California's BIG ONE ⚠️ Key Zones of Maximum M7.5+ Earthquake Potential

Hey everyone, geophysicist Stefan Burns here. A magnitude 6 earthquake just ruptured near the city of Halalabad, Afghanistan, a city with a population of 200,000 people. And this magnitude 6 earthquake was devastating because of its shallow depth of just 8 kilometers. There are right now 800 people that have died from this earthquake. That tally is very likely to go up past 1,000. There are more than 2,000 people injured. Tons of infrastructure damage to Halalabad and all the nearby provinces and cities. This region of Afghanistan, close to the Pakistan border, receives a lot of rainfall. And so there's also a lot of flash flooding that hits that area. And it's in this mountainous terrain where you have these valleys and then steep slopes. So there's also a liquefaction risk near the rivers where you have sedimentary basins. And then you also have a landslide risk with the mountains, rockfalls, and more. This area is prone to natural disasters. This magnitude 6 earthquake being quite powerful, especially because it was so shallow, causing a lot of regional devastation. And here we see a video of a building collapsing from that magnitude 6 earthquake. This again was at night for the Afghanis. And so it's a different sort of feeling when there's an earthquake at night because you're calming down, you're getting ready to go to sleep, or maybe you are in a dead sleep. And then all of a sudden the earth starts shaking and creates pure panic and terror. So that building went down. We see some of the more distributed damage that was caused as a result of this shallow earthquake. These sort of buildings that are made out of clay or brick, they typically don't do too well with any sort of powerful earthquake, especially if it's shallow. And again, if it's in that area that can shake a lot because of the regional geology. So sedimentary rocks are in kind of like these basins, they will in general amplify these surface waves as they bounce around the steeper valley walls, which have harder rock typically. So you get this sort of resonance amplification that occurs and magnitude 6 can become quite strong. We saw this very clearly with my hometown in Napa, California, with the 2014 magnitude 6 earthquake. And well, Napa is a sedimentary valley that has all this volcanic mountainous terrain surrounding it. And while the seismic waves really amplified, went crazy, and that caused about a billion dollars in damage. The thing is, is that in first world countries, typically the infrastructure is better developed. So you don't get these sort of building collapses. And so this is where you get a lot of the injuries and death in second and third world countries, because the building will collapse on a whole bunch of people. Then you have to like go there and you're trying to pull the rubble off. And it's really, really quite, quite unfortunate. And so please say your prayers for all the Afghanis and everyone else that's been affected by this earthquake. The death toll keeps rising. Again, I think it's going to go over a thousand. Let's check out the epicenter locations for these earthquakes. And here we have our USGS latest earthquakes map, and we can see a lot of Eurasia here. Here's Afghanistan. If you did not know, Halalabad is pretty close to Kabul. And so Halalabad is the fifth largest city in Afghanistan. Again, population 200,000. And if you punch in here, it's kind of difficult if you're in like the far out satellite imagery to see just how big these cities are, because it all kind of blends in. But in the moment you punch in, you see that these are some big, big population centers. And so Kabul is larger, but Halalabad is again the fifth largest. You punch in, you see it's a big city, 200,000 people. And these earthquakes occurred right nearby. So here's this magnitude six, and you can get a sense of these valleys and the slopes of the mountains that I've been talking about. So this occurred right here in this mountainous terrain. We have had quite a few aftershocks. A 5.2 aftershock there. That occurred just about four hours later. Also a 5.2 aftershock there a couple hours after that. Some magnitude four aftershocks. This was a orange pager. So we see that the, did you feel it was a nine on this scale because of that intense surface wave rumbling that occurred. This sort of geology really amplifying that. And we see that it was an orange pager. So let's check out what that means. The USGS has different scales to understand the impact of an earthquake, both in terms of the estimated fatalities and also estimated economic losses. And so this is a probability distribution. We don't know exactly where this is going to land yet, but currently their highest probability forecast is that there will be 100 to 1,000 fatalities from this earthquake and already at 800 plus. And I think it's probably going to go to a thousand because it takes not just a few hours or even a few days to understand the full extent of a situation like this, but it usually takes a couple weeks. And so that death toll is rising quickly. The injury rate is rising very fast in terms of our ability