Hacker News Reader

Comment by kickaha | Hacker News Reader

If you've lived through even a tiny earthquake it's much like if you've experienced a solar eclipse: even when short and mild, they elicit an otherworldly body-terror.

The people living on that peninsula right now are stressed out in a way most of us have never experienced.

View on HN

Disagree with this - I was in Iceland this summer when the volcano erupted (ironically at Blue Lagoon just 2 hours before it erupted) and people there just go about their daily business like nothing happened. There was a 5.2 earthquake the day before it erupted and kids kept playing in the street.

I live in downtown Reykjavik and unless you’re paying attention you miss most of them even the strong ones. Definitely more of a thing in Grindavík and I don’t envy the people living there although they’re probably used to it by now. The big earthquake a day or two ago did cause an exodus of tourists from the Blue Lagoon Hotel though.

Disagree: I lived through several short/mild earthquakes in California and Tokyo.

Visitors freaked a little, but locals looked up from their phones, confirmed with each other, then everybody guessed the magnitude and checked USGS to see who came closest.

Kinda like seeing a rat in NYC.

Hmm. I've done both. Tiny earthquake is no big deal. A big one, different story.

Also, when you experience an earthquake at the top of a tall building that oscillates and it sounds like it is going to fall apart, this is far more scarier than experiencing a stronger earthquake, but outside, on flat ground.

I have experienced big earthquakes in the former circumstances, and the sensation was confusing, until the earthquakes stopped you were not sure whether your building level is still firmly attached to its base, or it has started to travel independently towards an unavoidable fall.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com