Comparative magnitudes
from the Measurement page in Quake Basics

This illustration compares the energy released during some historic earthquakes with other events and phenomena. One notch up the magnitude scale translates to 30 times more energy. Therefore, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake produced over 30 times more energy than the explosion of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The quake that caused the tsunami in Asia in 2004 produced over 1000 times more energy than the bomb.



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