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Asked by anon-252773 to Paula on 1 May 2020. This question was also asked by anon-258020.
Question: Is it possible to prevent an earthquake from happening or reduce/nullify its effects?
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Paula Koelemeijer answered on 1 May 2020:
Once an earthquake has started, it is not possible to stop it from happening (and they also do not last very long). However, there are a lot of ways we can reduce the effects, or mitigate the risks: in the short-term, by seeking cover and being prepared with earthquake kits. In the long-term, we can reduce the damage from earthquakes by improving building regulations – we often say it is the collapse of structures that kills people, not the earthquakes themselves.
To improve building regulations, we try to estimate the earthquake risk in different areas (based on current recordings and past ones), so that buildings can be made to withstand a certain magnitude. This will depend on the area – in regions like Japan and California this is really necessary and done a lot, while in the UK this is not needed as much.
Comments
anon-252773 commented on :
I see.Thank you very much. You are all inspirations!
olegshebanits commented on :
To add to Paula’s answer – while stopping an earthquake is not possible (yet?), we can certainly entertain the idea.
Earthquake is a wave. We do know how to stop s wave: with a counter-wave, a wave with exactly opposite magnitude and same frequency/wavelength. This is called destructive interference and cancels the original wave completely – noise cancelling headphones work on this principle.
So imagine if we had massive earth-shakers installed in the ground where the earthquakes are often occurring, that send a counter-wave out and cancel the earthquake. The challenge would be to send the counter-wave in just one direction – imagine if you make waves on water, they would spread in all directions. So there is some geometry to figure ou
Ideally, the counter-wave should originate at the same place.
Gosia commented on :
To add a little bit more: in some regions when smaller earthquakes are happening more often they unload the stress from the rocks, so there is not enough stress accumulated to produce a bigger earthquake. But when the small earthquakes stop it can mean that a bigger one is coming.
As long as there are not only natural earthquakes, but also those produced by humans, producing a small earthquake just for releasing the stress from the underground can prevent the stress from accumulating. Sounds good, but in practice this operation can be too risky and too unpredictable, so the best idea is still to improve the building engineering.
Also the idea of counter-wave is very attractive, but for now impossible to do. Mostly because the magnitudes, locations and frequency spectra of the earthquakes are highly unpredictable, so it would be hard to generate exactly the same wave set with opposite magnitude. But still sounds very cool!
olegshebanits commented on :
Ops, misclicked.
So, a counter-wave is a reactive solution, we see an earthquake coming and we react. A better way would be to quench the source, or to prevent it from happening altogether. But for this we need to figure out how to reliably predict them first, how the sources work, and only then we can think of a preventive measure.