While I was enjoying Christmas at my niece’s house, I noticed that my phone alerted me at 9:55 am (ET) that a magnitude 22 earthquake had hit in Montana at 10:50:39 (ET) on the 24th near Polson Montana.
The earthquake scale is logarithmic – a 6.0 is 10 times stronger than a 5.0 – a 7.0 is 100 times stronger than a 5.0. The quake that devastated Japan was around a 9.0. An actual 22 would basically mean the Earth just collided with Mars and exploded.
Five minutes later, it was corrected to the real 2.2, which is about the strength of a truck driving past your house.
Good thing the stock market was closed when the news hit the wires.
Had the market been open, it might have dropped 100 points immediately, because the magnitude revision was, “less than expected”.
I’m going to stick my neck out and say the cause was the regular people were on vacation and/or enjoying egg nog.
Tremendous stimulus for the economy- just like cash for clunker program that made used cars unaffordable for the growing poor and unemployed to keep them from finding a job… or the money printing to keep homes unaffordable to the growing working poor.
Broken window fallacy x 10**22
You would think there are probably processes that kick off to initiate a response and start paging people. Apparently, the launch of nuclear weapons for the end of the world is not automatic
Maybe it was a 22 colliding with a -19.8? A 22 by itself would hit you like a colt.