++If your friends have started throwing lavish, time-intensive birthday celebrations, here’s how to navigate. +
++The celebration was threefold: a dinner, a boozy art class, and a day party, held over the course of a weekend last October. Ashlee Kelly, 35, had committed to attending every festivity during the multi-day function, all in honor of a friend she’d known since high school. To get there, Kelly, a college and career coach, her husband, and their two young children caught a flight from Tampa Bay, where they live, to Maryland, to the hometown of the guest of honor. +
++The dinner, on a Saturday night, went off without incident. But by Sunday, after the four-hour paint-and-sip, Kelly was starting to have second thoughts about the party, scheduled to begin immediately after. She was exhausted from the long day of artistry and wine, and felt she’d spent enough time away from her husband and children. So Kelly decided not to complete the trifecta and bowed out of the final event. Kelly’s friend, the host, was not pleased. +
++“She just stopped talking to me,” Kelly says. The pair haven’t spoken since. +
++The weekend-long celebration in question was not commemorating a hugely significant milestone, such as upcoming nuptials or the birth of a child, but something far more mundane and universal: a birthday. That a nearly two-decade friendship crumbled over a missed birthday party — one she crossed state lines to attend — was painful, Kelly says. “I’m still mourning it,” she says, “because it’s honestly like you’re grieving.” +
++Kelly has grown accustomed to big asks from her friends on their birthdays. This spring, one pal suggested for her special day flying to Las Vegas to see Usher perform, a trip that Kelly says would’ve cost her thousands. Another friend recently hosted a dinner party at a restaurant, followed by a no-kids-allowed bash on the beach a few days later. “She has two sons, so it’s not like she doesn’t have kids,” Kelly says. She estimates she attends five to six blowout birthday parties a year. +
++While Kelly tries her best to accommodate her friends’ wishes on their birthdays, she is often put in a tough position, having to choose between her family and her companions. For the invitations she does decline, some friends see it as a personal rebuff. +
++Depending on who you talk to, birthdays rank as one of the most significant days of the year. Who better to spend it with than your closest confidantes? A YouGov poll of 1,000 Americans showed that 72 percent spend at least some of their birthdays with friends. +
++Among certain circles, however, birthday parties have ballooned beyond the standard dinner and cake. While lavish birthday celebrations give single and child-free adults an opportunity to bask in the spotlight for a day (or week) similar to the effect of weddings and baby showers, throwing yearly massive events can strain a relationship. Fêtes can now encompass weekend trips, expensive experiences — think multi-course meals, excursions, and concerts — or multiple events over many days. TikToker Sabrina Brier pithily parodied the “birthday weekend” archetype in a recent clip: “This weekend it’s Katie’s birthday weekend, so we have a lot of birthday plans she’s lined up,” she tells an off-camera friend. “So I’m going to be kind of out of commission.” In the Unpopular Opinion subreddit, a lively debate ensued on a 2020 thread titled “Your birthday is a DAY, not a weekend, not a week.” “Omg yes,” one Redditor wrote. “My bf’s stupid ass friend has a birthday week and demands gifts everyday. 1st day: a gift from her past that she used to like 2nd day: a gift for the future 3rd day: something random 4: food 5: idk 6: idk 7th: her actual birthday and more gifts from family.” +
++These lavish affairs are even causing some to go into debt. According to a recent Credit Karma report, 36 percent of Gen Z and millennials said they have a friend who drives them to overspend; of those, 15 percent of Gen Z, 21 percent of millennials, and 29 percent of Gen X respondents cite birthday celebrations as the reason for their spendthrift behavior, according to additional unpublished Credit Karma data shared with Vox. Birthdays that start to look more like bachelorette parties can be off-putting for those accustomed to more modest celebrations or for those whose budgets can’t accommodate high-priced affairs. Hosts may misread their friends’ lack of enthusiasm or funds as rejection, potentially causing a rift in the relationship. +
++A confluence of factors has contributed to the birthday scope creep, experts say. Pandemic lockdowns and foregone birthday celebrations created a demand for parties. The years surrounding a 21st birthday are crucial years for friendships, says Grace Vieth, a PhD student at the Social Interaction Lab at the University of Minnesota. Being isolated from friends during your early 20s — years meant for bonding and adventuring with peers — can exacerbate the feeling that you need to play catch-up. “People are seeking those experiences that they had, or that they wanted to have, in their early 20s, but now it’s really hard for people to do that because they’re investing in their jobs, in their career, in their romantic partnerships. Maybe they’re even having kids,” Vieth says. +
