May 27, 2010 • 24 mins
In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss reservoir-induced seismicity and the conditions under which human activities and projects like dams can trigger earthquakes.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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That's Go to meeting dot com slash stuff. Hey and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as
always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You know it says
Chuck and Josh. We debated, this is Josh and Chuck.
It's chucking Josh, now, dude, it's what do you mean now? Well,
it was Josh and Chuck and then it became Chuck
(01:04):
and Josh. I'm sure in the future will just keep
roll rotating. It's like the wheel of time. All right.
I just Josh and Chuck has a ring that I enjoy.
How about Chosh, Chuck and Matt? Yeah, with special guest
producer Matt. Jerry's not here to spank us when we air, no,
which means we can get away with a lot of stuff.
(01:25):
Although I think we're self regulating these days. Yeah, we're
doing pretty well. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. Uh, Chuck, Yes,
you want to get into it. You remember the earthquake
in May of two thousand and eight in China, Sechuan Province. Yeah, yeah,
killed like eighty thou people, I think, right? Seven point nine, Yes,
(01:46):
the old Richter scale, right, how we pronounced it, That's
how you spoke to German. I just thought it'd be
funny if we mispronounced like even things that everybody knows,
because we have a reputation for mispronouncing difficult things. All right,
let's start doing it the Richter scale. Okay, well the
on the Richter scale, squail, can we do that? Uh
(02:07):
it hit? What did you say at seven point nine? Yeah? Thereabouts,
and like I said, killed lady thousand people was an enormous,
horrific earthquake, and um, very quickly, you know. I remember
MPR was there because they were like covering the Olympics,
so everybody went to Sechua instead because it was right
before the Olympics. Right, we were here, We were here.
But MPR did like a month of coverage on this earthquake,
(02:29):
like everybody was talking about it. One thing that flew
under the radar that at least my radar, was that
there were and still our allegations that the earthquake was
actually um man made, at least hastened by a man
made structure, specifically the you're pointing at me, the zipping
(02:49):
zip zipping poo damn, something like that, pooping poo. Yeah,
that's something like that. Yeah, flee below my radar too.
I had no idea about this. Did you see that?
Like on a certain there's like tons of articles on it.
They just got no play. Yeah. So, um, what we're
talking about is something that's called reservoir induced seismicity, Yes, right,
(03:12):
and to a certain degree in due size, misicity to
a greater extent. I don't know what you just said.
Not only reservoirs I got a couple of other nuggets. Yeah, chuck, chuck,
dug up some other man made earthquake phenomena. Right, Um,
but let's well, let's start with reservoir and du seismicity, right,
or let's start with damns. How about that? Well, that's
(03:34):
a good place to start. Or should we start with earthquakes? Actually,
if you want to know about earthquakes, go listen to
our How Earthquakes Work podcast, which is pretty good. Did
we do that? Yeah? Yeah, I'm getting old. Days are
just kind of melting together. I was honestly thinking we
should do one on earthquakes. Yeah, we already did, remember
the s waves? Oh yeah, yeah, sure, alright, So, um,
(03:55):
we'll talk about dams instead. These things are, um, well,
dams are getting bigger and bigger. Is our engineering prowess? Uh?
Is not ours? But humaniter is getting better and better
and our needs are growing. Right, So I think constructing
a dam in the first place, what you're doing is
you're just putting a wall up in front of a
river and letting the water back. Fell right, pretty easy.
(04:19):
But by doing this number one, you're changing um, the
river hydrology downstream e g. The people downstream are in
big trouble. Um. But you're also you have to take
into account the area around um the dam, what was
normally once just dry land with a river running through it,
(04:42):
and probably some villages. You know Lake lan Ear. I
think there's no natural lake in Georgia. They're all man
made it from what I understand. That's what I understand too.
But Lake Lanear specifically has a town beneath it. And
when the um, when the reservoir lowers, decreases. Uh, you
can see a gulf have any sixth time popping up
out of it? Have you ever seen that? It's creepy?
