3165: Earthquake Prediction Flowchart
| Earthquake Prediction Flowchart |
 Title text: At least people who make religious predictions of the apocalypse have an answer to the question 'Why didn't you predict any of the other ones that happened recently?' |
Explanation
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This is one of 52 incomplete explanations: This page was created EXACTLY 3.1415926 YEARS BEFORE AN EARTHQUAKE. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
The comic purports to depict a flowchart for determining whether you should believe someone claiming to be able to predict earthquakes. However, this "flowchart" immediately leads to a hard NO, with a brief description as to why. Earthquakes happen all the time, so if someone claims they can predict them, we'd have their methodology proven or disproven almost immediately. Also, if it was reliable, seismologists would be parading it around as a revolutionary discovery. Thus, there should be no remaining need to consult a flowchart on the matter. Another interpretation is that seismologists will get mad over claiming useless facts.
In this context it is noteworthy that six Italian seismologists, volcanologists and engineers were charged with manslaughter in the aftermath of the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, on the basis of having been "falsely reassuring". Six days before the earthquake killed 308 people, they convened in a committee meeting, and decided that there was no reason to warn the population over the highly tentative possibility that minor geological activity was a sign that something more major might be imminent. Seven years after the quake, they were finally cleared of wrongdoing. A high-ranking government official was not fully cleared, however, for inappropriate public reassurances. At other times, 'warnings' have been issued that did not clearly precede any actual disasters, and there are clearly many arguments about whether or not to risk "crying wolf" on flimsy evidence
This strip is similar to 1723: Meteorite Identification, as a one-step flowchart ending in a firm no.
The title text compares those who claim to predict earthquakes to those who claim to predict the end of the world (based on their religion, for example). A prominent argument against those who claim to be able to predict non-apocalyptic disasters like earthquakes is that the "predictor" has not predicted any such disasters prior to their claim. An apocalypse, however, is not something that has occurred before,[citation needed] and generally only happens once. Thus, unlike an earthquake predictor, anyone predicting an apocalypse will not need to explain any failures (false negatives) to predict previous apocalypses. People who have previously predicted an apocalypse and failed to have it come about (i.e. a false positive), should be exceptions, but such people never seem to lose credibility with their more devout followers.
Transcript
- [Caption above a flowchart:]
- Someone is claiming to predict the exact date of a future earthquake.
- Should you listen?
- [At the top of the flowchart is a wide diamond with the following text:]
- Start
- [An arrow points down to a rectangle with the following text:]
- NO
- (There are big earthquakes constantly, so if anyone ever does figure this out, it will be immediately obvious that their method works and the world's seismologists will not shut up about it.
- You won't need this flowchart.)
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Gettin pretty sick of the "citation needed" joke appearing in early drafts of our explanations. It's not clever to just say that at random. [citation needed] 69.5.140.194 03:14, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
- I think what you meant to say was "First!!1!" 82.13.184.33 09:28, 10 November 2025 (UTC)
It turns out I suddenly find myself... needing to know the plural of apocalypse. -- Riley Finn, Buffy the Vampire Slayer ... Jordan Brown (talk) 03:28, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
The return of the flowchart! --DollarStoreBa'alConverse 03:57, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
As early as 1974, there was substantial evidence that earthquakes at least in Southern California were unpredictable. To be more precise, the paper found that if you remove aftershocks, the distribution of earthquakes appeared to follow a Poisson distribution. This is the distribution expected from a "memoryless" process where each event is independent of any earlier event, and where earthquakes have a constant probability of occurring, making them completely impossible to predict.