++Social media, notably TikTok and Instagram, can create the false narrative that everyone you know is having a blowout bash. Celebrators may also hold the belief that they aren’t sufficiently loved unless they are being celebrated in a visible way. As Americans rethink traditional milestones — like delaying or forgoing marriage and having children — perhaps birthdays can fulfill the need for a memorable celebration. +
++How we celebrate birthdays +
++Birthday parties are a relatively recent phenomenon. While some ancient cultures such as the Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians marked the anniversary of birth, only high-ranking adult men were awarded such an honor. By the end of the 18th century, upper-class families in North America and Western Europe began more regularly celebrating children’s birthdays, but these events took place in the home and were centered around family. +
++The democratization of birthdays arrived in the early 20th century when everyone, regardless of age, gender, and social class, partook in the tradition of blowing out candles on the cake as a means of “understanding the individual existence as worth celebrating.” For children, birthday parties were seen as part of a normal and happy childhood. In the 1980s, birthday parties went through a commercial transformation: No longer hosted primarily at home, celebrations were held at venues like fast food restaurants, museums, bowling alleys, arcades, and other recreation centers. +
++As these children of the 1980s — and beyond — aged into adulthood, the love affair with birthday parties remained. Over half of Americans say they attended at least one birthday party in the last year, according to a YouGov poll, and 84 percent of people say they like or love the event — more than any other type of special occasion (such as a wedding or housewarming party). +
++The impending anniversary of your birth provides ample opportunity to reflect on your life and the people in it. Birthdays, according to one academic paper, strengthen one’s sense of belonging and importance: “[T]he birthday ceremony allows the celebrant to absorb positive impressions about himself.” When a friend fails to recognize your birthday, you may begin to question whether they’re a true friend after all. “I would argue that this is a day when, compared to all other days, you are looking for some demonstration that [friends] support you,” says friendship coach Danielle Bayard Jackson. +
++While Jackson’s coaching clients may not initially seek her out with specific birthday-related conundrums in mind, very often the roots of their conflicts trace back to a slight or disappointment that transpired during a birthday. The tension around birthday expectations arises frequently enough that Jackson dedicated an episode of her podcast to the phenomenon. “Some of this is tied to the idea that a true marker of friendship is you shouldn’t have to say what you need” on your birthday, Jackson says. “That’s very romantic, but you’re never going to get to a point of closeness where it transcends the need to communicate.” +
++The lofty expectations surrounding birthdays +
++Kenneth Miller has admittedly always set high expectations for his birthday, but “something always happens,” he says. On his 19th birthday, for instance, he planned a massive house party, but in an effort to not invite a certain acquaintance, Miller lied and said he wanted a low-key celebration. The acquaintance “turned around and told everybody else that I just wanted to keep it small, so nobody came,” Miller says. +
++This year, for his 21st birthday, Miller, a student, spent months planning a weekend road trip from his hometown of Phoenix to San Diego with three friends he’s known since middle school. Not only did Miller struggle to get his friends to commit to the trip, once the group arrived, Miller says, his friends slept in late, claimed food prices were too expensive, and seemed disinterested while at bars. While Miller acknowledges these friends are fairly introverted and don’t celebrate their own birthdays, he wanted to honor the milestone year with the people he knows best. “I think it really just came down to we had different priorities,” Miller says. +
++Potential conflict arises when reality doesn’t align with expectations. Written into the social contract of any friendship are a number of expectations, according to Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies and the director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kansas. Hall has narrowed the expectations of an ideal friendship down to six buckets, ranging from similarity with the other person to enjoying their company. Where does acknowledging a birthday fall within these defined assumptions of friendship? “It doesn’t,” Hall says. Conflict in friendship arises when two people have differing ideas on what it is to be a friend, Hall explains. In this gray area, tensions brew, say, if the birthday honoree expects their best friend to throw them a surprise party but the BFF considers a thoughtful text message sufficient acknowledgment. +
++Social media influences how we celebrate and want to be celebrated +
++If people aren’t clearly sharing their birthday expectations with their friends, they might be letting these expectations get shaped by social media. When social feeds are populated with images and videos of birthday vacations and ornate balloon backdrops, people begin to take these over-the-top gestures as commonplace. Just as social media comparison fueled the excesses of the wedding industry, a similar normalization of grandeur is transforming birthdays. “There’s an amount of consumerism that’s a part of this,” says therapist Shade Adekunle. “This desire of ‘I have to do it bigger and better than other people.’” +
