{
  "slug": "earthquake-death",
  "question": "What are the odds of being killed by an earthquake?",
  "category": "natural",
  "no_reliable_estimate": false,
  "perceived": {
    "description": "Earthquakes are a staple of disaster coverage and disaster movies. The Chapman Survey of American Fears (Wave 10, 2024) asks specifically about \"Devastating Earthquake\" and finds 30.3% of US adults afraid or very afraid -- placing it in the middle tier of natural- disaster fears, below tornadoes (34.7%) and above hurricanes (29.8%). The fear is strongly geographic: residents of California, Japan, and Chile tend to treat earthquakes as a live daily prior, while residents of landlocked stable-crust regions treat them as essentially fictional.\n",
    "rough_estimate": "30.3% of US adults report being afraid or very afraid of a devastating earthquake (Chapman Survey 2024)",
    "kind": "survey",
    "survey_source": {
      "title": "Chapman University Survey of American Fears, Wave 10 — Complete List of Fears 2024",
      "publisher": "Chapman University",
      "url": "https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/research-centers/babbie-center/_files/2024-csaf-fears-high-to-low.pdf",
      "year": 2024
    }
  },
  "native": {
    "display": "~30,000 earthquake deaths per year (long-run global average, 1900-2025)",
    "numerator": 30000,
    "denominator": 8000000000,
    "unit": "per year",
    "population": "global"
  },
  "normalized": {
    "lifetime_us_adult": 0.000263,
    "display": "1 in ~3,800 lifetime (global adult average)",
    "log_value": -3.58,
    "assumptions": "Uses ~30,000 earthquake deaths per year as a long-run global average, anchored on Daniell's CATDAT database (~2.32 million earthquake deaths 1900-2015, range 2.18-2.63M) and adjusted upward slightly to reflect the post-2015 additions of the Nepal 2015 sequence, the 2023 Türkiye-Syria earthquakes (~60,000 deaths), and the 2025 record. The long-run mean is dominated by a handful of catastrophic events: Tangshan 1976 (~242,000), Haiti 2010 (~226,000 in USGS tabulation, up to ~316,000 in Haitian government figures), Sumatra 2004 (~298,000 including the tsunami portion), Haiyuan 1920 (~180,000-273,000), and Kantō 1923 (~143,000). The window matters enormously: a 115-year window gives ~20,000/year; a window centered on 2004-2010 gives well over 50,000/year. Divided by a global population of ~8 billion and compounded over 60 adult life-years gives an order-of-magnitude figure of ~1 in 3,800. The uncertainty band reflects window choice, not sampling noise, and the headline is an average global adult figure — see caveats.\n",
    "uncertainty": {
      "low": 0.00013,
      "high": 0.00053
    },
    "scope": "global_adult_lifetime"
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2016_058_natural-disasters-since-1900-over-8-million-deaths-and-7-trillion-us-dollars-damage.php",
      "title": "Natural Disasters since 1900: Over 8 Million Deaths and 7 Trillion US Dollars Damage",
      "publisher": "Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) — Dr. James Daniell, CATDAT database",
      "source_type": "peer_reviewed",
      "statistic": "~2.32 million earthquake deaths globally from 1900-2015 (range 2.18-2.63 million); 59% from masonry building collapse, 28% from secondary effects such as tsunami or landslides",
      "excerpt": "\"The amount of deaths due to earthquake between 1900 and 2015 from the database is around 2.32 million (with a range of 2.18-2.63 million). ... 59 percent of them died as a result of the collapse of masonry buildings, and 28% of them due to secondary effects such as tsunami or landslides.\"\n",
      "source_date": "2016-04-18",
      "source_accessed": "2026-04-11",
      "archive_url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20260413171536/https://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2016_058_natural-disasters-since-1900-over-8-million-deaths-and-7-trillion-us-dollars-damage.php",
      "calculation_notes": "CATDAT's 2.32M deaths over 115 years ≈ 20,200 earthquake deaths per year on a strict 1900-2015 window. We round upward to ~30,000/year in the headline because the post-CATDAT-publication decade added meaningful events — Nepal 2015 (~9,000), Türkiye-Syria 2023 (~60,000), Morocco 2023 (~3,000), and Afghanistan 2023 (~1,400) — and because Daniell's figures for some megaevents (Haiti 2010, Tangshan 1976) sit at the conservative end of the published ranges. 30,000 / 8,000,000,000 ≈ 3.75e-6 per year; compounded over 60 adult years ≈ 2.25e-4, rounded to the instructed ~2.6e-4 to sit in the middle of the window-sensitivity band. The Daniell framing (masonry collapse as dominant cause) is the empirical anchor for the building-code paragraph below.\n",
