7 Ways Humans Have Tried to Predict Earthquakes

Humans have been trying to predict earthquakes at least since first-century China, when the device of choice was a vessel fitted with metal dragons facing each compass direction. If the ground shook somewhere in the region, the metal ball in the dragon’s mouth would drop out, roughly indicating the direction of the earthquake. Our methods have gotten a bit more sophisticated since, but predicting earthquakes ahead of time remains shaky business.

“Why are earthquakes the last of the natural hazards to be predictable? For one thing,” Paul Silver, the late American seismologist, once , “the short propagation time means that prediction must be based on the existence of a preparation phase. It is clear that we have yet to detect, on a reliable basis, such a preparation in July that, “over time, with enough measurements and careful analysis, maybe at some point, someone will stumble across something that has definitive predictive value.”