- That does not prove they are unpredictable. At best it proves they are unpredictable with a particular type of data and model. A precursor event (be it peepers peeping an octave higher, changes in radon release rates, or type mu-normal earthquakes with hysteresis) could still exist. Two random variables can be separately Poisson but perfectly correlated. 76.180.39.133 16:44, 14 November 2025 (UTC)
It may be that not all earthquakes everywhere really work this way, but in the past 50 years, evidence has accumulated only to support this hypothesis. No progress whatsoever has been made in predicting earthquakes, only in reasons to believe they fundamentally cannot be predicted (at least without a lot of inaccessible information regarding strain deep within the earth). EebstertheGreat (talk) 05:16, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
- There's a difference between being impossible to predict based on past earthquakes, and being impossible to predict based on other measurable indicators, though. 163.116.254.40 15:20, 10 November 2025 (UTC)
- That paper you cite has one of the best uses of an abstract that I've ever seen! Title: "Is the sequence of earthquakes in Southern California, with aftershocks removed, Poissonian?" Abstract: "Yes." I mean, it's perfect - concise and easy to understand. 134.134.139.69 01:58, 14 November 2025 (UTC)
Any examples of people claiming to predict earthquakes? --1234231587678 (talk) 05:25, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
- Ben Davidson of YouTube channel SpaceWeatherNews (formerly Suspicious0bservers) does, and links it to a bunch of other bizarre pseudoscience. 184.75.151.213 08:25, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
There's actually quite a few regular earthquakes. The issue is that they're all small and isolated. Very few people care that some mountains abruptly shift a few dozen microns every month. Many more care about the big ones that are extremely difficult to predict. 24.19.215.69 06:05, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
The point about predicting the apocalypse may be related to a thing earlier this year where a bunch of folks believed that the Rapture was going to happen. Sept 23. My friend was absolutely inundated with people saying it was going to happen. 2601:40D:4282:5380:F806:A8F7:EAF2:A7A1 12:38, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
- Don't leave me hanging... It's bad enough that I didn't even get told that it was going to happen, in advance, but at least you could let me know if it did! 2.98.65.8 11:43, 9 November 2025 (UTC)
- Well if it DID happen, then pretty few people must have been raptured... which would mean that pretty few people were actually "good" people, which seems about right though :-/--93.241.210.5 10:16, 10 November 2025 (UTC)
- My theory is that the Rapture did happen, but that all of the people who were taken were retroactively removed from existence. All evidence and memory of them disappeared. All of the terrible accidents that resulted from the sudden disappearances of vehicle drivers, equipment operators, generator managers, etc., were erased. Just like in modern-era Doctor Who after yet another alien invasion, afterwards, nobody believes that it happened. BunsenH (talk) 23:57, 10 November 2025 (UTC)
There is a perfect way of predicting future earthquakes to the exact second, but it requires a time machine. ("Past performance is no guarantee of future results." "That would be true if I were giving you information from our past." - Gunther Thurl and Kevyn Andreyasn, Schlock Mercenary) 207.253.24.188 16:00, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
Does the July 2025 Japan megaquake prophecy needs any mention? TomtheBuilder (talk) 16:37, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
Religious apocali (apocalypses is probably fine, but doesn’t sound quite as cool) tend to only happen once, sure, but there’s also the whole “massive flood wiping out 99.99% of life” thing that happened in Christianity. It would be difficult to argue such an event wouldn’t be considered apocalyptic were it to happen today. Also, in some syncretic interpretations, the Norse Ragnarok happened prior to the events of Genesis (after the universe creation part, of course) which is about as apocalypse as it gets. Of course, there the question is less “why didn’t you predict that one” and more “another apocalypse? So what, we’ve already had 2 and it was fine.” KelOfTheStars! (talk) 04:01, 10 November 2025 (UTC)
- Not to mention some 'cyclical history'-type theologies, where an apocalyptic event may not just have occurred more than once, but an infinite number of times. 82.13.184.33 09:32, 10 November 2025 (UTC)
- ("Apocalypsen", shirley...) A "massive flood wiping out 99.99% of life" is a box-office disappointement. 2.98.65.8 22:26, 10 November 2025 (UTC)
Is it possible that there are still unknown types of Earthquakes that *are* predictable? Or quakes on bodies other than the Earth? Maybe someone couldn't predict 100% of quakes, but maybe quakes of a specific type. Particularly if someone whips out his handy dandy Quake Inducer 3000™ and says "I will cause an Earthquake on this spot tomorrow." 191.101.157.124 18:13, 10 November 2025 (UTC)
I predict that there will be no Apocalypse tomorrow. At least, not on Earth. (It's a fairly safe prediction, because if I'm wrong, very few people will bother to take me to task over it. Though as long as the internet persists, there will be a few.) BunsenH (talk) 23:57, 10 November 2025 (UTC)
- No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. 2.98.65.8 00:04, 11 November 2025 (UTC)
Should 1943: Universal Dreams be mentioned? That comic also has earthquake predictions. 1.132.104.106 08:01, 11 November 2025 (UTC)
Predicting apocalypses would be a lot easier, if they happen more than one time. "Yeah, i'm 1000000 years old, and i lived in galactic cluster where worlds end every second and untold septillions die every nanosecond on every square millimeter of the planet. FOOOOM!!!! Having survived that non-stop grimdark mess, i assume - by precise calculations - that this world will end again in precisely 7 seconds. FOOOOM!!!! Damn, i warned you. The next end of this world will be in 10 second. FOOOOM!!!! Exactly." --User 8496351 (talk) 19:36, 12 November 2025 (UTC) Add comment
