night and in the right before a winter storm. Doubt they have big enclosed stadiums like a lot of US cities to serve as a casualty center. Turkey's military should have military tents but I am not sure they have enough to cover all of the cities hit.

Brittmoore Car Club said:

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aezmvp said:

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Brittmoore Car Club said:

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Geez how do you trust any remaining buildings within the general vicinity going fwd? Can't imagine how many homes and buildings are structurally unsound at this point. Earthquakes are the scariest and most "apocalyptic" feeling natural disaster imo.

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Then you haven't lived near a real volcano. Earthquakes are scary but literal mountain blowing up raining flaming meteors, clouds of ash and gas hot enough to burn you alive and rivers of molten rock... woof.

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True, I guess in modern times we just see more cases of Earthquakes seriously jacking up major cities. Footage of molten lava flowing and raining down upon a city causing massive devastation would be absolutely horrific.

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Theres only a handful of places dumb enough to build big cities in the path of volcanos...you know places like Tacoma, WA.

It's much more difficult to stay away from things like the really huge earthquakes, you dont really know theyve happened there before and you've ended up building a big city there already like...Tacoma, WA

aezmvp said:

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Netflix. Good documentary. Good reminder that some of those parts of mother nature are amazing but dangerous.

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Thanks for sharing, watching it now.

aezmvp said:

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Brittmoore Car Club said:

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Geez how do you trust any remaining buildings within the general vicinity going fwd? Can't imagine how many homes and buildings are structurally unsound at this point. Earthquakes are the scariest and most "apocalyptic" feeling natural disaster imo.

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Then you haven't lived near a real volcano. Earthquakes are scary but literal mountain blowing up raining flaming meteors, clouds of ash and gas hot enough to burn you alive and rivers of molten rock... woof.

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We generally know when a volcano is active or on the verge of an eruption though. Earthquakes give little to no warning.

How many people so far? Is this one of the biggest ever? I haven't followed it much since last night.

No where close to the biggest earthquake ever.

Last check says 4,300 dead and 18K injured.

Volcanoes just are pretty much less deadly than earthquakes in general unless you consider eruptions where the killer is volcanic winter.

MuchosPollos said:

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FbgTxAg said:

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In before 40 Trillion in taxpayer money to Turkey.

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We don't have to shoulder the burden that much but if there's ever a time we should be sending aid this is it.

These scenes are horrific.

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Agree. America is known as a generous nation and this is a time I'd be more than happy to see us send aid.

I'm watching Aftershock on Netflix, about the 2015 Nepal quake. It was also a 7.8. Probably similar issues to Turkey with buildings and infrastructure not designed for such massive quakes.

News agencies are now reporting 4000 to 10,000 deaths or more could occur …. This is going to be bad .. 1710 buildings reported collapsed in Turkey already .. not good . Syria has many many buildings down also

I think it will be way more than 10,000

bmks270 said:

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I think it will be way more than 10,000

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Yes one insurance risk assessment company in Germany now predicting 17,000 or more

AggiePops said:

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Smeghead4761 said:

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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.

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Alaska, 1964, was a 9.2. I worked with a guy who was a school kid up there during that.

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I think that's the biggest on record in the U.S. That one was actually offshore, IIRC, but the tsunami was brutal.

Luckily, Alaska wasn't very densely populated. My last tour at Ft Lewis, WA, I participated in a tabletop exercise centered on a major quake (8-9.0) on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which runs offshore from about Eureka, CA, to Vancouver Island. Quite a bit of development in the tsunami zone there, although luckily Seattle/Tacoma and Portland are sheltered a good bit.

The truly scary part is that the historical period between major quakes on the CSZ is 200-500 years.

It's been 323 years since the last one, confirmed by tsunami records in Japan.

If memory serves, the CSZ was the focus of the pilot episode of the series "Megadisasters."

schmellba99 said:

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Aggie95 said:

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the videos and thoughts of massive earthquakes in poorly developed countries is just overwhelming to me...

the magnitude of human loss and suffering
where do you even start with SAR?
how do you remove and dispose of all that ruble?
even if money was available to help...do you send it to that region, knowing it would/could get into the wrong hands.
earthquakes ,probably more than any other natural disaster, get "the end of the world is near" vibes

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Hatians are still waiting on their aid from the Clinton foundation....

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That whole Scam should be enough to put those two thugs away……..how they gave hope, took the money instead from the poor and the needy.

……but let's point to orange man bad.

Sooner or later there will be a ~M 7.5 #earthquake in this region (South-Central Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon). #deprem pic.twitter.com/6CcSnjJmCV

— Frank Hoogerbeets (@hogrbe) February 3, 2023

JoCoAg09 said:

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Sooner or later there will be a ~M 7.5 #earthquake in this region (South-Central Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon). #deprem pic.twitter.com/6CcSnjJmCV

— Frank Hoogerbeets (@hogrbe) February 3, 2023

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Amazing. Unfortunately it was sooner.

When massive structures that have stood in that region for thousands of years and survived numerous earthquakes in the past completely collapses, no building code is going to save you.

They may be sheltered from a tsunami event tonsome degree, but they arent sheltered from the estimated 7 feet drop in elevation that some have calculated should the plates shear quickly.