(05:03):
That is creepy. That's why. Also they can never find
somebody who dies in likely near because they get caught
up in like power lines or in a convenience store
or something like that. Shopping yeah, under the water, shopping dead. Yeah. Um.
But around this area and what was what used to
be dry land, there's also dirt and rock and oftentimes
mountains sometimes fall lines. Because you want to use the
(05:27):
natural geography of the area to hold this water. Right.
You ever been to the Hoover Dam. I haven't. I've
flown over it. Does that count. I got a good
gander of it at like ten thousand feet. Yeah, if
you ever go this is I mean a lot of
people drive over the Hoover Dam, or they stand on
the edge of the Hoover Dam, like Bob Will suggests.
But I suggest that if you're there, take the time
(05:48):
to pay the dough it's like, I don't know how
much it is tin bucks and go down and take
the tour. Wow. It's my only my only tip tip
of the day. I've seen it on the TV. It's
really cool looking and you can stand there and rbl
at it, but when you get down on the guts
of it is when you're really like whoa. Yeah. So
it's a marvel of engineering, absolutely right, And like I said,
it utilizes the surrounding geography to hold the water. Um.
(06:12):
But when you do this, you're applying a lot of
water that didn't used to be there to the surrounding
same mountains. Yea, And all of a sudden you have
something that we call landslides, right, yes, And that's what's
usually you think of. You don't think of earthquakes when
you think of um, that kind of activity. You think
of landslides. You want to tell them about the Italian
(06:33):
landslide because you love to do the accents, but do
it in a really somber tone. Well there, I'm not
gonna do it an Italian accent. But it is one
of the deadliest in history and it was in northern
Italy and sixty three and it killed people. An entire
village is wiped out when four hundred million cubic yards
of mountain rock fell into the reservoir. I'm not going
(06:56):
to pronounce that the v damn. Yeah, it looks French. Yeah,
well it's in the Alp so it's close to France. Yeah,
and it basically created a tidal wave eight hundred and
fifty six ft tall, right, So this um four hundred
million cubic yards of rock goes into the reservoir, just
places all that water. And yeah, the the wave I read,
(07:19):
this wave that was generated by it crested over the
top of the damn. It washer than that. It was
twenty It was equal to a twenty eight story building.
Imagine that on top of the damn and it just
came down crazy and washed villages away. You're you're just
sitting there in Italy and sixty three enjoining your grappa,
(07:40):
having a good time. Not for long now, but apparently
it took full two minutes to get down there to
wipe out the village. How long two minutes from what
I read, that's like the MUDs like in Guatemala, no warning. No,
And there's also some in China that apparently have been
pretty disastrous thanks to it. A damn there, the three
(08:03):
gorgeous damn, which is pretty famous. Dam it's on the
Yanks River, right, Yeah, they were kind of worried about
that one. Yeah, and they kind of should be from
what I understand. Uh As whenever just about any time
they raise or lower the um the reservoir or when
they initially filled it, landslide started happening. And there was
one in two thousand seven that buried a bus. I
guess it just kind of caught him unawares. What a
(08:25):
horrific death to be buried in a bus, but well,
to be buried alive in any way, but bus would
probably be badly bus You ever taking a bus trip? Yes,
I would not want to bury a bus trip, Nor
would I because you're like, I can't believe I'm surrounded
by these people while I'm alive, you know. Yeah, not
to make light of it. No, when to come across
(08:46):
as insensitive. No, so chuck. Um, these are just landslides
we're talking about. That's that's a totally different you know,
destabilizing the dirt that holds up mountain rock is totally
different from an earthquake. Right. Indeed, so how do we
get to uh, the reservoir induced seizedmicity? How do we
(09:07):
how do we get to a dam creating an earthquake? Well,
in the case of the one in China, um, the
Zipping Poo dam. It's fifty stories tall. It can store
more than one billion cubic meters of water from the
min Jong River. So all of a sudden you have
a regular river and then all of a sudden it
(09:27):
weighs you know, a billion cubic meters more. Well, that's
not a weight, but you know what I mean. So
that's gonna create some a lot more pressure on the
ground beneath it. Right, there's a fault line there, then
you're in big trouble. Yeah, and um, we don't really
know whether there are fault lines there. Um, when we're
constructing dams. It turns out, apparently there is a survey
(09:48):
in n by the World Bank that found that forty
nine projects, like more than three quarters of them that
were surveyed all had unexpected geology geological activity, right, And
apparently it costs millions of millions to do a survey
of an area and you may find that, yeah, there's
a fault line there that we didn't know about. So
(10:10):
companies who build damns oftentimes don't want to know that
whether or not there's a fault line there. I've seen
that that not a lot of research goes in well,
I don't want to say not a lot of research,
but many times not enough research goes into the underground situations. Right.
