Stuff You Should Know - How Earthquakes Work

Episode Date: June 30, 2009

What makes the earth quake? Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the science and history of earthquakes in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Buffalo Park and Zoo, and sports and literary attractions too. Expand your sense of wonder today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun. Mississippi, Wanderers Welcome. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W. Chuck. Chuckers, I love you, Bryant. You're saying that or that's my middle name? Who cares? I love everybody. Sure. Okay. I'm in high spirit today, Chuck. Things are moving. Stuff is taking place. Things are coming to fruition. This is out of nowhere because you were not feeling this way like literally

it's seconds before we recorded. I don't know what you're talking about. Wow. I'm impressed, dude. You can turn it on. You know why, Chuck? Why? I can tell because you're drinking your little energy drink. Yes. I would call it an energy soda. Your little dream sailor. That was, yeah. You really liked that podcast, didn't you? I thought it was good. My favorite part was when we mentioned the doctor in Berkeley when you said Vavum or Rao or something like that. Yeah. It was funny. Yeah. Thanks. I thought, um, I liked all the nose breathing I did in that podcast for some reason. Maybe we should sit around and talk about our whole podcast. Hey, Chuck. Hey, Josh. You did some time out on LA,

right? Yeah. So, um, I know that you met Matthew McConaughey. You thought that story. And, uh, Keeper Sutherland's driver? Yeah. And I saw him in the grocery store, too. With his driver? No, with it. How did you know it was him then? A Buxamblan babe, actually. Gotcha. Um, it was Keeper Sutherland. You know, I mean, it's unmistakable. Gotcha. Um, he's breathing, mouth breathing behind me in line. We're going to get in trouble one day for that. I know. He's a hide head, too. He just got sued. He like hit a photographer or somebody. Did he really? Yeah. So watch, watch your back. Plus, he knows his way around a gun. Yes, he does. And he's ruthless as I understand it from what I've seen on TV. I know what you're

about to ask me about Los Angeles. I know you do because we're doing how earthquakes work. So, Chuck, let's just cut to the chase, shall we? I have never felt an earthquake out there. Nor have I. I was out there for four years, dude. And I was there when earthquakes happen. And I never realized it and felt anything. Friends of mine would be like, dude, did you feel that this morning? Yeah. No, I have no idea. Did they use a lot of that, um, honey that comes in the little bear? Yes. Did they? I'll bet they did. Dude. Uh, that's what they're saying, Kelly. Gotcha. Chuck, I've never experienced an earthquake either. The closest, um, thing to an earthquake story I have involves earthquake proofing. Let's hear it. Remember my friend Hippie Rob? Oh, yeah. Hippie Rob did

a little time out in San... Also a fan of the Honey Bear? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hippie Rob did a, uh, some time out in San Quentin, actually. Really? Yeah. Here's the thing. He was not looking forward to doing San Quentin. I imagine. Um, and he finds out that right when he gets there that, um, he and all of the other relatively light offenders are going to be moved to Folsom Prison, which was undergoing earthquake proofing construction. Really? Right. So they were going to keep all of the light offenders at Folsom and then move all the light offenders at San Quentin over to Folsom. And then they moved all like the murderers and rapists and pedarasts to, uh, that were at San Quentin. No, at Folsom over to San Quentin. Wow. That's my earthquake story. Good for Folsom.

So Hippie Rob got off easy. Yeah. He was with light offenders in Folsom. Right. Yeah. Did he, they actually have to work on the earthquake proofing? Were they put to work or was it just going off? Oh, I don't think so. Okay. Would you trust the guy named Hippie Rob to earthquake proof your prison? I would not. I wouldn't either. So let's talk about earthquakes. Let's do it. Can I, you want a little history? I did some extra research. Let's hear it. So before, uh, 1915, we didn't really have much of a conception of what was going on geologically with, with the continents. Right. Was it just anyone's guess at that point? Yeah. I think you were, I could have come up with an adequate theory. We'd be like ghosts or something like that.