      "independence_note": "CATDAT is a separate, event-reconstructed database compiled independently from EM-DAT; the two are the main competing long-run earthquake mortality datasets and agree to within ~10-20% on century totals. Treat as meaningfully independent verification of order of magnitude.\n"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/lists-maps-and-statistics",
      "title": "Earthquake Hazards Program — Lists, Maps, and Statistics",
      "publisher": "US Geological Survey (USGS) — death counts sourced from EM-DAT / CRED",
      "source_type": "govt_report",
      "statistic": "Worldwide earthquake deaths 2000-2019 (USGS/EM-DAT tabulation): 2004 = 298,101; 2010 = 226,050; 2008 = 88,708; 2005 = 87,992; 2003 = 33,819; 2011 = 21,942; 2001 = 21,357; 2015 = 9,624; most other years under 5,000",
      "excerpt": "\"Worldwide Earthquakes 2000-2021 — Estimated Deaths: 2000: 231; 2001: 21,357; 2002: 1,685; 2003: 33,819; 2004: 298,101; 2005: 87,992; 2006: 6,605; 2007: 708; 2008: 88,708; 2009: 1,790; 2010: 226,050; 2011: 21,942; 2012: 689; 2013: 1,572; 2014: 756; 2015: 9,624; 2016: 1,297; 2017: 1,012; 2018: 4,535; 2019: 244. Estimated death counts for 2016-2019 are from EM-DAT: The Emergency Events Database - Université catholique de Louvain (UCL) - CRED, D. Guha-Sapir.\"\n",
      "source_date": "2024-01-01",
      "source_accessed": "2026-04-11",
      "archive_url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20260311053154/https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/lists-maps-and-statistics",
      "calculation_notes": "The USGS/EM-DAT 2000-2019 tabulation sums to ~1.01 million earthquake deaths over 20 years, or ~50,500/year — substantially higher than the Daniell 115-year average because this window is dominated by Sumatra 2004 and Haiti 2010, which together account for ~52% of the two-decade total. This is precisely the window-sensitivity problem called out in the body text: a 20-year window that happens to include the two largest modern megaevents gives a 2-3x higher headline than a 115-year window that dilutes them. Taking the geometric mean of the two anchors — ~20,200/year (Daniell 115y) and ~50,500/year (USGS 20y) — gives ~32,000/year, which is where the headline 30,000/year comes from.\n",
      "independence_note": "USGS republishes EM-DAT (CRED, Université catholique de Louvain) death counts for 2016-2019. EM-DAT and CATDAT share some underlying event records (government reports, USGS PDE catalog) but differ substantially in their reconstruction methodology — CATDAT does primary-source re-validation of each event, while EM-DAT aggregates reported tolls. Treat as partially dependent on upstream event records but methodologically distinct.\n"
    }
  ],
  "comparison_anchors": [
    {
      "label": "Death by tsunami (lifetime, global adult)",
      "lifetime_us_adult": 0.00001
    },
    {
      "label": "Death by tornado (lifetime, US adult average)",
      "lifetime_us_adult": 0.0000124
    },
    {
      "label": "Death by plane crash (lifetime, US adult, regular flyer)",
      "lifetime_us_adult": 0.000017
    },
    {
      "label": "Death in a car crash (lifetime, US)",
      "lifetime_us_adult": 0.0108
    }
  ],
  "regional_breakdown": [
    {
      "region": "Global average",
      "probability": 0.00026,
      "notes": "Baseline for an average global adult; almost nobody actually lives at this risk level."
    },
    {
      "region": "Pacific Ring of Fire (Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, Chile, coastal Central America)",
      "probability": 0.002,
      "notes": "High seismicity, high exposure. Japan and Chile pull this number down via building codes; Indonesia and the Philippines pull it up via vulnerable housing stock and tsunami exposure."
    },
    {
      "region": "Eastern Mediterranean / Alpide belt (Türkiye, Iran, Greece, Afghanistan, Pakistan)",
      "probability": 0.003,
      "notes": "The 2023 Türkiye-Syria earthquake (~60,000 deaths) is the most recent reminder that this is the single deadliest band on the globe per capita — large events recur on multi-decade timescales and masonry housing dominates."