++Tori D’Amico thought organizing a picnic for her 22nd birthday would be simple to execute, but the two days she spent baking a bright pink cake proved otherwise. The inspiration for the picnic came from TikTok, where the Philadelphia-based writer saw clips of other women with picturesque spreads. “It was all because I wanted to have something that felt special,” D’Amico, now 23, says, “because it looked like it felt special for other people.” +
++Rather than let online trends dictate the nature of a celebration, Jackson suggests removing outside influence altogether. “If you weren’t allowed to take pictures of your birthday gathering, what would you do?” she says. The pomp and circumstance of an event — and how that event is portrayed online — can overshadow the celebrant’s true intentions: to honor life and relationships. +
++The wedding-ification of birthdays +
++As priorities shift and companions see each other less frequently, the more birthday parties are used as an excuse for friends to get together. However, when these celebrations begin to have the time and financial obligation typically associated with weddings or bachelorette parties, attendees need to prioritize certain events over others. Savannah, Georgia-based Aysia Woods has reached an age where many of her peers are simultaneously celebrating 30th birthdays, engagements, and marriages. “There’s so much to pay for,” says the 30-year-old entrepreneur and graduate student, “and it’s a bummer because I want to say yes to everybody’s wedding, everybody’s bachelorette, and everybody’s birthday, but it’s just like, I can’t afford it.” When weighing what events to attend, Woods considers how close she is with the host and whether she can show her support in other ways to the invites she declines. Due to academic and financial obligations, Woods turned down an invite to Miami for a friend’s 30th birthday but helped the host plan the event by curating a list of hotel and Airbnb options. +
++Considering the abundance of events afforded to coupled adults and parents — bridal and baby showers, bachelor and bachelorette parties, weddings, housewarming parties — some people may see celebrating their birthday as settling the score. “I have certainly had conversations with women who are single and child-free who speak to feeling a certain disappointment because they feel that there’s a lack of reciprocity in how they’re celebrated,” Jackson says. “Feeling like, I have to show up in all these ways because these milestones have more of a cultural reference than the milestones I’m experiencing in my life.” +
++Woods even attended a birthday that had the aesthetics of a wedding. A family friend’s 43rd birthday was held in a banquet hall, complete with a DJ and catering. “I just couldn’t figure out why are we doing this for a 43rd?” she says. “I’m so conflicted. Because I’m like, you made it to another year. That’s always a reason to celebrate.” +
++Surviving another revolution around the sun is significant enough for many to honor their birth. “I really disliked myself for a really long time,” says Kenneth Miller, the student in Phoenix who was disappointed by his friends’ lax attitudes during his birthday trip. Now that he’s more at home in his skin and empowered to ask for what he wants on his birthday, Miller wants the moments he celebrates himself to live up to his expectations. +
++“Now that I’m at a spot where I’m more comfortable with that,” he says, “it makes me want to do even more because I didn’t have the chance to do it at all growing up.” +
++A massive quake near Marrakesh on Friday night has killed more than 1,000. +
++More than 1,000 people are dead after a powerful earthquake with a magnitude of at least 6.8 hit Morocco Friday night near the city of Marrakesh, the largest such quake to hit the country decades. +
++The death toll is rapidly climbing as rescue workers search the towns and villages around the epicenter in the High Atlas Mountains and make their way through the rubble of Marrakesh’s old city, located about 70 kilometers north. Morocco’s leader, King Mohammed VI, has called upon the military to conduct search and rescue efforts, and other nations including France, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey have pledged their support with the operation. +
++The area near the quake’s epicenter is known for its small, scenic villages tucked into the mountains while Marrakesh is an international tourist destination with a history dating back to the Middle Ages. The famous red walls representing the city’s boundary, as well as the Kutubiyya mosque in the old city, had both been damaged in the quake, but the full extent is still unknown. +
++Many Buildings in the old city are hundreds of years old; the Kutubiyya mosque dates back to the 12th century. Because earthquakes are rare in Morocco, structures are not built to withstand them as they might be in a city like San Francisco or Tokyo. Additionally, the quake was just 18 kilometers below ground, according to the United States Geological Survey, likely increasing the damage and portending a high death toll. “I would expect the final death toll to climb into the thousands once more is known,” Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London told the Associated Press. “As with any big quake, aftershocks are likely, which will lead to further casualties and hinder search and rescue.” +
