[HN Gopher] Magnitude 7.3 earthquake off the Coast of Fukushima ...
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       Magnitude 7.3 earthquake off the Coast of Fukushima Prefecture
        
       Author : Kuinox
       Score  : 160 points
       Date   : 2022-03-16 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.data.jma.go.jp)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.data.jma.go.jp)
        
       | sva_ wrote:
       | Comparison: The 2011 earthquake had a magnitude of 9.0 - 9.1 (but
       | it had a 7.2 foreshock 2 days before.)
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
        
         | frellus wrote:
         | The thing most people don't mention is that after the March
         | 11th 2011 earthquake, we had daily aftershocks, the kind you
         | could easily feel, which lasted for _months_. Seems to happen
         | mostly at night, most disconcertingly, as I was woken up out of
         | bed more times than I could count with ones large enough to
         | cause me to jump up and think the  "big one" was hitting Tokyo.
         | 
         | Took me a good year, and moving out of Japan, to calm down
         | about it and realize just how much daily stress it had caused
         | me, how much on edge you are after something like this. Of
         | course, nothing happened, but when your system is constantly in
         | heightened awareness mode, the way I expect soldiers in a
         | warzone feel wondering if there's someone around the corner
         | waiting to get you, you start to build up PTSD in a real way.
         | 
         | Side note: add in a bit of nuclear fallout concern, plus having
         | young kids and some playgrounds in Tokyo getting abnormally
         | high enough readings they had to close them... oh, in addition
         | to tainted food supply, and you'll maybe understand.
        
           | Hulitio wrote:
           | We visited Japan 3 years ago and it stuck with me how normal
           | earthquakes, alerts for this and tsunamis are.
           | 
           | Like wtf!
        
             | teraku wrote:
             | Japan is not only the country hit most frequently by a
             | large margin, it is also the country hit by the strongest
             | natural disasters.
        
               | claytongulick wrote:
               | It's certainly up there [1]. I didn't realize that Costa
               | Rica and the Philippines were even higher than Japan.
               | 
               | According to [2] the US has the most severe weather in
               | the world, which is interesting. I've certainly
               | experienced some of it, tornadoes are horrifying.
               | 
               | I had a crazy experience in Oklahoma City once where I
               | ran out of my hotel because of an earthquake only to see
               | two funnels on the ground coming towards me.
               | 
               | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_na
               | tural_d...
               | 
               | [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/05/16/ext
               | reme-we...
        
           | yamazakiwi wrote:
           | I remember the aftershocks, and I still have ptsd regarding
           | earthquakes. I've felt a few small ones back stateside and
           | feels like it starts the cycle over again. Not sure how long
           | it will take for me to get over it.
        
             | dvngnt_ wrote:
             | talk to a doctor
        
               | pizza wrote:
               | Just curious, what would you expect to happen if they
               | did?
        
               | s5300 wrote:
               | I don't exactly understand why he's being downvoted.
               | Perhaps he could have worded things better, but I read it
               | in good faith.
               | 
               | A doctor may be able to tell them some specific coping
               | mechanisms that could be helpful in breaking the thought
               | loop they were otherwise unaware of, & sometimes a short
               | duration of medication like a benzo can break the anxiety
               | enough so that it doesn't come back.
               | 
               | Obviously, it's hard to tell over the internet, & that's
               | why it's recommended to see a professional.
        
               | oceanghost wrote:
               | If he/she actually has PTSD-- which is entirely within
               | the realm of possibility, there are medications such as
               | Prazosin as well as therapy that can help.
        
           | lostlogin wrote:
           | The Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand had a lot of
           | aftershocks and a lot of people left the city to avoid them.
           | Here is an article saying that there were 11,200 aftershocks
           | in the following 2 years.
           | 
           | https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/11000-aftershocks-
           | christ...
        
             | djrobstep wrote:
             | Yep can confirm, I lived in Christchurch through the quake
             | and aftermath. Aftershocks multiple times a day for months
             | afterwards.
        
           | 8ytecoder wrote:
           | Living in the Bay Area and right atop a fault, I feel phantom
           | shakes. I usually have my ham radio tuned to the local
           | repeater and people start reporting real ones almost
           | instantaneously. So I use that as indicator to calm myself.
           | 
           | Hasn't affected my life but it's always there in the back of
           | my mind. I realised I'm also a lot more sensitive to them
           | than anyone else I know. Almost all the major ones -
           | including the one in Napa have woken me up, usually in cold
           | sweat and heart palpitations.
        
         | almog wrote:
         | While I hope it is a small quake compared to the 2011
         | earthquake, the main 2011 earthquake came 2 days after a 7.1
         | foreshock quake:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
        
         | danuker wrote:
         | Hope today's was not the foreshock to something bigger.
        
