What kind of phenomena did the "eyewitnesses" discover before the Wenchuan earthquake? Are earthquakes really unpredictable?

Hello everyone, today I, the editor from Sichuan, will continue to bring my readers "personal experience" of earthquakes and some little knowledge about earthquakes.

Continuing from the previous article, there are many "experiences" in predicting earthquakes among the people. For example, earthquake clouds will appear in the sky, insects (frogs) will migrate on a large scale, pets will become restless and bark non-stop... So what kind of strange phenomena did the editor discover before the "5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake"?

As a "veteran", I feel that the biggest "abnormality" that day was that everything was normal.

There were no fish-scale earthquake clouds in the sky, no groups of toads roaming on the ground, and even the pet dogs in the neighborhood seemed to be as greedy for the wonderful nap time at noon as their owners, and did not even bark unnecessarily.

The earth-shattering earthquake came quietly without any warning. The house was shaking and the windows were rattling. I was taking a nap in bed at the time, and I could only curse in my head: "What a damn truck, it's carrying so much cargo at noon, go to hell! It's making so much noise, I can't even sleep a little longer."

After a few seconds, my brain gradually came to its senses and I realized something was wrong—there was an earthquake! So I quickly got under the bed (the rest of the story is described in detail in the previous article, so I won’t go into details here)…

Indeed, I personally feel that before the "Wenchuan Earthquake", Sichuanese had almost no psychological warning for a major earthquake. As a result, nearly 70,000 compatriots died, nearly 18,000 were missing, and more than 300,000 were injured to varying degrees. The epicenter was almost left with only rubble.

Is it really impossible to predict such a terrible disaster?

Regarding this issue, let’s first talk about the folk remedies that are said to be miraculous.

Earthquake clouds, large-scale insect migration, pets are restless, well water bubbles, rivers and ponds are dry, etc., these phenomena certainly cannot be directly concluded that an earthquake is coming. However, it seems too arbitrary to turn a blind eye to these and say that they have nothing to do with earthquakes. As the old saying goes, "It is better to believe it than not to believe it." It is always right to have a psychological warning and take more precautions.

The editor has compiled some correct ways to deal with the above phenomena. First of all, we must not panic and think that an earthquake is about to hit, and then spread rumors and cause social panic. We should find out the time, place, and relevant circumstances of the phenomenon, protect the scene, and report it to the relevant departments in a timely manner.

After introducing folk remedies, let's move on to serious scientific predictions. Think about the rapid development of human technology in the past one or two hundred years. We have been able to go to the moon and explore Mars. We can even make black holes, a deep abyss of space and time that even light cannot escape, "appear" and take photos of them. Just open a weather forecast app on your phone, and we can know in advance not only the weather information for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, but also the weather information for a week or half a month.

To what extent have omnipotent humans been able to predict earthquakes? In one word: “Nothing”!

It is true that the research on earthquakes in the past century is inevitably biased if we simply use the word "nothing" to describe geological researchers. However, compared with the accuracy of weather forecasts, earthquake forecasts are far from accurate.

The editor vaguely remembers such a news. On June 17, 2019, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake occurred in Changning County, Yibin City, Sichuan Province. Suddenly, an early warning popped up on the TV screen in Chengdu area: "An earthquake of about magnitude 5.8 is occurring in Changning, Sichuan Province... The seismic wave will arrive in 47 seconds!" This 47-second earthquake warning seems too "precious" compared to the weather forecast of half a month.

Why is earthquake prediction so difficult? Even with advanced technology today, this global problem still leaves scientists helpless?

The main reasons are as follows.

First, earthquakes generally occur in the crust 20 to 30 kilometers underground. The movement of mantle molten rock in the deep mantle is more complicated. The deepest drilling hole today only reaches 12 kilometers. Compared with the diameter of the earth, which is 12,756 kilometers, humans have only touched the surface. Therefore, we can only rely on ground observations to infer many conditions inside the earth.

Secondly, the accumulation of energy inside the earth and the brewing of earthquakes are often a complicated and long process, taking decades or even hundreds of years, which is difficult to model and describe using classical physics.

Finally, the formation mechanism of earthquakes varies greatly in different regions and periods, and the final outbreak of earthquakes is somewhat accidental.

For all these reasons, scientists still have a long way to go in predicting earthquakes accurately and timely, and they will certainly do their best and devote their entire lives to this end!

Scientific predictions are seriously lagging behind, and folk remedies are still under discussion...

When we complain about the shortcomings of earthquake prediction, have we ever thought about this question: how many earthquake emergency drills have we participated in since we were young? When encountering disasters, how much knowledge do we have about self-rescue and escape?

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