

Japan quake map - yread
http://www.japanquakemap.com/

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harshpotatoes
I was looking at the usgs data last night, so it is quite nice to see somebody
else made a visualization of the data. I looked at usgs, and was quite
surprised to see there were over 100 >5 magnitude earthquakes off the coast of
japan in the past week. Most seemed to be relatively shallow (10-20km), so i
can't imagine what it must be like there right now. This isn't something I've
read about in the papers, and I can't imagine why not. A single one of these
aftershocks would be noteworthy in Seattle, and it appears these are hapening
nearly every hour. Incredible.

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nandemo
As NZ_Matt pointed out, most of the quakes's epicenters are offshore. The
strength of the shake decreases rapidly with distance. In Tokyo it's still bad
but not as bad as it might appear on the map. Sometimes it's like this:

A: "So we need to add one table to the database and"

B: "Wait."

A: "What?"

B: "It's shaking."

A: "Oh, is it? ... Ah, yeah"

B: "OK now. So what about the backups?"

On the other hand, the bigger aftershocks were grade 3 or 4 (in the Japanese
scale) in Tokyo, which ranges from "shaking noticeably" to "shaking quite a
lot". Personally, I don't feel scared anymore because I'm pretty sure both my
apartment and my office won't crumble. Still, it's quite stressful.

Oh, you probably haven't read it in the (English-language) papers because
they're too busy talking about the impending "nuclear winter".

~~~
beedogs
Drudge's lead story right now is about the "radiation plume" that's due to hit
the US any day now... so, yeah.

The network news in the US is a slightly-toned-down version of this hysteria.

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fourspace
This an amazing visualization that does well to bring home the impact of these
quakes. I've never been scared just by looking at a Google Map before.

~~~
bad_user
My God, if that happened near my city, it would be completely wiped off the
face of the earth.

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NZ_Matt
The destruction from the earthquake itself could've been a lot worse in Japan
if the epicenter was closer to Japan and not 200km offshore. This map shows
that the shaking in Japan was not of a destructive intensity in most areas.
[http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/shakemap/global/shake...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/shakemap/global/shake/c0001xgp/download/intensity.jpg)

PGA is generally better than magnitude for analyzing an earthquakes true
intensity near cities <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_ground_acceleration>

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schwanksta
I made a similar map the other day for the LA Times: <http://lat.ms/gJWWEK>.
Starts Thursday at the 7.2, and has every fore- and aftershock magnitude 5+
(until late yesterday, I need to update it).

The nice thing about this guy's map is that the circles are huge, and they
fade out.

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jedsmith
You should put momentum in your timeline drag.

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schwanksta
Yeah, it's a third-party plugin. There are a few ways I could smooth it out.

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nhebb
Not to detract from the nice job, but I think it would be even better with
sound added to emphasize the intensity and sense of bombardment.

Related: radiation map - <http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4870>
(Miyagi and Fukushima are still under survey at this point.)

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Groxx
To put those values in scale (something few radiation graphs do, in my
experience, especially when dealing with anything with the word "nuclear" in
it):

>"The average radiation dose from an abdominal X-ray is 1.4 mGy" [from
Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_(unit)>]

The normal value at the highest location is about 1000 nGy, with a spurt at
double that for a few hours. Which means it takes 1400 hours to equal an
abdominal Xray - 58.3 days. Not _good_ , but people react to news of things
like this as if they're expecting to grow a third arm if they don't have a
lead bunker to hide in _now_. The next highest areas are 1/10th that, meaning
it'd take about a year and a half to equal a single medical Xray, barring
whatever info comes in for the N/A areas.

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pyre
Impressive. My only gripe is that I paused it on the 9M quake and zoomed out
to look at the 'reach' of it, but hovering the mouse over the quake in the
list on the right displays the quake as if it were at the original zoom level
(i.e. doesn't take zoom out/in into account). That's unfortunate seeing as the
9M quake goes off the map on the default zoom level.

~~~
tmhedberg
I don't think the radii of the circles actually correspond to a particular
land area. How would one measure the "extent" of an earthquake, anyway? It's
not like they have well-defined, circular bounds.

More likely, the circles are just sized in proportion to the magnitude of the
quake, to give you a visual sense of scale.

~~~
mattm
You can move the map without zooming and the circles follow.

I think the circles are quite proportional. I have a friend of a friend in
Osaka who said they did feel the 9.0M one all the way down in Osaka so that
circle is correct.

Edit: Actually I had zoomed in a level. I think zooming in one level is a
little more accurate. I really don't think people in Korea or Eastern Russia
felt it.

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nandemo
FWIW this is Yahoo Japan's earthquake website:

<http://typhoon.yahoo.co.jp/weather/jp/earthquake/>

By the way, it's part of their weather website and existed way before this
disaster. It shows the last earthquake, the magnitude at the epicenter and a
list of the magnitudes at surrounding areas. There's also a list of past
quakes.

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ambient
we feel every single earthquake that is on this map. we live in Nikko Japan
and operate a hostel <http://zenhostel.jp> (500 meters above sea level), 160
km southwest of the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor and 100 km due north of Tokyo.

the fact that the epicenters are offshore is meaningless to the fact that the
mountains here in Nikko are shaking with each of those earthquakes.

I have felt 3 earthquakes in the time it took me to write this message.

i was making a video of my brother at the Unesco world heritage area when the
9.0 Tohoku earthquake struck; <http://youtu.be/tH1Y0kMcQwM?a>

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newhouseb
This is horrifying. I'd be curious to see historical data from other large
earthquakes, i.e. is this typical for an earthquake of this magnitude (of
which I realize are few) or is this a further geological anomaly?

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locopati
Something similar on youtube <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xylDxj6-9dY>

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datums
Nice job. Japan quakes visualized via Quakespotter <http://min.us/lmgLTA>

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guelo
Are people in Japan actually feeling these?

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NZ_Matt
Probably not, most of them are 100+km offshore.

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rorrr
What does depth refer to here?

    
    
        ...
    
        4.8M, depth: 17km 17/3/2011 00:00
    
        5.3M, depth: 32km 16/3/2011 23:46
    
        4.7M, depth: 38km 16/3/2011 23:38
    
        4.7M, depth: 23km 16/3/2011 23:27
    
        5.4M, depth: 1km 16/3/2011 22:38
    
        4.7M, depth: 25km 16/3/2011 21:48
    
        ...

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jedsmith
The earthquake's distance beneath the Earth's surface, which I believe starts
at 0km on the ocean floor for the purposes of these measurements -- meaning,
the water has nothing to do with it and the word _depth_ is a coincidence.
That confused me at first.

[http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/seismology/determini...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/seismology/determining_depth.php)

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d0m
I really thought it was a japan in a "quake GAME" map.

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d0m
I think it needs a clarification.. As a gamer, a map is basically the virtual
place where you play and quake is a famous shooter game. So, basically, I
thought that "japan quake map" was a map for the quake game.

It, by no means, was an insult/bad joke about the current situation in Japan
as we all know how terrible it is.

~~~
mhansen
It's just that it's not really relevant what you thought this page was

