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Comment by spuz | Hacker News Reader

Probably because the average Japanese person experiences a lot more earthquakes than the average American even those in the highest risk areas. It's much harder to get a feeling for a value on a particular earthquake scale if you only experience 2 in your lifetime.

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If you live in California, you'll experience more than two earthquakes per year (hell, SoCal just had two reasonably strong ones over a span of two days). It's certainly enough to develop an intuition around relative amounts of shaking.

I live in California, I have never noticed them.

Yeah I don't generally either. I live north of the Bay Area and the last quake I remember feeling there was the Napa one in 2014. I believe it was somewhere between a 5.5 and 6.0.

I went to school in the LA Inland Empire area - there was a quake I felt last year there during class. It was really close but I'm pretty sure it was just short of 4.0.

We have hundreds (thousands?) of quakes per year, but the likelihood your average resident feels a quake in any given year? I think it's low.

I have lived in the bay area for 7 years (2012-2019). I have never felt an earthquake. I recall a few happening (from news reports, twitter), but I either didn't feel them or they happened at night while sleeping.

The only time I've felt the ground shake was in the earthquake simulator at the California Academy of Science in SF :)

The Hayward fault seems to have the most seismic activity lately. You'll feel them 2+ times a year in the East Bay--especially if you're in an older, multi-story building when it strikes.

You're misrepresenting things by mentioning the two recent earthquakes. Most earthquakes come in waves, quite literally, so it was almost expected that the first one might be followed be another.

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