The amount of destruction to infrastructue on the NW coastal reagions would be unimaginable.

bmks270 said:

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I think it will be way more than 10,000

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Given the sheer amount of collapsed buildings, this will have more deaths than the Japanese tsunami.

That 1964 Alaska one was something else. M9.2. Epicenter was 75 miles from Anchorage but still just about leveled the city.

Can't imagine the destruction if the PNW sees one anything close to that.

Earlier in the thread they said it was estimated that 1700 building collapsed, not sure if that changed or not. Hard to say how many people were in the buildings when they collapsed since there are a lot of videos after the earthquakes. Let's just say about half so 850, and even though we saw a lot of multi-family housing way more than 10 we will just say 10 for now which means 8500 likely dead.

As others have stated I could easily see 10,000+ dead. More strict building codes may have saved some lives but not much you can do about that many strong earthquakes. Mother nature always wins

I wonder if Incirlik was affected

I think the Richter scale is absolutely terrible. Humans don't think logarithmically.

It would be so much easier if someone said,

oh this earthquake was a 2, no this one was a 7, wait this one was a 500. You would instantly get the difference,

What's a 7.2 vs a 7.5? Mathematically it seems the same, but reality is way different.

2ndGen87 said:

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I think the Richter scale is absolutely terrible. Humans don't think logarithmically.

It would be so much easier if someone said,

oh this earthquake was a 2, no this one was a 7, wait this one was a 500. You would instantly get the difference,

What's a 7.2 vs a 7.5? Mathematically it seems the same, but reality is way different.

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JoCoAg09 said:

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Sooner or later there will be a ~M 7.5 #earthquake in this region (South-Central Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon). #deprem pic.twitter.com/6CcSnjJmCV

— Frank Hoogerbeets (@hogrbe) February 3, 2023

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That's pretty crazy, if real.

2ndGen87 said:

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I think the Richter scale is absolutely terrible. Humans don't think logarithmically.

It would be so much easier if someone said,

oh this earthquake was a 2, no this one was a 7, wait this one was a 500. You would instantly get the difference,

What's a 7.2 vs a 7.5? Mathematically it seems the same, but reality is way different.

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It was created with actual force units I believe but with such a huge range logarithmic actually does make sense and simply things on a whiteboard. The energy output of an earthquake is already outside the conceivability of most people.

To the average joe though you are right. Would not mind another system. Would you base off of force or damage though? Would it be like the Fujitsu Scale which most misinterpret anyways?

GAC06 said:

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I wonder if Incirlik was affected

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Reports saying no major damage or injuries. Good thing since the USA has 50 B61 nuclear missiles there

Sometimes it is hard not to question Gods plan. Praying for everyone who was impacted

Human beings are regularly devastated by the inability to grasp the implications of exponential functions.

Smeghead4761 said:

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AggiePops said:

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Smeghead4761 said:

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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.

---

Alaska, 1964, was a 9.2. I worked with a guy who was a school kid up there during that.

---

I think that's the biggest on record in the U.S. That one was actually offshore, IIRC, but the tsunami was brutal.

Luckily, Alaska wasn't very densely populated. My last tour at Ft Lewis, WA, I participated in a tabletop exercise centered on a major quake (8-9.0) on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which runs offshore from about Eureka, CA, to Vancouver Island. Quite a bit of development in the tsunami zone there, although luckily Seattle/Tacoma and Portland are sheltered a good bit.

The truly scary part is that the historical period between major quakes on the CSZ is 200-500 years.

It's been 323 years since the last one, confirmed by tsunami records in Japan.

If memory serves, the CSZ was the focus of the pilot episode of the series "Megadisasters."

---

Not many folks know about the Cascadia subduction zone. When that thing goes, no one in the entire state of Washington or Oregon will be interested in the color or gender of their fellow citizens. The quake would be bad enough, but the tsunami would finish off Seattle for a couple of years.

MouthBQ98 said:

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Human beings are regularly devastated by the inability to grasp the implications of exponential functions.

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Example: Our national debt

fasthorse05 said:

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Smeghead4761 said:

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AggiePops said:

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Smeghead4761 said:

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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.

---

Alaska, 1964, was a 9.2. I worked with a guy who was a school kid up there during that.

---

I think that's the biggest on record in the U.S. That one was actually offshore, IIRC, but the tsunami was brutal.

Luckily, Alaska wasn't very densely populated. My last tour at Ft Lewis, WA, I participated in a tabletop exercise centered on a major quake (8-9.0) on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which runs offshore from about Eureka, CA, to Vancouver Island. Quite a bit of development in the tsunami zone there, although luckily Seattle/Tacoma and Portland are sheltered a good bit.

The truly scary part is that the historical period between major quakes on the CSZ is 200-500 years.

It's been 323 years since the last one, confirmed by tsunami records in Japan.

If memory serves, the CSZ was the focus of the pilot episode of the series "Megadisasters."

---

Not many folks know about the Cascadia subduction zone. When that thing goes, no one in the entire state of Washington or Oregon will be interested in the color or gender of their fellow citizens. The quake would be bad enough, but the tsunami would finish off Seattle for a couple of years.

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