What If a Magnitude 20 Earthquake Hits?

before we start today's episode check this out it's our brand new what if 100 book it features the 100 most popular what-if scenarios as suggested by you learn more and get this special collector's piece by clicking in the link in the description below would you sleep in this earthquake proof bed it senses when an earthquake is happening and drops you into a safe metal chamber yeah we know how ridiculous this looks but desperate times call for desperate measures because we're about to experience the most powerful earthquake in history a magnitude 20. how much damage would it cause would it break our planet into pieces and what could cause such a massive earthquake this is what if and here's what would happen if a magnitude 20 earthquake hits to understand just how big a magnitude 20 earthquake would be let's take a look at the richter scale the richter scale is a logarithmic scale that rates the amount of energy released by an earthquake what does logarithmic mean well in this case it means that the amount of energy released increases 31.7 times between whole number values on the scale for example a 2.0 quake is 32 times as energetic as a 1.0 event and a 3.0 quake is 1 000 times more powerful than a 1.0 event the largest earthquake ever recorded registered a magnitude of 9.5 and it caused about 5 billion dollars in damage it killed 655 people and left 2 million people homeless so how much worse would a magnitude 20 be would we have to evacuate the planet to properly prepare for an earthquake this big we need to understand what causes earthquakes in general earthquakes are vibrations that travel through the crust of the earth they can be caused by events like volcanic eruptions and meteor impacts but the movement of tectonic plates is what usually causes them these plates which make up the earth's crust can slide against each other at a region called the transform boundary when the plates move in different directions they can cause a break in the earth's crust called a fault line this is where most earthquakes take place the plates create friction as they push together tightly and if there's enough friction they can become locked together and stop sliding but the forces of the earth will continue to push against them and increase the pent-up energy and pressure when the pressure builds up enough it will overcome the friction and result in an intense and sudden shift this causes the vibration we know as an earthquake and the longer the fault line the more massive the earthquake so how long of a fault line would be required to produce a magnitude 20 earthquake well let's put it this way to produce a magnitude 10.5 earthquake you'd need a fault line of about 80 000 kilometers and given that the earth's circumference is only about 40 000 kilometers that would be highly unlikely with all that considered a magnitude 20 earthquake seems pretty impossible so there's nothing to worry about oh right except for that one way that a magnitude 20 earthquake could occur would be due to a massive asteroid impact an earthquake this large would last longer than any earthquake we've ever experienced you would feel the shaking for at least five minutes and aftershocks would go on for hours tsunamis and volcanic eruptions would be taking place more earthquakes would likely be triggered and the whole world would be falling apart literally for the power of this earthquake to destroy the planet it would need to overcome something called the gravitational binding energy which describes the minimum value a spherical and uniform object needs to keep together under the influence of gravity now we won't go into specific values here because we don't want to make things any more complicated so believe it at this we're screwed a magnitude 20 earthquake would produce more than enough energy to overcome the gravitational binding energy and destroy our planet but the good news is that we would likely see the massive asteroid coming and would have time to prepare for everything that comes with it would it be enough time to get off the planet before it explodes well that's a story for another what if you

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Keywords: what if, what happens if, scifi, science documentary, what if scenario, mysteries, earthquake, magnitude, resultant force, earthquakes, earthquake video, most powerful earthquake, unexplained mysteries, what if earth, documentaries, hypothetical scenario, science, mega earthquake, interesting facts, massive earthquakes, documentary, earthquake today, powerful earthquake, biggest earthquake, hypothetical, interesting, physics, mystery, documentary channel, free documentary, oceanography

Id: aGREN6-MRfA

Length: 5min 57sec (357 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 05 2021