++Both Marrakesh and the surrounding areas have a high population density, which will likely impact the casualty count. Though the impacted region itself has a population of around 1.8 million, parts of Marrakesh are more densely populated than Manhattan, according to a New York Times analysis of data from WorldPop, a project from the University of Southampton in Britain. +
++Earthquake science has improved in recent decades and insight into fault lines and possible quake locations is far clearer than it was in the past, which can help drive policy and preparation. But it’s still impossible to predict when earthquakes will happen — making it all the more important that vulnerable regions are prepared to withstand the disaster. +
++Here’s how Morocco’s government is handling the crisis +
++Morocco does have a prime minister, Aziz Akhannouch, but the king has final say in matters of state, according to Morocco’s constitution. Any international aid will have to be at Mohammed’s invitation. +
++The monarchy is an important institution to Morocco’s national identity, and dates back to the 8th century. Mohammed’s father, Hassan II, ruled for 38 years at a time of post-colonial transition for Morocco and the African continent more broadly; though he has a complicated legacy, he was a notable presence on the world stage and cultivated friendships with the US and Israel. +
++Mohammed, however, is often absent from his country, and not for diplomatic trips — he returned to Morocco this spring after extended trips abroad to France and Gabon, and is often seen in the company of German-born Moroccan Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Abu Bakr Azaitar and his brothers. Though they haven’t been nearly as visible since Mohamed’s return, Moroccan press outlets often denigrate the brothers and express concern about their influence over the monarch, the Financial Times reported last month. +
++Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces have deployed helicopters, drones, and airplanes in the search and rescue mission, according to the Associated Press; travel by land to affected areas has been made extremely challenging due to traffic and debris from the quake. Mèdecins sans Frontières announced Saturday that it would send a team to Morocco and was already coordinating with local authorities. +
++Mohammed himself has not been seen or heard from since the quake; even his order to deploy forces for search and rescue was relayed through the Moroccan Army. Even though countries like Japan, Israel, and Turkey have offered support — and three French regions have even pledged $2 million for relief efforts— it’s not clear whether the king has accepted that aid. +
++Though Morocco is relatively stable in comparison with neighbors like Libya and Tunisia, it’s still contending with serious economic strife — including an agricultural sector suffering from prolonged droughts, and a tourism industry still recovering form the Covid-19 pandemic, not to mention crippling inflation due to the war in Ukraine. +
++Friday night’s earthquake is reminiscent of the one that rocked southern Turkey and parts of northern Syria in February, where inadequate infrastructure also contributed to the high casualty count and delayed search and rescue efforts. Though reforms to improve the buildings’ resistance to earthquakes were introduced in 2011, they have not been uniformly adopted in all of Morocco’s earthquake zones, the New York Times reported, and quality checks in poorer and rural areas are infrequent. +
++A massive quake in Morocco killed more than a thousand people. Here are eight things to know about these seismic events. +
++A powerful magnitude 6.8 earthquake rocked Morocco Friday night, the largest tremor to hit the country in at least 120 years. Officials report more than 1,000 people have died and expect the death toll to rise as rescuers reach remote afflicted areas. +
++Such strong earthquakes are rare in North Africa, which means few structures are designed to withstand them and residents have little experience responding when a quake occurs. +
++But earthquakes can still be deadly in earthquake-prone regions. In February, a huge magnitude 7.8 earthquake rattled across Turkey and Syria early Monday morning. Another quake with a magnitude of 7.7 rocked the region a few hours later. The quakes killed more than 50,000 people and toppled more than 6,600 buildings in the region. +
++Two major fault lines cross the Turkey and trigger shocks on a regular basis. Larger quakes are less frequent, but still a regular occurrence. Last November, Turkey suffered a magnitude 5.9 quake. A magnitude 7.0 quake rocked the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece in 2020. +
++While scientists have drastically improved their understanding of where earthquakes are likely to occur, forecasting when one will occur is still impractical. The rumbling earth can easily catch people off-guard, worsening the ensuing death and destruction. +
++In light of the recent disasters, here’s a refresher on earthquakes, along with some of the latest science on measuring and predicting them. +
