Estimated damage, fatalities due to earthquake in W Japan

[busaikko]

Time: nowish

Comments

[cateriona]

Have you check the original Richter scale? It was based on how much damage was done. Add in a bit for shear wave and accumative effects and then down for wood structures and modern designed structures and it could give you a rough estimate of damage and fatalies. Tsunami, well you're going to have to get a fault map for that. Distance from the shore combine with magnitude generally will give you an estimate of the size of the wave. And again, are there any measures put in place to deal with it?

Modern design is usually set to handle a magnitude 7 on the nearest active fault line. For maximum destruction pick overlooked fault lines that are small or thought to be dorminate. They are less likely to be studied too, so it's easy for the baddies to come in and mess with them.

[busaikko]

Thank you! You're good at this mayhem business! You have some excellent ideas.... Japan is all about earthquake preparedness, but with, say, a city of 9+ million on a plain by the sea where many of the highways and buildings are old and/or built by corrupt construction companies: bad things could happen. Thank you for helping me!

[cateriona]

Born in California where father spent most of his professional career doing foundation studies and is credited with the developing the shear wave study, earthquake mayhem was every day dinner conversation when I was growing up.

[busaikko]

Little did you know back then how useful all that knowledge would prove! (er. Albeit in the realm of fanfic....) Thank you! *adds your name to list of People in the Know*

[javaboy32]

I actually had to a presentation on the 1995 Kobe earthquake back in the day. It's probably a pretty good comparison case. Things I recall from my research

[cateriona]

Landfill liquidfaction, I forgot about that, everything sinks into the ground.

[busaikko]

Hee! I was here for the Kobe quake, and backpacked supplies in 5 days after it hit. It really is a good standard for mayhem. Thank you for reminding me that in my story, I definitely want all the highways to fall down. (The Kansai airport, needless to say, is going down like Atlantis.)