‘Apocalyptic’ earthquakes could strike at ANY TIME, experts say

A SERIES of overdue high magnitude earthquakes is expected to strike at any moment along some of Earth’s major fault lines, an expert says.

UTS Geotechnical and Earthquake Engineering senior lecturer Dr Behzad Fatahi said “no one in the world is safe” from the looming natural disasters of potentially apocalyptic proportions.

“There are a lot of magnitude 6-plus earthquakes overdue in the Middle East, India, China, Japan and the US,” Dr Fatahi told news.com.au.

“There are some fault lines that have not released their energy for a while.

“There are at least 5-10 that are overdue, but we don’t know when they’re going to happen.”

He added: “The question is not will they be activated. The question is when.”

Dr Fatahi said there was a “return period” for earthquakes and those that didn’t strike within the expected time frame only came back stronger. He said an example of this was the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal that left more than 8000 people dead in April last year.

“You expect a particular fault line will be activated every 100 years or 500 years,” he said.

“If the period is longer we expect higher magnitude earthquakes … looking at the history of some of those major fault lines, some are very overdue.

“The return period has passed but the earthquakes haven’t happened.

“So we are just waiting for them to happen.”

THE COLLISION COURSE

Earthquakes claim tens of thousands of lives all over the world each year.

But the places most often rocked by them are those closest to major fault lines, where different tectonic plates meet.