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+- What causes earthquakes
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++An earthquake occurs when massive blocks of the earth’s crust suddenly move past each other. These blocks, called tectonic plates, lie on top of the earth’s mantle, a layer that behaves like a very slow-moving liquid over millions of years. +
++That means tectonic plates jostle each other over time. They can also slide on top of each other, a phenomenon called subduction. The places on the planet where one plate meets another are the most prone to earthquakes. The specific surfaces where parcels of earth slip past each other are called faults. As plates move, pressure builds up across their boundaries, while friction holds them in place. When the former overwhelms the latter, the earth shakes as the pent-up energy dissipates. +
++Scientists understand these kinds of earthquakes well, which include those stemming from the San Andreas Fault in California and the East Anatolian Fault in Turkey. However, earthquakes can also occur within tectonic plates, as pressure along their edges cause deformations in the middle. These risks are harder to detect and measure. +
++“Our understanding of these within-plate earthquakes is not as good,” said Stanford University geophysics professor Greg Beroza. An earthquake within a tectonic plate has fewer telltale signs than those that occur at fault lines, he added. +
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+- The Richter scale isn’t the only measurement game in town anymore
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++The Richter scale, developed by Charles Richter in 1935 to measure quakes in Southern California, has fallen out of fashion. +
++It uses a logarithmic scale, rather than a linear scale, to account for the fact that there is such a huge difference between the tiniest tremors and tower-toppling temblors. On a logarithmic scale, a magnitude 7 earthquake is 10 times more intense than a magnitude 6 and 100 times more intense than a magnitude 5. +
++The Richter scale is actually measuring the peak amplitude of seismic waves, making it an indirect estimate of the earthquake itself. So if an earthquake is like a rock dropped in a pond, the Richter scale is measuring the height of the largest wave, not the size of the rock nor the extent of the ripples. +
++And in the case of an earthquake, the ripples aren’t traveling through a homogenous medium like water, but through solid rock that comes in different shapes, sizes, densities, and arrangements. Solid rock also supports multiple kinds of waves. (Some geologic structures can dampen big earthquakes while others can amplify lesser tremors.) +
++While Richter’s scale, calibrated to Southern California, was useful to compare earthquakes at the time, it provides an incomplete picture of risks and loses accuracy for stronger events. It also misses some of the nuances of other earthquake-prone regions in the world, and it isn’t all that useful for people trying to build structures to withstand them. +
++“We can’t use that in our design calculations,” said Steven McCabe, leader of the earthquake engineering group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “We deal in displacements.” +
++Displacement, or how much the ground actually moves, is one alternative way to describe earthquakes. Another is the moment magnitude scale. It accounts for multiple types of seismic waves, drawing on more precise instruments and better computing to provide a reliable measuring stick to compare seismic events. +
++When you hear about an earthquake’s magnitude in the news — like Turkey’s recent magnitude 7.8 quake — moment magnitude is usually the scale being used. +
++But this is still a proxy for the size of the earthquake. And with only indirect measurements, it can take up to a year to decipher the scale of an event, like the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, said Marine Denolle, an earthquake researcher at Harvard University. +
++“We prefer to use peak ground acceleration,” she said. This is a metric that measures how the speed and direction of the ground changes and has proven the most useful for engineers. +
++So, yes, earthquake scales have gotten a lot more complicated and specific over time. But that’s also helped scientists and engineers take much more precise measurements — which makes a big difference in planning for them. +
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+- We can’t really anticipate them all that well
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++Predicting earthquakes is a touchy issue for scientists, in part because it has long been a game of con artists and pseudoscientists who claim to be able to forecast earthquakes. (Their declarations have, of course, withered under scrutiny.) +
++Scientists do have a good sense of where earthquakes could happen. Using historical records and geologic measurements, they can highlight potential seismic hot spots and the kinds of tremors they face. (You can check out the US Geological Survey’s interactive map of fault lines and NOAA’s interactive map of seismic events.) +
++As for when quakes will hit, that’s still murky. +
++“Lots of seismologists have worked on that problem for many decades. We’re not predicting earthquakes in the short term,” said Beroza. “That requires us to know all kinds of information we don’t have.” +