And for the three gorgeous um damn there were there.
Actually it's built over two fault lines and they're just
(10:31):
waiting for this thing to blow apparently, Yeah, and they
said it might be a big one too. So with
the two thousand and eight earthquake, China kind of got
into this issue of reservoir induce seismicity, and it's already
kind of cloudy. It's kind of one of those um walks,
like a duck scenarios, because you have um, you have
increased seismic activity in areas as reservoirs are being filled,
(10:53):
you have um earthquakes that that people weren't expecting, right obviously,
but even geologists weren't expecting seismologists um with an epicenter
under the dam. Right, So it's like, yes, damns are
creating earthquakes, um. But again there's a lot of money
at stake. If people become more aware of r I s,
(11:17):
which is what people in the NO call it, then
people who live downstream from a dam are gonna want
their houses earthquake proof, which is gonna raise the costs
through the roof. And they're not gonna do that, right,
And like I said, with China now and it's it's
become obviously scated even further. Yeah, because in a case
of China, there's probably a lot of houses that need
(11:38):
to be retrofitted. Well, not just that the the government's
politically in the hot seat right now and the earthquake
in two thousand and eight, they tried to distance themselves
because it was a government project. And building a damn
in and of itself is it's a very utilitarian pursuit.
If a dam can create an earthquake and kill people
or their landslides, and that kills people because you're helping,
(12:00):
you know, x number of people, Like the Zipping Pooh
dam generates like sixty kilowatts kilowatt hours of electricity. Oh yeah,
sure you do. But at the same time, so it's
kind of like, Okay, well there's a bus full of
people that just got buried, but we have all this electricity.
So when you throw that in, when you throw the
(12:21):
money in and then um, paper in the journal, uh,
the Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation. Do you get
that it sounds like a it does? It concluded that
people in other countries who were um affected by reservoir
and in due seismicity from American built dams had legal
(12:43):
grounds to see those people in the US for damages. Basically,
there's a lot of people out there who are like
rs doesn't exist, but it does. Yeah, uh. And you
know it's not just the water pressure sitting on top
of these plates that can cause it. What also happens
is the water seeps down in there and fills up
all the little cracks. And if there's way more water
(13:03):
doing this, then that can cause uh, fractures to become
larger or to shift around, and that you know, that
might be one of the reasons to right. And it
also lubricates, it doesn't it. It goes down to these
faulans because you think about it, like you have tectonic plates,
you have fault lines where the earth is basically sitting
like just on the tiniest ledge of one plate over another,
(13:25):
and if you get some water in there and loop
it up, then they slip and you have an earthquake.
It's called poor pressure, my friend. It's poor pressure is
the fluid pressure in the pores and the fractures of
the rocks, and um the acts against the weight of
the rocks. So when poor pressure is low, the imbalance
of what they call it in situ earth. Have you
(13:46):
ever heard that phrase? Uh doesn't mean like um stable
bedrock or something like that sort of it's Latin egg.
