So, earthquake is when two plates keep piling on each other and building stress/pressure that reaches a critical point and discharges all this built up energy. Is it possible do preemptively discharge this pressure while it’s still not big enough to cause serious damage? Like, with bombs or something. And if yes, why nobody does it?
In: 10
It is difficult to adequately describe the enormous magnitudes of energies which build up and release during techtonic activity. Even if we knew precisely where the next largest stress nodes were, no tools we have (not even nukes). Could meaningfully change the outcome of techtonic activity.
The only human activity which has any measurable influence on regional seismic activity is fracking, where pressurized water is pumped between layers of rock to tease out pockets of natural gas. Sometimes this activity causes localized rock formations to collapse which releases techtonic energy. But the effect is unpredictable.
Even if we ignore the question of how to do that: Each step on the Richter scale is a factor ~30 in energy. If you want to dissipate the energy of a single magnitude 9 earthquake then you need around 30 earthquakes of magnitude 8, or 1000 of magnitude 7. Is a monthly severe earthquake better than a once-in-a-lifetime devastating earthquake?
There is also the political aspect: Who would approve that? Who would approve additional earthquakes after some people died from induced earthquakes?
It’s possible, but not anytime soon.
We need to improve sensor tech to determine where, and we’d need to experiment on the best solution to relieve pressure. It could end up making things worse
E.g. you vibrate the area to loosen it, but now it’s compacted and more likely to build pressure because it’s denser.
That’s not how tectonic plates work, unfortunately. The focus (source) of an earthquake is several kilometres below the ground. We can’t reach it. To influence the plates on that level, we’d need to create a disturbance far larger than the earthquake itself. (Larger because it’s so much closer to the surface).
The answer is you can.
The issue is actually doing it.
In practice it would involve digging a literal grand canyon but far, far deeper.
The new mega crack we dug would be a few miles wide, hundreds or thousands of miles long, and dozens to hundreds of miles deep with a rough maximum of close to 1800 miles deep.
Not at the moment, but I like your thinking. We know HOW quakes works but we can’t still predict WHEN their energy is going to be released. Or at least not in a human date of years, but as geological fact ” somewhere from now to the next few centuries”.
But for the one we know we can take the famous San Andres Fault as example, running 1,200 kilometers through the Californias, at depth of 3 km.
Pumping in/out, fracking, drilling, mining or even a bunch of nukes would cost trillions, take decades to be constructed, be very dangerous and with no hard scientific data supporting any action.
Without thinking of the political side of whom would start a project that could trigger a catastrophe of biblical proportions.
Maybe one day we will be able to control those massive energies, but for now we can only prepare for the aftermath.
Looks like we’ll have to stick to the good old ‘duck and cover’ method. Or maybe just move to Mars.
Latest Answers