to quantify it, put it down on a list. So they have this as an orange pager, but it's very likely to actually be in the red zone there. And so you don't get these sort of earthquakes that often. This was a very significant earthquake as it relates to us here on the earth, its impact on people. And what's been interesting is recently we've had a bunch of powerful earthquakes that haven't been affecting anyone effectively. So we've had two magnitude seven plus earthquakes south of South America in the Drake Passage that basically affected no one. The magnitude 8.8 megaquake struck off the coast of Kamchatka. And yes, the tsunami rammed into Kamchatka Peninsula. There are some towns and cities there, but in general, it seems that things were okay. Well, now we have a devastating earthquake and it struck near the border of Pakistan. Here we see our estimated economic losses. So the general trade-off is that first of all, the country will have a lot more economic damage that will total up in the billions and perhaps even more than that, millions or billions, but their fatality rate will be low. Whereas in a less developed country, and there's different definitions of development, let's keep that in mind, okay? But in a less developed country, you'll have more fatalities. But in general, because the infrastructure just isn't as advanced, the economic loss won't be as great. So here they're estimating that the damage from this is about 10 to 100 million US dollars, though I wouldn't be surprised if that pushes up a little bit. We will see. But this is something that you can check after an earthquake to get a sense of the real world implications of it, and not just the fact that it's a burst of energy that's traveling out across the globe. And for a magnitude six earthquake, that energy is gonna ripple out across the entire globe to some degree. This was a very powerful earthquake. And we can look at one final graphic here provided by the USGS to understand the context of this earthquake. So we have the Himalayas right here. We see a lot of seismic activity, big earthquakes along the Himalayas. Also in this region here, like Kyrgyzstan, kind of where the plates are meeting, tremendous amount of earthquakes. Halalabad there is just at the bottom of that. And so there are some big earthquakes that have occurred in this area. Historically, this is one of the larger ones, it seems. You'll notice a cluster of big earthquakes right here nearby. So this whole area is very seismically active. And I talked about the flash flooding that they get. When it rains, it just goes right off of the hillsides and mountains and goes into these river valleys here. This is where you have the greatest liquefaction risk. So I can turn that layer on. Let's look at our liquefaction risk. You have these zones here. This is just an estimate by the USGS based on the geology. But anywhere where you get the ground to go flat, you have a river going through, and it's in this sort of mountainous terrain. That's going to be loose sedimentary fill or rock. And well, that's the sort of stuff that basically just really shakes like crazy and can undergo a lot of subsidence and more. And then we have our landslide estimates. That's the thing too. This earthquake occurred right here in the zone of highest landslide risk. And so you get this double whammy. And they have been dealing with flash floods recently in December, notably of 2024. There's a lot of big flash floods that went through this area. And so this area has been rocked by basically natural disaster after natural disaster. So please say your prayers. Powerful magnitude 6 earthquake hit Halalabad, Afghanistan. We'll see what happens next. It's unlikely that there's going to be an aftershock that is of the same scale. I think we've already had the main aftershocks of those two magnitude 5.2s. Here we're looking just behind the scenes at Halalabad. I'll put this video link in the description. If you want to get a sense of what life is like here. I personally have been wanting to travel to this area of the globe for a while and do a trip kind of through that whole zone. Haven't done it yet. Can't say I've been here yet, but this is a look behind the scenes. A lot of people out and about again, 200,000 people that were affected by this. And even more if you include the regional area. So please say your prayers. Thanks so much for watching. Again, I've been your host, Stefan Burns. I'll keep you up to date with what is happening with the earth, geologically, geophysically, and more. This is earthquakes, volcanoes, Shumar residences. Also, we look at solar activity, space weather. We have a double solar storm impact coming in imminently within less than about probably 24 hours or 12 hours. So be on the watch for a live stream on that when that comes in. We also discuss things even further afield like planetary residences and cosmic forces like 3i Atlas. If you'd like to stay up to date with everything that's happening energetically in our little spot in the universe, then please subscribe to the channel. Wishing each and every single one of you well. Please take care of yourselves. I'll see you all in the next video.