I basically want to understand if earthquakes can simply happen anywhere, or if there are some conditions for earthquakes to happen in an area.
In: Planetary Science
People will probably tell you that Earthquakes are due to fault lines, subduction zones, volcanic stuff and such things. That’s _mostly_ correct, the strongest and most common earthquakes are usually of that nature.
But there are other sources. The collapse of underground caverns or similar cave-ins can cause immense shaking. This for example is one of two hypotheses how the one that [flattened the Swiss city of Basel in 1356](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1356_Basel_earthquake) happened. Other underground events such as nuclear tests also shake the earth, but our typical bombs are too weak (yes, nukes are puny compared to many quakes) to cause more than some rumbling.
The impact of a large asteroid also causes intense earthquakes, but this might only by number 7 or so on your list of immediate problems.
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