Right. Um, but the ghost was not an acceptable explanation for a guy named Alfred Wegener. Okay. Uh, he's German clearly. Okay. Cause his last name begins with a W, but I pronounced it with a V, which is a dead giveaway for a German is a German. Right. Um, so Wegener, um, was actually an astronomer by training, but he was fascinated with geology, and he became increasingly fascinated when he found out that there had been fossils, identical plant and animal fossils found, um, on, uh, the, let's see, that would be the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa. And at the time, the predominant theory was that there were land bridges that were now underwater. And that's how these species would have gotten

together. Wegener, he thought, I don't know that that's entirely true. And he also noted that Africa kind of looked like it could fit into South America. Interesting point. So he started thinking about it and thinking about it. And he realized that some, he, he postulated about 300 million years ago, all of the continents were hooked together, right, which he called one big stinking massive land. Right. In Greek, that would be Pangea. Yes. And, uh, so Pangea starts to break apart. And, uh, basically, Wegener, uh, postulated that the, the continents were in fact still drifting. He thought that they were basically plowing along the ocean and it was due to centrifugal force and spinning of the tidal movement. Right. And tidal movement. Make, you know, makes sense

for the time. It's back in 1915. Sure. Um, he was right about the continents drifting. We know that, but not with the centrifugal force or the tidal movement. One of his rivals calculated that, for the tides to move a continent, that, that kind of force would actually stop the rotation of the earth in less than 12 months. Right. So that wasn't it. But he was right about the continents drifting. Um, he was pretty much ridiculed during his lifetime, but in the 1950s and 60s, as we got more and more acquainted with, um, the, the actual ridges along the plates, they figured out that Wegener had been right. The continents were in fact drifting, not in the way he thought. Right. Go Wegener. Go Wegener. That's the history lesson. That's good.

And I didn't know that. I know. I told you it was extra research. I'm impressed. I like that. And that's continental drift theory. Right. Sure. Once we figure this out, that actually, the, uh, what is that the lithosphere, the surface of the earth, which all these different plates make up are actually moving along the Athena sphere, which is this layer of rock that actually, it is a lubricant. It behaves like a liquid because of the heat and pressure. Right. Right. So it's the goop in between the plates that's kind of cushioning everything. Right. I like that. And we figured this out. I didn't, you didn't, but you know, geologists did. And once we figured it out, we realized that that explains all sorts of stuff like volcanoes,

trenches, yes, mountains under ocean bridges under the ocean. But most importantly, this podcast, it also explains. Yeah. Volcanoes, plate tectonics, earthquakes. It's good stuff. Earthquakes. No, volcanoes. Okay. Tsunami. Well, so wait, we're going to switch mid podcast and do how volcanoes work. Let's just make it up. Yeah, it really does. It explains earthquakes. And it all makes sense. And I love plate tectonics. Who doesn't, you know, just the thought of our earth, I don't know, stuff like this makes me feel insignificant and a good way that the, you know, we're kind of on this earth humans and we think we're all that, but we're really at the whim of whatever the earth decided to do. There was something going on at the core that we didn't

know about right now. And all of a sudden everything started going haywire. We'd be powerless. Oh yeah. So I kind of like that insignificant feeling occasionally. I mean, we're powerless to, you know, baseball size hail. Yeah, exactly. You know, let alone the movement of continents. Yeah. Yeah. You want some stats, Josh? Chuck, I knew you'd bring those up. There are actually many, many, many earthquakes all the time. You just don't feel them all. They don't get attention. If you don't feel them and they don't get attention if they're not where people are, which a lot of them are as well or away from people. There's one earthquake every 11 seconds, Josh. That's 8,000 per day and about 3 million per year. Actually, the US Geological Survey maintains a site, Chuck,

that has like updated earthquake activity around the world. Did you know about, let's see, six hours ago there was a 6.7 earthquake in Papua New Guinea? Dude, really? That's big. Yeah. It's a pretty cool site. Anything over seven is a major. It's a big time major. Yeah, we'll get to the Richter scale in a few. Don't give it away. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that many earthquakes is a lot, but you don't feel them if they're, if they're, most of them are deep underground. Right. Or in uninhabited areas. Exactly. And so unless it's in a major city or something and killing folks, it's not going to make the news. Right. But speaking of killing folks, I got one more stat. I like this one. 1.5 million people have died from