It can mean a bunch of different things, but in
case of the Earth, it means uh. In the place
is in water or oil that hasn't been extracted yet
oh yeah, yeah yeah, or gas. Let's say, whatever is
down there, any kind of natural earth. UM. So the
(14:08):
imbalance of the institute earth stresses UH will cause the
occasional earthquake. And if the poor pressure is increased, then
it takes a lot less of an imbalance for these
to get out of whack. And one of the reasons
that that might happen is if you inject something into
the subsurface, or if you extract something from the subsurface,
(14:29):
like maybe oil or water or gas. Yea. And that
all made sense because I've I've often posed the question
does the earth need it's oil, Like, you know, we're
extracting oil, but maybe it has a really vital function
down there, maybe it's a lubricant. I kind of found
out that that wasn't necessarily true that you know, if
(14:49):
we pull out all the oil from me, well, we
can't pull out all the oil. I think it leaves
about a third they they leave at least a third
in all reservoirs because we just don't have the technology
to get But what I what I gathered from researching
this a little bit today is that it doesn't necessarily
it's such a small amount still compared to the density
of the earth that these like small empty pockets might
(15:12):
make things move around and cause like some minor tremors,
But it's not like we're going to have the big
one one day if we tap the oil out of
the earth. But we also use like water injection technology
to BINGO and that can cause an earthquake, right, Yeah,
and that's when you you inject like steam or water
or c O two to either move the oil around
(15:32):
or heat it up make it more viscous, and that
means it will flow to a channel where it's easier
to tap it. Or they do that for water wells too,
to make water more readily available. I think there were
some earthquakes and surprising earthquakes in Colorado in the nineties
that had to do with natural gas drilling. Yeah. Well,
you know the other thing they do is they inject
(15:53):
waste water into the earth. I did not know that.
I didn't either. I always wondered where it went. Well,
a lot of they read assume we were all drinking it. Well,
I think it's a certain amount we do, but there's
way more wastewater than there are mouths to drink it.
So evidently they'll drill down into the earth and inject.
They'll supposedly clean it. They supposedly they clean it. Yeah,
(16:16):
I've never witnessed it. But why would they lie? Why
would they lie? I don't know. I mean, who would
lie when money is at stakes? So they inject the
waste water back into the earth. And that's you know,
hasn't create any problems thus far. Yeah, yet, who knows. Uh,
there was I remember we talked about like carbon sequestration.
(16:37):
Uh once were we were talking about taking C O two, remember,
capturing it from smoke stacks and then putting it into
the and we were wondering, like, what what effect is
that going to have? Who knows? Probably well, we'll all
find out what when we do hit the big ones
from removing oil and then injecting like carbon c O
two into the earth, what happens. So many of these
(16:59):
studies are all like, O, don't no, it's not doing anything.
But like I'm of the belief that holding a cell
phone up to your brain it's gonna cause some damage.
Another saying no, it doesn't. But we haven't studied anyone
who's done it for thirty years every day, right, Yeah,
it's a good point. And then I found like a
little computer, you know, I know it's like d d
D D D d D. I think we're gonna see
some fallout from that in about years. Brother, you know,
(17:20):
conger over it stuff. Mom never told you wrote it? Uh?
An article on cell phones making a sterile, keep it
in your pocket, yeah, next to the boys. Yeah, I
don't want to do that, so chuck. One more thing.
We should say very specifically that even though people it
seems like there is a consensus that r S does exist, right, yes, um,
(17:43):
and there's a lot of people who want to downplay it.
Like the Chinese pointed out that prior to this earthquake
that the in in such Uan in two thousand and eight,
the biggest r a S linked earthquake happened in nineteen
sixty seven in India and it was like six point
five and they point that that was the biggest ever
(18:04):
that was induced by a dam. So we're not entirely
certain how how how big these things can be UM
or how how much dams can contribute. But again, we
don't really know what we're doing building dams either do
we mining too that can cause them? And I also
read that UM building construction like that tower in Taipei,
(18:27):
that that caused some minor earthquakes because it was so big.
