If you didn’t grow up in an earthquake-prone area, let me tell you, big earthquakes are terrifying and devastating. Tiny earthquakes, though? They are what you talk about at school and work. (“Did you feel it?”) If you didn’t, you feel left out. Small earthquake FOMO is real.

Had a 5.9 in Melbourne in 2021 and I was on a half-built deck at the time. The shift from the initial shakes to synchronised oscillation of all the stumps under the deck was both fascinating and pant-soiling.

I didn't feel the 7.2 or whatever here in Washington 20 some years ago because I was on the bus lol

We had a 4.4 in Swansea a few years back, where we never get earthquakes, and when the ground felt like it swung underneath me I thought I was having some kind of neurological event

I guess it would be as commonplace as a nighttime thunderstorm in that region, or a big snowstorm. Something that would just be everyday conversation, maybe even something you grew up and might even have nostalgic feelings about

🤙🏼

Those few seconds of a small earthquake where you're starting to think it might be turning into a big one and then it doesn't, whew. "Uh should I be getting up off the couch? ....No, okay"

We were on holiday in Taiwan Mar/Apr and experienced the big earthquake there. We didn’t know it wasn’t typical so we didn’t know to be scared. Once we knew how bad it was, the aftershocks were terrifying.

I was in Santa Cruz in ‘89. Madness. No one talks about the smell of natural gas everywhere. And that the ground doesn’t actually stop shaking. It just vibrates constantly.

Growing up in Latin America, I remember a lot of tremors; I would hear the plates and glasses rattling before I felt them. But in 1965 there was a 5.9 quake that knocked me out of bed. It killed 125.

Cali vibes