[wanderfowl]

The writing and research following this quake series has again underscored for me both a) how little we actually know about predicting earthquakes b) and how frustrating that is. You can read every article out there about the things, and each one ends with, roughly, shrug. As somebody who derives a sense of control from knowledge, it's extra terrifying to have something with such a huge potential impact on me completely in the dark.

[lotsofpulp]

I don't see the point worrying about things outside of your control. Solar storms, nuclear war, infectious diseases, asteroids, any number of other unknown natural phenomena we know nothing about. Mitigate what you can, try to help others, but accept that at the end of the day, you (and the rest of humanity) are most likely inconsequential in the story of the universe.

[themodelplumber]

I'm just a casual ham radio operator, military history hobbyist, amateur health science researcher, and I know a tiny bit about space. But it seems the four types of disasters you mention have been studied and measured in depth, with the result bring great impact on our vulnerability to them. Is this not so, and should we not continue improving our measurement (control) systems?

[lotsofpulp]

We should strive to improve our model of the universe, but I was specifically responding to the notion of being “terrified” by the person I responded to. I think am not terrified by it because I’ve accepted that there are always any number of risks that can wipe me out, known and unknown.

[rubicon33]

You conclude that infectious disease is "out of your control"?

[lotsofpulp]

Is it not? As far as I know, it’s plausible a new bacteria, fungus, or virus could develop and we can’t figure out how to fight it, or at least not quickly enough.

Anything is possible, but I’m not saying we can’t or shouldn’t fight it or take steps to prevent it or mitigate damage from it. I’m saying no point in being worried about it.

[coding123]

> I’m saying no point in being worried about it.

(sorry there is no reply option for lots of pulp).

Isn't worry the one human emotion that actually makes us ready for things. If we had an earthquake 1000 years ago that killed half of society and the people just said, damn oh well. They don't do things the same way after that do they? They change design, learn more about the planet, adjust adjust adjust. All of that is driven by worry.

[lotsofpulp]

Perhaps worry is not the right word, as the person I initially responded to had used the word “terrified”. As in I wouldn’t dwell on things out of my control.

[peter303]

It is not from lack of trying. Geophysicists have been trying for 50 years. There was a glimmer of hope when I started grad school with Russians promoting pre-quake velocity anomalies and radon emissions anomalies. And Chinese promoting animal behavior. Neither were reproducible or reliable after extensive study.

Then prediction research became the black death of academic careers with little progress.

This century a milder version called 'earthquake forecasting' has gained acceptance. That is more big data and statistical odds.

Plus 'early warning' seeks to detect quakes and warn people at the speed of light, seconds before damaging waves arrive at the speed of sound.

[adanto6840]

Right there with you. My wife keeps asking me questions about it and she seems dumbfounded that my relaying of information via research generally ends with "we just don't know how it works".

It seems to me like we've recently (~15-30yrs) had a lot of new technology deployments (and accessibility to the underlying data that's produced) which might considerably help us with gaining an understanding over time. Things like high-resolution, high-precision aerial & satellite radar/lidar/photography and the like.

I tend to think it's just a function of time at this point, but on geological time scales that may still take quite a while I suppose.

[mgsouth]

I'm not optimistic.

1. Hold your hands together, palms open, as if you were praying.

2. Press them together very hard, and at the same time try to slide them past one another.

3. Predict exactly when they will slip, by how much, and how loud the sound will be. To be roughly to scale, it must be with millisecond [0] and millimeter [1] accuracy.

[0] Assuming avg. 100 years between quakes, prediction accurate to a week, avg. 5 seconds before hands slip, then 100 yrs * 52 weeks : 1 week ~ 5,000:1 ~ 5 sec : 1 msec.

[1] A 150 KM fault with a prediction of slip accurate to 0.5 M movement is 300,000:1. For a hand span of 150 mm that would equate to 0.5 um. On the other hand (pun intended), we could compare maximum slippages; assuming an earthquake movement max of 20 M and a hand slippage max of 0.2 M, a real-world resolution of 0.5 M would equate to a hand-slip prediction accurate to 2 mm.