earthquake-related activity in the last hundred years alone. And you know, earthquakes get a really bad rap, Chuck, because really most of those deaths are attributed to, you know, collapsed structures or tsunamis or mudslides generated by the earthquake. Exactly. It's not like the earthquake just opens up, the earth opens up, people swallowed into it like the movies. Except in Superman. True. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. He reversed it though, dude. Oh yeah. By flying very fast. And he lied to Lex Luthor's girlfriend doing so too. He did. Jerk. Crickets. Josh, I think we should get back to tectonics. Okay. Let's talk about plates under the earth. Okay. And what can happen basically when these things meet up, the two plates meet up. Right.

Which where they, where two plates meet is a fault. Right. Right. You probably heard of the San Andreas Fault Line in California. Very famous fault. Faults are where most earthquakes happen. Right. I keep on saying volcanoes. It's so weird. So what happens when plates get together is they can do a couple of things. They can move apart from each other. In that case, the magma comes out, magma turns into lava, that cools and hardens, and then it kind of reforms as part of the structure. So it's like the cube you oozes through and then makes it more solid. Right. And then it cools and you have a new land mass formed. Exactly. Right. We should also probably point out here to any people who believe in the hollow earth theory that we're discussing is based on the notion that

the earth's core is molten. Okay. Yeah. Sure. Nice. So go ahead, Chuck. Disclamer there. What kind of fault was that that you just described? Well, no, that wasn't a fault. That's just what happens when the plates move apart. When the plates push together, one oftentimes one will go underneath the other. Like they'll meet up, then one will slide under the other one, and it dissolves basically at that point. And the final thing, Josh, is the plates can slide against each other. So they just kind of pass in the night basically, just kind of moving by each other very slowly. Right. And all these different things that I'm talking about where these plates meet, that is where we get to the faults. Right. There's four kinds, right? Yes, indeed. There's four kinds that can either go

vertically or horizontally as far as the faults are concerned. You've got the normal fault and the reverse fault. Those are vertical faults, right? Uh-huh. So the normal fault is where the plates actually move away from one another. The reverse fault is where they move together. Right. Right. And then you have ones that move horizontally, which I think the San Andreas fault is a horizontal fault. Is it a thrust fault? I think it's either a thrust fault or a strike slip fault. Okay. So it's basically the same thing, except along horizontal lines rather than vertical, right? Yeah. But no matter which way they're moving, they can be moving apart, moving together horizontally or vertically. All fault lines are basically where plates are

still pressing together. Right. Very tightly. Right. And when they press together, they're eventually going to get locked. Yeah. Because of friction. Right. But the pressure's still going. They still want to move. So all this potential energy is being built up. Uh-huh. And as it builds and builds and builds, the pressure eventually overcomes the resistance. And all of a sudden you have a slip. Yep. It breaks. It does. And that's actually the epicenter, the focus of the earthquake, where that happens. Right there. That is the key. That is what an earthquake is. Yes. Is when the initial fault break or more that happened later on occur. So there you have it. We really paid that out in a dramatic fashion, didn't we?

Did we? Oh, yeah. It didn't feel that dramatic to me. It will when we listen to this. Maybe it's because I know the ending. So Chuck. We all die. Right. That's the ending. I can't believe you gave it away. Oh. For food lovers, there's no place on earth like Mississippi, where sweet, spicy, and smoky flavors satisfy your spirits. Wherever you wonder. Plan today, visit Mississippi.org slash dining. Mississippi. Wanderers welcome. Your family's health is a top priority. That's why we are conducting research with the goal of helping people who have COVID-19 stay out of the hospital and feel better faster. Learn more at active6study.org slash radio. That's A-C-T-I-V-6 study.org slash radio. So fault zones. That's where there's

