Why Are We So Bad at Predicting Earthquakes? (telegraph.co.uk)

In the wake of major earthquakes in both Japan and Ecuador, one British newspaper asks: Why are we so bad at predicting earthquakes? In 2015 seismologists told Vice, "The more we study them, the harder they look to predict, and "there's a shortage of instrumenation." But today the Telegraph newspaper concludes that we actually have two problems: first, "science is hopeless at predicting earthquakes and, second, we keep building cities on major fault-lines..." They cite a new book called Earth-Shattering Events which reports that nearly half the world's large cities are in earthquake-prone areas, adding, "we don't just build our cities on fault-lines, we also tend to rebuild them, in the same place, but no more robust, time and time again." In 1976 one quake in China killed more than 750,000 people, while a 2004 quake in Indonesia killed 170,000. "The Earth will move and there's not a thing we can do to stop it," the Telegraph concludes, arguing that we need to learn more from our past.

Comments

What straw will break the camel's back

[Kjella]

We know where earthquakes will be - along fault lines. When will it happen? When the tension gets too high. It's like asking what pebble will start a landslide, what snowflake will start an avalance or what straw will break the camel's back. The problem isn't the lack of an answer, the problem is that we're expecting an exact result to a complex and chaotic process. Would you also like a map of where lighting is going to strike?