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Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

Is it crazy to think that there may be a pattern for all these strong earthquakes in the past few years since the Haiti one, and that they may be linked?

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Could it be that the Haiti one was the first earthquake you started paying attention to?

It's the Pacific Ring of Fire, which includes Haiti, Japan, Chile, New Zealand, Solomon Islands and Indonesia (list goes on) which have had deadly quakes in the last few years - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire

*edit, not Haiti which has its own crazy deep-earth stuff going on in the area

The ring of fire doesn't seem to include Haiti: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=36428

The Caribbean instead has it's own smaller "ring": http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2010/0121/Haiti-eart...

I personally always get Haiti and Papua New Guinea confused in my head. I know they are very different, but for some reason I have to think for a few seconds when someone says Haiti.

>but for some reason

Because both islands are divided between 2 states each.

Is that it? I think its just a neural hash collision in my head that resulted from hearing about missions in both countries in catholic elementary school (they are both very poor, at least PNG and Haiti).

Do you mean a pattern of earthquakes being more common in highly earthquake prone areas? Yeah, that's expected.

It's incorrect but not crazy: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=patternicit...

There is an idea where strong earthquakes are linked to the end of large-scale nuclear tests.

Presumably nuclear tests helped tensions to resolve in small earthquakes and now they build up and release a devastating one.

I have read speculation about that too. I don't think it's crazy, but I don't think it's widely accepted as a significant correlation by seismologists either.

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