         | Denvercoder9 wrote:
         | For those unware, the magnitude scales used to measure
         | earthquakes are logarithmic, with released energy increasing by
         | a factor of about 32 (10^3/2 to be exact) for each step. Thus,
         | the 9.1 earthquake from 2011 released about 500 times as much
         | energy as the one from today.
        
           | thrdbndndn wrote:
           | I feel like it should also be added that part of (not all)
           | the reason we use logarithmic scale for these things to begin
           | with is precisely because their "damage" or impact is not
           | linearly correlated to the energy released from the event
           | (same goes to dBPL used in sound pressure).
           | 
           | Unfortunately, it's not linear to the logarithmic scale
           | either so it's hard to get a intuitive "feeding" from it.
           | 
           | I'd say it's something in between but closer to the linear
           | scale in earthquake's case.
        
         | andrepd wrote:
         | Reminder that 9 isn't ~25% larger than 7, its 100x larger.
        
       | Shadonototra wrote:
       | Chip plants and nuclear plants in high seismic activity land
       | 
       | People who gave the greenlight should be in jail for the rest of
       | their lives
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | x62Bh7948f wrote:
       | I felt a 3-ish small one for about 5 seconds and then it was
       | over. About a minute later it began again but this time it was
       | definitely over 4 (I'm in Tokyo). It was long too, almost a
       | minute I think (by the end it was not so strong, maybe 4-5 during
       | the first 15 seconds or so)
        
         | mlindner wrote:
         | Just to clarify for others, the numbers used in the above post
         | are shindo-scale which are a location-dependent measurement of
         | actual movement. They are used much more in Japan versus
         | magnitude numbers.
        
           | genewitch wrote:
           | i used to live very close to a fault in Los Angeles County,
           | and the numbers i remember from the 80s and 90s don't seem to
           | correlate to the numbers i hear now - i left CA in 2006. The
           | running joke with my CA friends is "don't even tweet/post
           | about it unless it's a 7.0" whereas a 7.0 would mean
           | widescale destruction back when i lived there. I remember the
           | Apple Valley Quake, it was a rolling quake, and it was
           | somewhere between a 4.8 and a 5.4. It derailed trains, and
           | caused a bunch of property damage. I had a ham radio at the
           | time and i was tuned into two of the biggest repeaters in
           | southern california (one being "the nut") and listened to the
           | damage reports and movement of emergency crews.
           | 
           | We were quite far from that one, and it wasn't violent, but
           | it still caused property damage and power outages due to
           | shorted lines.
           | 
           | So i see a 7.3 magnitude, and since i no longer deal with
           | earthquakes (just floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes), i have
           | no frame of reference for how bad that is. Gauging off the
           | running joke above, it's gotta be somewhat bad, right?
        
             | crazcarl wrote:
             | I'm no expert, but it looks like the Apple Valley big
             | earthquakes were centered on land, and these Fukushima are
             | centered off the coast. I would assume the closer to the
             | center, the worse the damage, so perhaps that could explain
             | it?
        
       | bithavoc wrote:
       | Do we have to worry about the nuclear plant? Is it still active?
        
         | mark-r wrote:
         | No, I don't think that plant will ever be active again. There
         | might be a danger if a tsunami came through again and washed
         | more radioactive debris out from where it settled.
        
         | npteljes wrote:
         | It's not active.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daini_Nuclear_Power_...
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | We do have to worry about the nuclear agency that allowed it to
         | be built there in the first place ...
        
       | Kuinox wrote:
       | Tsunami advisory:
       | https://www.data.jma.go.jp/multi/tsunami/index.html?lang=en
        
       | prpl wrote:
       | less than 1 week difference 11 years later.
        
       | darkteflon wrote:
       | That was big. First time since the 2011 quake that I actually put
       | the emergency backpack on. Another 10 seconds and I reckon we
       | would have woken our son and headed outside.
        
         | 88840-8855 wrote:
         | what is the emergency backpack?
        
           | alephnan wrote:
           | https://www.nhk.or.jp/sonae/en/goods/index.html
        
           | ihumanable wrote:
           | They also sell these in the US as well.
           | 
           | Products like this
           | 
           | https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ready-America-2-Person-3-Day-
           | Eme...
           | 
           | They are good to have if you live in an area with natural
           | disasters, 5-year shelf life and you just keep it somewhere
           | that you can quickly grab if you ever need to evacuate.
        