lots of faults together. Connected. Right. Yeah. So one of those, one of those faults slipping, one of that, a place where the potential energy turns kinetic all of a sudden can actually trigger faults or it can actually trigger movement along other faults that are connected. Those fault zones you mentioned, right? Right. That's why earthquakes often happen in series. It's more than more than one. Right. And they almost always happen along the faults, but I know that very, one very famous earthquake in 1811 and 1812. Which I didn't, did that happen in like December 31st and January 1st or what? Oh, I don't know. That's a good point. Thanks. 1811 and 1812. That'd be one long earthquake. Yeah, it would be. We'll find out

about that. But that occurred in the middle of a plate, in the middle of the North American continental plate, which is odd at the time. But it was, they found out later that deep beneath the earth, that was in fact a 600 million year old fault zone. So yeah, there you have it. Yeah. So it's the, some way or another, right? There's a fault zone involved. Indeed. So Chuck, we actually have a way to measure earthquakes. We measure them through their seismic waves, right? Seismic waves. Which seismic waves are the energy that radiates from their focus. Uh-huh. And it acts as a wave, much like a wave in water. Right, like if you were to throw a sound wave. A rock and a pond, that kind of thing. There's two different types of waves, two major

types of waves. You have body waves. Uh-huh. And you have surface waves. Yes. So let's talk about body waves first. Yes, they move through the inside of the earth, the inner part of the earth. Right. And well, there's two different kinds. There's primary and secondary body waves. Yeah, P waves. P waves. Or S waves. Right. It's easy to remember. Sure. Pneumonic induction and lucid dreaming, etc. Right. They travel about one to five miles per second. Faster than I thought. The P waves, too. Uh-huh. Yeah. And they're actually, they can move through solid, liquid, or gas. Yes, they cannot be stopped. No. So they can actually go from one end of the earth to the other. Well, they do, too. Every time. Isn't that correct? I don't know. I think that's what it says. Oh,

we'll find out. Uh, and these, these, the, the P waves actually, they affect the stuff that they're moving, like say rock horizontally. Right. So it shakes back and forth on a horizontal plane. Right. Okay. And like you said, they're the fastest. So they get their first, but I got the impression that they caused the least amount of damage. And you have secondary waves, right? Secondary body waves. Yeah, that's the problem. Well, they're the first problem because they displace rock perpendicularly to the direction of the weight, right? Right. So you remember the movie tremors? Oh yeah, loved it. So you remember the worms going underground and it was displacing dirt up on the earth's surface? Yeah. Same thing. Yeah, exactly. That's like, that's like a secondary

wave, an S wave. Yeah, I love that your quoting tremors is our scientific backup. I love that one. That's great. Fred Ward classic. So, so actually that was Kevin Bacon. Well, that line was Kevin Bacon. Yeah, that was such a good one. It's probably one of my top fives. It's a good one. Yeah. Um, so let's, let's talk about surface waves. You want to? Well, uh, we should actually just say real quick though that they don't travel through solid material. The secondary waves. Yeah, the S waves don't. Yeah. So they stopped at liquid, the liquid earth's core. Right. Or if you believe in the hollow earth theory, they would stop when it became hollow because it doesn't travel through gas apparently either. Right. Yeah. They would stop at the temple of doom. Yeah. According to the

hollow earth theory. Can we talk about surface waves yet? Yes. We're there. Let's do it. They're like more like the waves in a body of water. Right. They move the earth up and down. Did you see some of the pictures in this article? Uh huh. This is a really cool article for pictures. There's actually a page, a picture page of nothing but earthquake aftermath pictures. Right. And there were cool interactive things too when you talked about the plate shifting, some animations that you can click on. Did you see the one with the railroad tracks? I did. What was that, Peru? I don't remember. There's a picture in this article of railroad tracks that basically just make a perfect S because of the surface waves that hit it during an earthquake. Well, the crops that

