Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

Blog posts filtered by the category: Earthquakes

Italy’s Earthquakes

Today’s New York Times claimed that the intensity of yesterday’s 6.3 magnitude earthquake was “rare" for Italy. Um, really? What is rare in earthquake terms?

In the last century, over 130,000 people died in Italian earthquakes. Just seven years ago, 30 people died in a 5.9 quake in southern Italy. Rare?

We tend to think in human time. To make matters worse, human time has been…

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Once again, California is proving itself way ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to disaster resilience. Check out my Time.com story on the Great Shakeout here.

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Scientists have now determined that the chance of one or more maginitude 6.7 or larger quakes happening in California over the next 30 years is 99.7%. That is to say, it’s definitely going to happen. Put it on your calendar, and start shopping for shoes.

So then what? Earthquake survival is not intuitive. Running outside (which some research has shown men might be more likely to do than women) is a bad idea. Doorways are no longer the sweet spot we once thought they were. And after the shaking stops, turning off the gas to your…

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