             | heavenlyblue wrote:
             | HTTP Access denied from UK
        
             | hedora wrote:
             | Thank you! These are actually in stock locally and seem way
             | more practical than the prepper food buckets.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | coobird wrote:
       | It was two earthquakes -- one "small" one and another "big" one
       | that followed about a minute later.
       | 
       | On TV, they were announcing the quake intensity of the first one
       | and and there was a video feed of the Fukushima nuclear plant, as
       | they usually do when there's a strong quake in that area. A
       | moment later, the feed was shaking violently -- I thought it was
       | a replay of what was taken earlier, but it must have been the
       | "big" one.
       | 
       | In Tokyo, we felt the secondary wave of the first overlapping
       | with the primary of the second, so it was disorienting and scary.
       | Although the quake intensity itself wasn't serious in Tokyo.
        
         | GolDDranks wrote:
         | The big wasn't still very big here in Tokyo, but it felt weird.
         | The shake was in different direction than usually, it's hard to
         | describe. It also lasted quite long in detectable intensities,
         | although the peak shake was over pretty quickly.
        
           | numpad0 wrote:
           | That's the transverse Secondary wave from a distant origin.
           | It feels like you're suddenly put on a ship rather than like
           | the ground exploded. I learned that anecdotally...
        
         | coobird wrote:
         | Well, seems like a Shinkansen derailed. It doesn't seem very
         | serious as there's someone tweeting about it from inside that
         | train...[1] There's also a tweet that the part of the overhead
         | power line broke off and fell[2], so it may take a while to get
         | back in service...
         | 
         | [1]:
         | https://twitter.com/tokimemo1130/status/1504110997732139024
         | 
         | [2]: https://twitter.com/R19i90/status/1504112207746936832
        
       | hanselot wrote:
        
       | graderjs wrote:
       | Largest quake in at least a year in Japan. Also strangely almost
       | exactly 12 months since a 7.0 in the very same area (20 March
       | 2021):
       | https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000dl6y...
        
         | kijin wrote:
         | The infamous 2011 earthquake was also in March. Is there any
         | plausible reason for earthquakes to occur in the same region
         | around the same time of year over and over again, or is it just
         | coincidence? I don't think Japan has any large glaciers that
         | could melt in the spring and shift the center of mass of the
         | plate underneath, for example.
        
           | pvaldes wrote:
           | My guess would be that ice melting in the caps triggers a
           | release tension cascade in several parts of the crust, but is
           | just a feeling. Less weight in the poles could make the
           | planet tend to go more "sphaerical".
           | 
           | Just my own stupid theory. I'm not a geologist and could be
           | wrong by a mile.
        
             | pvaldes wrote:
             | In any case since several years ago I have noticed a sort
             | of end of the winter pattern: Eyjafjallajokull (2010),
             | Fukushima (2011), Villarica Chile (2015), Fagradalsfjall
             | (2021), New Zealand earthquakes (2022)... all in March.
             | 
             | And then is a waterfall later travelling towards equator:
             | Volcan de Fuego Guatemala (may 2012). Feels a little like a
             | tennis play with eruption waves bouncing, but maybe I'm
             | just cherry picking facts together.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | toyg wrote:
           | Maybe something to do with orbital forces / sea currents...?
        
           | graderjs wrote:
           | Great question. 1/12 x 1/12 x 1/12 -- odds seem kind of
           | low...but could possibly be related to ocean currents,
           | seasonal flow systems probably significantly shift the center
           | of mass of large bodies of water, maybe related to
           | temperature.
        
             | corpMaverick wrote:
             | Interestingly the two biggest earthquakes in my memory in
             | Mexico City happened in the same day. Sept 19 1985 and 2017
             | 
             | Every year in Sep 19 there is a city wide simulacro. And
             | then in 2017 an earthquake happened for real.
        
             | wilihybrid wrote:
             | Probabilities and statistics don't work like that. Between
             | 2011 and now there's been loads of earthquakes in Japan, in
             | most months, many stronger than 7.0.
        
           | danuker wrote:
           | Maybe thermal expansion, since March means warming after
           | winter.
        
             | 88840-8855 wrote:
             | 20 meters under ground there is already no temperature
             | difference between summer and winter.
        
       | MrYellowP wrote:
       | Right on schedule.
        
       | andy_ppp wrote:
       | It looks very close, is a tsunami possible?
        
         | maybe_pablo wrote:
         | 1m rise is expected, said the news.
        
         | geerlingguy wrote:
         | Yes: https://tsunami.gov/?p=PHEB/2022/03/16/22075004/1/WEPA40
         | 
         | Also, from Japan:
         | https://www.jma.go.jp/bosai/map.html#5/38.411/143.174/&elem=...
         | 
         | It _looks_ like the tsunami 's arrival will be before high
         | tide, so at least they have that going for them...
        
           | vesrah wrote:
           | edit: Misread, I apologize
        
             | fredoliveira wrote:
             | It is. I think you misread the previous comment. Tsunami
             | will hit _before_ the high tide, resulting in less
             | potential for flooding.
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-16 23:01 UTC)