re: Hypothetical if a 7.8 earthquake hit California like it did Turkey how bad

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quote:
Northridge had a 6.7 hit. caused $40B in damages

the one that hit turkey is 1000x's stronger



Bruh, Richter scale is based on log 10. "1000x's stronger" than a 6.7 would be stronger than 9.7.

The 7.8 in Turkey was about 12.6 times stronger than Northridge at 6.7.

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From this LINK

The Richter Scale (more accurately referred to now as the “local magnitude” scale or ML), like all other magnitude scales to follow, is logarithmic, meaning each unit up on the scale equals a 10-fold increase in amplitude–e.g. a 7.0 earthquake is 10 times stronger than a 6.0 earthquake, and 100 times stronger than a 5.0 earthquake.

However, the energy released by a seismic wave is 101.5 (or about 31.6x) the amount of its amplitude, meaning that a 7.0 quake releases 31.6 times more energy than a 6.0 quake, or 1,000 times more energy than a 5.0 quake.