That's gotta put hair on your chest if you're the
project manager of of of a project that causes earthquakes. Yeah,
and we should also point out lastly dams can't create
earthquakes all by themselves. They have to be a bunch
of factors present. Like it has to be built on
a fault line. It has to be huge. The dam,
(18:49):
I think, has to be at least a hundred meters
high to create earthquakes that really register. But pretty much
anytime you build a dam like around a fault line,
seismic a activity increases as you fill it up. So
it's gonna happen. Yeah, we're not anti damn. We should
point that out. We love damns. Yeah, I guess that's it, right,
(19:12):
I think, so, I won't have anything else. All right, Well,
if you want to read a little more about this
and see some gripping pictures, you can type in humans
and earthquakes. I think that'll probably bring this article up right. Probably,
So this episode of stuff you should know. It's brought
to you by go to Meeting the affordable way to
(19:33):
meet with clients and colleagues for your free thirty day trial.
Is it go to meeting dot com slash stuff And
this is a short one, chucklin't it. Yeah, I have
some stuff to inject here at the end, and to
our subsurface, we have some announcements about New York, right
and T shirts. Yeah, New York. You know we're going
(19:53):
to New York. We're gonna like throw our hat and
do a little twirl in the middle of Times Square
because we've made it a for all. Um, we're gonna
be at the Knitting Factory. We're having a stuff you
should know meet and greet, happy fans, happy hour, come
hang out with us. Um, you pay for your own
drinks or whatever, but we're not charging anything to get in.
(20:14):
We may or may not be wearing shirts. Uh. And
it's gonna be at the Knitting Factory. We're gonna have
shirt We're gonna have T shirts. We can go ahead
and say that that's right, we are. We're gonna have
shirts stuff you should know. T shirts the very first
ones and Josh designed it. That's how awesome. Oh go on, Yeah,
it's pretty cool. Anyway. That's at the Knitting Factory in
Brooklyn on Monday, June seven, from five thirty seven thirty right, Yes,
(20:38):
and a concert will follow in the main space, sponsored
by The Onion newspaper. Who are buddies now? And I
think that's like ten or twelve bucks if you want
to get into that and we'll be hanging out all night,
so yes, we'll be there. Um And then Wednesday, June nine,
we're doing an all star team trivia, yes, featuring us,
Joe Randazzo, who is the editor of The Onion and End,
(21:00):
and a couple of other famous type nerdy famous people
that are funny. But we can't commit to those just
yet because we don't want to disappoint you in case
they don't show up. I guess we should tell them
where it is, right, You don't think they should just
like drive around New York looking for it. Uh? Yes,
it's at the Bellhouse, Josh, and that is in Brooklyn,
(21:21):
New York. And um, it goes from seven to nine
as as trivia start to seven. Doors at six thirty,
So show up early and rub elbows with us and
uh drink an adult beverage with us and trivia starts
at seven. Is game on for the next two hours
and should be a really fun time right on, Chuck
sounds good, huh. And we'll also put this on the
(21:42):
Facebook page to just so people know. And if you're
not um a fan of ours, or if you don't
like our fan page on Facebook, go check it out.
It's um, we're on there a lot, and actually Chuck
is just killing it well talking to people. He walks
around and shaking hands, kissing babies crazy. It's awesome. And
we have a Twitter account s y s K podcast.
(22:04):
You're killing the Twitter. You're very funny on there. And Uh,
one last thing, if you listen to our Guatemala podcast
Part one and two, UM, you know that we worked
with an organization down there called Cooperative for Education and
they have a text donation drive going. And if you
aren't a super cheap skate, then you should give AM
easily five dollars five bucks to get textbooks for Life
(22:27):
for Guatemalan student. Yeah, you don't even have to actually
spend any money. You just pay your bill plus five
bucks at the end of the month. You'll never even that. Uh.
You just text the words stuff s t U F
F T two zero to two two. You'll get a
text back and it'll say you sure or something like that,
(22:48):
and you text yes back and there you go by
the boom. But the being and uh, what data and
wireless rates apply? Maybe yes, they definitely do, uh in
certain cases. And if you live outside the United States,
you um can go to the website co ed dot
u C C o E d u C dot org
(23:09):
and you can donate there if you live outside the
United States. Worthy cause, let's do listener mail. Now do
we do T shirts? Uh? No. T shirt contest is
officially on, has been going on. It closes at the
end of the month May thirty one, at midnight and
Eastern time, Eastern time. If you submitted once, you've got
(23:30):
to resubmit, do a one sided design, not on both sides.
