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Last active December 31, 2020 01:02
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Earthquake Danger in SF
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earthquakes_in_sf.md

SF Earthquake Danger

How dangerous are earthquakes to SF residents? My best guess is that we get an extra 15 micromorts per year. That’s a 3% increase over the non-natural causes mortality base rate in the US.

Math

Each year has about a 1/500 chance of a massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake that kills ~6000 people. SF has 800k people. (1/500) * (6000/800000) * 1000000 = 15 micromorts/year

Yearly all non-natural causes mortality in the US is 580 micromorts / year

15 / 580 = 2.6% increase in mortality rate

Sources

1 in 500 chance of 7.9 magnitude quake

image

I eyeballed the above chart from https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/of03-214/

6k fatalities from 7.9 magnitude quake

image

I got the above quote from this site. They claimed that it was from pubs.usgs.gov, but I couldn't find the quote there.

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