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Comment by amanzi | Hacker News Reader

As someone who lives in an earthquake-prone area, I don't think those stats are high enough that they would lead officials to evacuate an area as a precaution. But it would be a useful indicator to encourage people to make sure they have their earthquake supplies topped up and ready to go.

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I disagree, in Japan we just had the "megaquake" warning for a week, maybe it was prudent but it was also very distracting, kind of worrying, and nothing happened in the end. On the other hand we have Typhoon warnings, which are actually much more predictable and quite useful.

My point, unless it's something like 90-95% accurate, I don't think it's useful at all. Mostly a distraction. When you live in a seismically active area, you just need to be prepared all the time.

Fair enough. I'm in Wellington and the risk profile here is a lot different to Japan. From a quick read of a BBC article, I see the "megaquake" you were warned about could have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the worst case scenario. Here in Wellington I've read estimates of up to thousands of deaths in the worst case scenario. But regardless, people here tend to be quite blasé about emergency supplies - perhaps if there was a heightened risk, people might actually check their grab-bags and get their supplies in order.

Fwiw it would affect my decision to go to the beach even if only 70% accurate

It wasn't a warning with a 70% accuracy though. It was saying it's 3x or 4x more likely than usual, which is still pretty unlikely. I don't think more information is ever a bad thing. Should countries have published covid statistics or hid them because it's very distracting, kind of worrying, and nothing really happened in the end? It was useful to know when cases were going up in your community so you can take precautions.

I took the megaquake warning as me realizing that I need to have at least 3 days of water stockpiled. I had 0. I don't really want to be a burden upon my neighbors in case of an earthquake, so it made sense just to store some water.

I'm not arguing the warning isn't useful, I'm saying if it's not accurate. It will get ignored.

You know there is a very high chance this megaquake will happen in the next 30 years, why don't you have water stockpiled all the time?

Because it's not an accurate enough prediction.

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