This middle oceanic rifts creates new oceanic floor. I read about suggestions that oceanic rifts expand not gradually but in large jumps. Many superbombs may be needed to create superquake.Ħ) The Earth cracks in the area of oceanic rifts. Large nukes may be used the same way, but super earthquake requires energy which is beyond current power of nukes on several orders of magnitude. Blockbusters bombs in WW2 was used to create miniquakes as its main killing effect, and they explode after they penetrate ground. I got more ideas about possible ways of worldwide EQ:ĥ) Superbomb explosion. If core some how collapse, because of change of crystallic structure of iron in it or because of possible explosion of (hypothetical) natural uranium nuclear reactor in it. ģ) Unknown processes in mantle sometimes results in large deep earthquakes Ĥ) Very hypothetical changes in Earth core also may result in worldwide earthquakes. (This is just my conjecture, not proved scientific fact, so the possibility of it needs further assessment.) Smaller scale event of this type happened in 1957 during Gobi-Altay earthquake when whole mountain ridge moved.

I think that 1 mile asteroid is enough to create worldwide earthquake.Ģ) Change of bouyancy of large land mass may result whole continent uplifting may in miles. But distribution of largest earthquakes could could have long and heavy tail which may include worldwide quakes.ġ) Asteroid impact surely could result in worldwide earthquake. Plate techtonics as we know it can’t produce them. It would be interesting to assess probability of worldwide earthquakes, which could destroy everything on the earth surface. This episode features insight from seismologist Martin Chapman of Virginia Tech. Do you have ideas for an extreme situation that could transform a locally devastating earthquake into a global calamity? We only consider a few scenarios in this podcast, but we’d love to hear from other people. This podcast was produced in a similar vein to Myth Busters and xkcd’s What If series. Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Ariel Conn of FLI consider extreme earthquake scenarios to figure out if there’s any way such a risk is remotely plausible. But is there some way an earthquake could become an existential or catastrophic risk? Could a single earthquake put all of humanity at risk? In our increasingly connected world, could an earthquake sufficiently exacerbate a biotech, nuclear or economic hazard, triggering a cascading set of circumstances that could lead to the downfall of modern society? While they may be devastating to the local community, rarely do they impact the whole world. Earthquakes are not typically considered existential or even global catastrophic risks, and for good reason: they’re localized events.

Quake 2 weapons of destruction