shifted too. That was really cool. Instead of the crops being in a straight line, they had the wave in them. Yeah. So that's all due to surface waves. Surface waves are the ones that cause the most damage as far as we're concerned. Yeah. If you're like, you know, a mole man or something, you're probably going to be more afraid of secondary body waves. Right. Up top side, we're afraid of, you know, the surface waves, the L waves or long waves is what they're called as well. Top dwellers that we are. Right. So they cause the worst damage because they move the earth up and down. Like you said, a wave, a water wave in the ocean. Yeah, exactly. We don't, we don't build our buildings generally to withstand wave like motion. No. Well, they've done a lot of work though to build

buildings that can rock back and forth and move a little bit and have the foundation shift. Sure. It's called earthquake. What we were talking about reinforcement. Sure. Some of my apartments in LA actually had were reinforced. You could tell like in the walls, they would have these bars running up and stuff. Yeah. As far as I know, Japan's on like the cutting edge of earthquake proofing of everything. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of earthquakes in Japan. Yeah. And robots. And volcanoes. Where are we now, Josh? You want to talk about Richter scale yet or? I think that's the inevitable conclusion. So Josh, the Richter scale is, as most people know, records a magnitude of the earthquake. It's logarithmic. So that means that a whole number of jump means it increases

tenfold. So a six on the Richter scale is actually 10 times as powerful as a five. Right. And a nine is 100 times as powerful as a seven. How about that? Yeah. That's serious business. And what the Richter scale does is it measures the wave amplitude of the seismic energy of a quake. And so that's the one you always hear about. Like I talked about that one in Papua New Guinea was a 6.7. Right. Which is large. Anything below a three generally doesn't get much attention. This is just a little trimmer. A micro quake. It's kind of hard to say. And that's the vast majority of earthquakes or three or less, right? Yeah. You won't see anything below a four. You won't see a lot of damage going on. But anything seven and above is a pretty serious business. And I know the record

is a 9.5. I looked this up. 1960 Chile. Right. You ready for some stats of my own? I'll look at you. I mean imagine a 9.5 on the Richter scale. It's immense. Devastating. There were 1665 people killed, 3000 injured and 200,000 homeless in Chile alone. Wow. Along with 550 million dollars in damage, property damage. And what year was this? 1960. So that's 1960 dollars? That's the impression I have. Yeah. Wow. It created a tsunami that killed 61 people and caused 75 million dollars worth of damage all the way in Hawaii. You're kidding. And in Japan there were 138 deaths and 50 million dollars worth of damage. Wow. Yeah. And it just kind of goes on from there. You know what they said about that 1810 slash 11 earthquake in Missouri was that the church bells

in Boston rang from the reverberation? I know that's nuts. Yeah. I want to verify that. It's a big old earthquake right there. So what you're talking about though with assessing the damage, that is actually the Mercale scale. Right. The damage done by the earthquake, which has figured out many days or weeks later. Right. Not like the Richter scale. I call that the why us God scale. Right. Yeah. That's a good word. It's described in Roman numerals up to 12, which you can also say is XII. Right. And XII is where there is evidence structural damage. The ground is opened up. Sure. Like in the movies. Yeah. And there's been at least a tsunami or a mudslide or some other disaster. Right. Yeah. My brother felt earthquake when he was in LA. His mom comes back

to your brother. Did he look handsome? Much more exciting things happened to him out there. I guess he said it felt like a buzzing, like a real loud buzzing. And then he looked at his closet and the clothes were shaking. And you know, it's over then, you know, as soon as you realize what's going on, it's over. Yeah. I read about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. They said that the sensible duration of the earthquake was a minute. Really? Which I imagine probably felt like an hour killed 3000 people. Well, that's that just goes to show you the kind of devastation. If it only takes 60 seconds to wreak that kind of havoc, what's going on? Well, a lot of it was fires that broke out after word as well. Yeah. Buildings collapsing. Sure. Very scary stuff.

So Chuck. Well, we can't predict earthquakes. We do need to close with that, I think. Okay. They've come a long way in determining the epicenter and they can predict aftershocks pretty well now. And they can say, Hey, due to history, you're likely to have an earthquake because we think things are moving in your area. The plates may be moving, but they can't accurately say when it's going to happen. Yeah. I remember being a little kid and I think some scientists came out and said there's going to be a massive earthquake in, you know, San Francisco or California that's going to basically cause the state to break off. That's a pretty fun thing to talk about. They couldn't say when it was going to happen. They said within the next X number of decades.