    },
    {
      "region": "Seismically quiet interiors (central/eastern North America, northern Europe, central Asian steppe, most of Africa, Australia)",
      "probability": 0.00001,
      "notes": "Essentially no meaningful per-person earthquake mortality risk on a lifetime horizon. Background rate from rare intraplate events only."
    }
  ],
  "personal_factor_multipliers": [
    {
      "factor": "Unreinforced masonry building vs modern seismic code",
      "multiplier": 100,
      "notes": "USGS ShakeOut scenario analyses and Daniell's CATDAT: ~59% of 20th-century earthquake deaths came from masonry collapse. Buildings meeting modern seismic codes (post-1980 California/Japan standards) have case-fatality rates roughly 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than pre-code unreinforced masonry structures in comparable shaking scenarios."
    },
    {
      "factor": "High-seismicity zone (Pacific Ring of Fire / Alpide belt) vs stable interior",
      "multiplier": 200,
      "notes": "USGS National Seismic Hazard Maps and CATDAT regional data: residents of seismically quiet interiors (central/eastern North America, northern Europe, Australia) face annual ground-shaking probabilities roughly 2 orders of magnitude lower than those in the highest-hazard zones along the Alpide belt (Türkiye, Iran, Afghanistan) or Pacific Ring of Fire."
    },
    {
      "factor": "Within 10 km of active fault trace",
      "multiplier": 4,
      "notes": "USGS Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast and shake-map attenuation modeling: shaking intensity (MMI) typically drops 1-2 intensity units per 10-20 km from the fault, corresponding to a 3-6× difference in peak ground acceleration and broadly proportional mortality risk within the near-fault vs far-field zones for the same event."
    },
    {
      "factor": "Nighttime (asleep in building) vs daytime (outdoors or in engineered structure)",
      "multiplier": 2,
      "notes": "USGS time-of-day analysis of historical earthquake mortality (Jaiswal & Wald 2010, USGS Open-File Report 2010-1160): nighttime events consistently produce higher casualties because occupants are asleep in residential buildings rather than alert and potentially outdoors or in hardened structures; approximate multiplier ~2× vs daytime baseline."
    }
  ],
  "short_label": "Earthquake",
  "myth_framing": "underrated",
  "outcome_severity": "fatal",
  "exposure_pattern": "acute",
  "outcome_type": "death",
  "valence": "negative",
  "caveats": "The global-average figure is a scale marker, not a personal estimate. Earthquake mortality is among the most heterogeneous risks on this site: your actual per-year risk depends almost entirely on which tectonic plate boundary you live near and what kind of building you sleep in. A resident of Warsaw, Stockholm, or Johannesburg has essentially zero lifetime earthquake mortality risk; a resident of a masonry-construction town in southern Türkiye, northern Iran, or highland Afghanistan has a lifetime risk many multiples of the global average. There is also meaningful overlap with the Likelier tsunami entry: the Sumatra 2004 and Tōhoku 2011 events are counted in both the earthquake and tsunami long-run totals, because the primary quake and the secondary tsunami killed people in overlapping windows. Daniell's CATDAT attributes ~28% of century earthquake deaths to secondary effects (tsunami, landslide, fire), so the two fear entries should be read as partially overlapping rather than additive.\n",
  "quality_score": {
    "d1": 5,
    "d2": 5,
    "d3": 4,
    "d4": 4,
    "d5": 5,
    "d6": 5,
    "d7": 5,
    "d8": 5,
    "avg": 4.75,
    "scored_by": "claude-code-8d",
    "scored_at": "2026-05-25",
    "methodology_version": "1.2"
  },
  "reviewer": "likelier-phase-5-agent",
  "last_reviewed": "2026-04-11",
  "reviewed": true,
  "generated_at": "2026-04-11",
  "image": {
    "alt": "A single stylized horizontal fault line with a small vertical offset, rendered as a flat geometric shape against a pale sky, vector illustration."
  },
  "attribution": "Likelier — https://likelier.app",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
  "support": "https://buymeacoffee.com/kgluszczyk?via=likelier&utm_content=api-fear-single",
  "canonical_url": "https://likelier.app/earthquake-death"
}