The forecast for the earthquake became viral. Does it give people a false hope?

Brent Dmitruk calls himself a forecast for the earthquake.

In mid-October, he told his tens of thousands of followers on social media that an earthquake would soon be hit at the westernmost point of California, south of the small coastal city of Evrika.

Two months later, a magnitude of 7.3 struck the place in northern California -putting millions under a tsunami warning and growing up to Dmitrush after online as they turned to it to predict the next one.

“So people who reject what I do, how you can claim that it’s just a coincidence. It requires a serious skill to find out where the earthquakes will go,” he said on New Year’s Eve.

But there is one problem: earthquakes cannot be foreseen, the scientists who study them are said.

And it is this unpredictability that makes them so disturbing. Millions of people living on the west coast of North America are afraid that the “big” can hit at any time, changing landscapes and countless lives.

Lucy Jones, a seismologist who has been working for the US geological survey (USGS) for more than three decades and has been the author of a book called The Big Ones, has focused much of her research on the probability of earthquake and improves sustainability to withstand such cataclysmic events.

While studying earthquakes, D -Ji Jones said there are people who want an answer when the “big” – which means different things in different regions – will happen and claim to have pierced the code.

“The human need to make a model before the danger is extremely strong. This is a perfectly normal human response to fear,” she told the BBC. “However, there is no predictive power.”

With about 100,000 earthquakes around the world every year, according to the US geological survey (USGS), it is understandable for people to want to have a warning.

The Eureka region – a coastal city of 270 miles (434 km) north of San Francisco, where the earthquake happened in December, has felt more than 700 earthquakes in last year alone – including more than 10 in the last week alone, according to data.

The area where Dmitruk correctly defends that a quake will happen is one of the most “seismically active areas” of the United States, according to the USGS. Its instability is due to three meetings with tectonic plates, an area known as Mendocino’s triple intersection.

It is the movement of plates in connection with each other – whether it is above, floor or along with – causes stress accumulation. When stress is released, an earthquake may occur.

Assuming that the earthquake will happen here is an easy bet, G -Jia Jones said, although the strong size seven is quite rare.

The USGS notes that there are only 11 such earthquakes or a stronger than 1900. Five, including the one who has been promoted to social media, has happened in the same region.

Although the assumption was right, Da Jones told the BBC that it was unlikely that an earthquake – including the largest that destroying society types – will ever be able to be predicted by any accuracy.

There is a complex and “dynamic” set of geological factors that lead to an earthquake, said G -Jia Jones.

Probably the magnitude of the earthquake is formed when the event happens, she said, using a tear of a piece of paper as an analogy: RIP will continue unless there is something to stop it or slow it – like water markings that leave the paper wet.

Scientists know why an earthquake is happening – sudden movements along the fault lines – but predicting such an event is something that USGS says that it is not possible to do something that “we do not expect to know how at any time in the foreseeable future”.

The agency notes that it can calculate the likelihood of earthquake in a particular region within a certain number of years – but it is as close as it can come.

Geological records show that some of the largest species of earthquakes, known as the “big” of the locals, happen with a certain amount of regularity. It is known that the cascadia subduction area slides every 300 to 500 years, regularly exceeding the Pacific northwest coast with 100 feet (30.5 meters) high mega-tsunami.

While San Andreas’s mistake in southern California is also the source of another potential “big”, with bone earthquakes happening there every 200-300 years. Experts said the “big” could happen at any time in any region.

Ja Jones says she had several thousand people during her career who warned her about such forecasts for a great earthquake -including people in the 90s who would send faxes to her office in the hope of warning them.

“When you get a forecast every week, someone will be lucky, right?” she says with laughter. “But then it will usually go into their heads, and they predicted another 10 that were not correct.”

Such a scenario seems to have happened with G -n -Dmitruk, who has no scientific experience. He has long predicted that incredibly large quake will hit southwestern Alaska or islands off the coast of New Zealand, Magnitud, so strong that he said he could violate global trade.

USGS says the earthquake forecast must have three defined elements – date and time, the location of the earthquake and the magnitude – to be beneficial.

But the timeline of the Dmitruk continues to shift.

At one point, he said that this would come just before or after taking office of US President Donald Trump.

Then he said it would definitely happen before 2030

Although this significant earthquake has not yet hit, Dmitruk said it still believes that this will happen.

“I don’t believe it’s just accidental,” Dmitruk told BBC. “It’s not accidental or luck.”

This type of thinking is common when it comes to earthquakes, G -Jia Jones said.

“Random distributions can look like they have models. We see a constellations in the stars,” she said.

“Many people are really afraid of earthquakes and the way to deal with it is to predict (when) this will happen.”

But the fact that you cannot predict when the earthquake will strike does not mean that you have to be unprepared, experts said.

Each year, on Thursday Thursday in October, millions of Americans participate in the biggest earthquake training on Earth: The Big Shock.

It was created by a group at the Southern California Earthquake Center, which includes G -Jia Jones.

During the training, people practice drop guidance, cover and retain: they go down to their knees, conceal themselves under a healthy object as a desk and hold for one minute.

The average training has become so popular with its creation that it has spread the earthquake coast in other countries and countries.

If outdoors, people are advised to reach open space away from trees, buildings or electrical lines. Near the ocean, people practice to run in a higher place after the shaking stops to prepare for the possibility of tsunami.

“Now, until the Earth is shaken, although it is not a very stressful situation, it is really the best time to practice,” says Brian Terbush, the head of the earthquake and a volcano for Washington’s emergency management department.

In addition to training, residents of the west coast use a phone warning system supported by USGS called Shakeaalert.

The system works by detecting pressure waves emitted by an earthquake. Although it cannot predict when an earthquake will occur in the distant future, it gives a second warning that can be life -saving. This is the closest thing to the “predictor” earthquake that has been invented so far.