This is on scare of student day at your school. Yeah. So if you have any relatives in California, they will likely die. And I do have relatives in California too. You did at the time? I still do. Hey, Aunt Barb. Okay. Yeah. Aunt Barb? Aunt Barb, cousin Jessamy and cousin Wolf, along with cousin Peter, cousin John. And I think that's it out there. Oh, and Aunt Donna. Wow. Yeah. Crazy names. Oh, they live in California. Wolf. He actually, you want to know a Wolfie story? Sure. This may or may not make it in the final version, but I'll tell you Chuck. Um, cousin Wolf was born Eric Wolf, right? His first and middle name. When he was like 11 or 12, he decided he preferred the name Wolf more. So he got his parents permission and went down to the clerk of courts and changed

his name to Wolf Eric. Really? And he's been Wolfie ever since. That's pretty funny. Yeah. What a guy. Uh, and then, um, I guess we already kind of talked about building construction. 1973 is when the uniform building code came about and it's a set of standards basically that people have to follow now. Right. Whether you're in Folsom Prison, right, San Quentin, Japan, you got to follow certain standards. Chile. Sure. Oh yeah, especially Chile. You name it. So that's earthquakes in a nutshell. And we're not doing this one again unless they, they figure out that the continental drift theory was complete rubbish. Right. Yeah. Good stuff, Josh. Oh, and also we should probably tell people Chuck, there is an article on how to survive an earthquake at

howstuffworks.com. Right. You can type survive earthquake in the handy search bar, save yourself a few keystrokes and that'll bring that right up. Good idea. And also you can just type in earthquakes and it'll also bring up the, uh, how earthquakes work article with all those super cool pictures, right? Yeah. Yeah. Let's do listener mail, buddy. Okay. Josh, I'm just going to call this sleep paralysis deluge. It was a deluge, wasn't it? Yeah. Uh, last, well, it'll be last week now, a couple of weeks ago, probably when this is released, we had a listener mail from Drowsy Doug in Oregon who had the pig suit man. He was awake, but couldn't move and very frightened. And apparently everyone on the face of the earth knew that this is sleep paralysis, but us. Yep.

And I'd heard of sleep paralysis. Me too. Uh, never done a whole lot of research on it, but rest assured we will do, uh, an episode on this now. So here's the delusion of paper cup, Chuck. Yeah. Well, I also want to say I did not respond to any of those emails and I am very sorry, but we got literally over a hundred of them and I just didn't have time, but it did read them. Sure. So no offense, people. And out of all the emails we got about that one from medical and psychological professionals, I went with Madeleine, our new 13 year old fan because hers was so good. Hey guys, did you just listen to your podcast with Drowsy Doug? It sounds like what happens to me. I would be laying in bed and wake up. Unfortunately, I'm too lazy and tired to get up,

but then I would see things out of this world. Like one time I woke up and I was too tired to get up and I saw, it seems to be a common thing, and I saw in my huge half a sofa sized mirror, my sister, half her body was in the mirror frozen while the rest of her was bending and moving around to my dresser. Awesome. Another time I saw army guys getting pulled onto my roof. Please don't give me any cures for this because I like seeing Navy Seal guys climbing to my roof. Yeah. So that's from Madeleine and Madeleine. It sounds like you might have a little case of sleep paralysis, but as long as there's no pig suited people or bloody faces, we'll follow up with the podcast on this and condition and a lot of people, it sounds like they have it actually,

a lot of people are running. Yeah. They're right there with Doug. Yeah. We keep making these promises, don't you? Yeah, we'll do it. All right. Well, if you want to basically boss chucking me around and get us to do a podcast, send us your ideas to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more how stuff works? Check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Thank you. For people who love food, there's no place on earth quite like Mississippi, where a melting pot of culinary talent blends the flavors of yesterday and today.

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