++It’s difficult to figure out when an earthquake will occur, since the forces that cause them happen slowly over a vast area but are dispersed rapidly over a narrow region. What’s amazing is that forces built up across continents over millions of years can hammer cities in minutes. +
++Forecasting earthquakes would require high-resolution measurements deep underground over the course of decades, if not longer, coupled with sophisticated simulations. And even then, it’s unlikely to yield an hour’s worth of lead time. So there are ultimately too many variables at play and too few tools to analyze them in a meaningful way. +
++Some research shows that foreshocks can precede a larger earthquake, but it’s difficult to distinguish them from the hundreds of smaller earthquakes that occur on a regular basis. +
++On shorter time scales, texts and tweets can actually race ahead of seismic waves. In the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan, for example, warnings from near the epicenter reached Tokyo 232 miles away, buying residents about a minute of warning time. +
++Many countries are now setting up warning systems to harness modern electronic communications to detect tremors and transmit alerts ahead of shaking ground, buying a few precious minutes to seek shelter. +
++Meanwhile, after a large earthquake, aftershocks often rock the afflicted region. “If we just had a big one, we know there will be smaller ones soon,” Denolle said. +
++When it comes to prediction, researchers understandably want to make sure they don’t overpromise and underdeliver, especially when thousands of lives and billions of dollars in damages are at stake. But even this caution has had consequences. +
++In 2012, six Italian scientists were sentenced to six years in prison for accurately saying the risks of a large earthquake in the town of L’Aquila were low after a small cluster of earthquakes struck the region in 2009. Six days after the scientists convened to assess the risk, a large quake struck and killed 309 people. Those convictions were later overturned and the ordeal has become a case study for how scientists convey uncertainty and risk to the public. +
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+- Sorry, your pets can’t predict earthquakes either
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++Reports of animals acting strange ahead of earthquakes date back to ancient Greece. But a useful pattern remains elusive. Feathered and furry forecasters emerge every time there’s an earthquake and there’s a cute animal to photograph, but this phenomenon is largely confirmation bias. Animals do weird things (by our standards) all the time and we don’t attach any significance to them until an earthquake happens. +
++“On any given day, there will be hundreds of pets doing things they’ve never done before and have never done afterward,” Beroza said. Bottom line: Don’t wait for weird animal behavior to signal that an earthquake is coming. +
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+- Some earthquakes are definitely man-made
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++The gargantuan expansion of hydraulic fracturing across the United States has left an earthquake epidemic in its wake. It’s not the actual fracturing of shale rock that leads to tremors, but the injection of millions of gallons of wastewater underground. +
++Scientists say the injected water makes it easier for rocks to slide past each other. “When you inject fluid, you lubricate faults,” Denolle said. +
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USGS
++The US Geological Survey calls these “induced earthquakes” and reported that in Oklahoma, the number of earthquakes surged to 2,500 in 2014, 4,000 in 2015, and 2,500 in 2016. +
++“The decline in 2016 may be due in part to injection restrictions implemented by the state officials,” the USGS wrote in a release. “Of the earthquakes last year, 21 were greater than magnitude 4.0 and three were greater than magnitude 5.0.” +
++This is up from an average of two earthquakes per year of magnitude 2.7 or greater between 1980 and 2000. (“Natural” earthquakes, on the other hand, are not becoming more frequent, according to Beroza.) +
++Humans are causing earthquakes another way, too: Rapidly drawing water from underground reservoirs has also been shown to cause quakes in cities like Jakarta, Denolle said. +
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+- Climate change could have a tiny effect on earthquakes
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++In general, scientists haven’t measured any effect on earthquakes from climate change. But they’re not ruling out the possibility. +
++As average temperatures rise, massive ice sheets are melting, shifting billions of tons of water from exposed land into the ocean and allowing land masses to rebound. That global rebalancing could have seismic consequences, but signals haven’t emerged yet. +
++“What might occur is enough ice melts that could unload the crust,” Beroza said, but added there is no evidence for this, nor for which parts of the world will reveal a signal. Denolle agreed that this could be a mechanism, but if there is any impact from climate change on earthquakes, she says she suspects it will be very small. +
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+- We’ve gotten better reducing earthquake risks and saving lives
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++About 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes occur in the Ring of Fire, the region around the Pacific Ocean running through places like the Philippines, Japan, Alaska, California, Mexico, and Chile. The ring is also home to three-quarters of all active volcanoes. +
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Javier Zarracina/Vox
++Mexico is an especially interesting case study. The country sits on top of three tectonic plates, making it seismically active. In 1985, an earthquake struck the capital, killing more than 10,000. Denolle noted that the geology of the region makes it so that tremors from nearby areas are channeled toward Mexico City, making any seismic activity a threat. +
++The Mexican capital is built on the site of the ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, an island in the middle of a lake. The dry lakebed that is now the foundation of the modern metropolis amplifies shaking from earthquakes. +
++The 1985 earthquake originated closer to the surface, and the seismic waves it produced had a relatively long time between peaks and valleys. This low-frequency vibration sends skyscrapers swaying, according to Denolle. “The recent earthquakes were deeper, so they had a higher frequency,” she said. +
++The biggest factor in preventing deaths from earthquakes is building codes. Designing buildings to move with the earth while remaining standing can save thousands of lives, but putting them into practice can be expensive and frequently becomes a political issue. +
++“Ultimately, that information has got to get implemented, and you can pretty much get that implemented in new construction,” McCabe said. “The trickier problem is existing buildings and older stock.” +
++Earthquake-prone countries know this well: Japan has been aggressive about updating its building codes regularly to withstand earthquakes. The revised standards have in part fueled Japan’s construction boom despite its declining population. +
++Mexico has also raised standards for new construction. Laws enacted after the 1985 earthquake required builders to account for the soft lakebed soil in the capital and tolerate some degree of movement. +
++Meanwhile, Iran has gone through several versions of its national building standards for earthquake resilience. And Alaska has been developing earthquake damage mitigation strategies and response plans for years. +
++But codes are not always enforced, and the new rules only apply to new buildings. A school that collapsed in a 2017 Mexico City earthquake apparently was an older building that was not earthquake-resistant. And because the more recent earthquakes in Mexico shook the ground in a different way, even some of the buildings that survived the 1985 earthquake collapsed after tremors in 2017. +
++In countries like Iran, there is a wide gulf between how buildings are constructed in cities versus the countryside. More than a quarter of the country’s population lives in rural areas, where homes are built using traditional materials like mud bricks and stone rather than reinforced concrete and steel. This is a big part of why casualties are so high when earthquakes strike remote parts of the country. +
++The biggest risks fall to countries that don’t have a major earthquake in living memory and therefore haven’t prepared for them, or don’t have the resources to do so. A lack of a unified building code led to many of the more than 150,000 deaths in Haiti stemming from the 2010 magnitude 7.0 earthquake. +
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+- The big one really is coming to the United States (someday)
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++The really big one you keep hearing about is real. +
++The New Yorker won a Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for its reporting on the potential for massive earthquake that would rock the Pacific Northwest — “the worst natural disaster in the history of North America,” which would impact 7 million people and span a region covering 140,000 square miles. +
++The potential quake could reach a magnitude between 8.7 and 9.2, bigger than the largest expected earthquake from the San Andreas Fault, which scientist expect to top out at magnitude 8.2. +
++Large earthquakes are also in store for Japan, New Zealand, and other parts of the Ring of Fire. We don’t know when these earthquakes will rock us; we just have a rough estimate of the average time between them, which changes from region to region. +
++“In the business, we’ve been talking about that [Pacific Northwest] scenario for decades,” Beroza said. “I wouldn’t say we’re overdue, but it could happen at any time.” +
++“It is a threat,” echoed Denolle. “We forget about this threat because we have not had an earthquake there for a while.” “A while” means more than 300 years. +
++So while California has long been steeling itself for big earthquakes with building codes and disaster planning, the Pacific Northwest may be caught off guard, though the author of the New Yorker piece, Kathryn Schulz, helpfully provided a guide to prepare. +
++Update, September 9, 2023, 1:00 pm: This story was originally published in 2018 and has been updated to include news of the earthquake in Morocco. +