And that's pretty much only limitations at this point, except
you have to be American. Yeah, it's crazy, like you
can't be a part of this. Yeah, if you have
to be a bystander, an innocent bystander, we hope, but um, yeah,
a bystander if you're not Americans an American except you
(23:53):
should know T shirt throw down, Yes, and we would
love for it to be everybody. But it's that the
laws of Earth, is what I've been saying. And I
can't win a contest in um Africa. So well, Chuck's
going to night school right now to study international laws,
and once he gets his masters, we will be holding
(24:13):
contests elsewhere right indeed, Uh, if you want to send
us a listener mail you just shoot it in an
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(00:21):
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(00:43):
That's Go to meeting dot com slash stuff. Hey and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as
always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You know it says
Chuck and Josh. We debated, this is Josh and Chuck.
It's chucking Josh, now, dude, it's what do you mean now? Well,
it was Josh and Chuck and then it became Chuck
(01:04):
and Josh. I'm sure in the future will just keep
roll rotating. It's like the wheel of time. All right.
I just Josh and Chuck has a ring that I enjoy.
How about Chosh, Chuck and Matt? Yeah, with special guest
producer Matt. Jerry's not here to spank us when we air, no,
which means we can get away with a lot of stuff.
(01:25):
Although I think we're self regulating these days. Yeah, we're
doing pretty well. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. Uh, Chuck, Yes,
you want to get into it. You remember the earthquake
in May of two thousand and eight in China, Sechuan Province. Yeah, yeah,
killed like eighty thou people, I think, right? Seven point nine, Yes,
(01:46):
the old Richter scale, right, how we pronounced it, That's
how you spoke to German. I just thought it'd be
funny if we mispronounced like even things that everybody knows,
because we have a reputation for mispronouncing difficult things. All right,
let's start doing it the Richter scale. Okay, well the
on the Richter scale, squail, can we do that? Uh
(02:07):
it hit? What did you say at seven point nine? Yeah? Thereabouts,
and like I said, killed lady thousand people was an enormous,
horrific earthquake, and um, very quickly, you know. I remember
MPR was there because they were like covering the Olympics,
so everybody went to Sechua instead because it was right
before the Olympics. Right, we were here, We were here.
But MPR did like a month of coverage on this earthquake,
(02:29):
like everybody was talking about it. One thing that flew
under the radar that at least my radar, was that
there were and still our allegations that the earthquake was
actually um man made, at least hastened by a man
made structure, specifically the you're pointing at me, the zipping
(02:49):
zip zipping poo damn, something like that, pooping poo. Yeah,
that's something like that. Yeah, flee below my radar too.
I had no idea about this. Did you see that?
Like on a certain there's like tons of articles on it.
They just got no play. Yeah. So, um, what we're
talking about is something that's called reservoir induced seismicity, Yes, right,
(03:12):
and to a certain degree in due size, misicity to
a greater extent. I don't know what you just said.
Not only reservoirs I got a couple of other nuggets. Yeah, chuck, chuck,
dug up some other man made earthquake phenomena. Right, Um,
but let's well, let's start with reservoir and du seismicity, right,
or let's start with damns. How about that? Well, that's
(03:34):
a good place to start. Or should we start with earthquakes? Actually,
if you want to know about earthquakes, go listen to
our How Earthquakes Work podcast, which is pretty good. Did
we do that? Yeah? Yeah, I'm getting old. Days are
just kind of melting together. I was honestly thinking we
should do one on earthquakes. Yeah, we already did, remember
the s waves? Oh yeah, yeah, sure, alright, So, um,
(03:55):
we'll talk about dams instead. These things are, um, well,
dams are getting bigger and bigger. Is our engineering prowess? Uh?
Is not ours? But humaniter is getting better and better
and our needs are growing. Right, So I think constructing
a dam in the first place, what you're doing is
you're just putting a wall up in front of a
river and letting the water back. Fell right, pretty easy.
(04:19):
But by doing this number one, you're changing um, the
river hydrology downstream e g. The people downstream are in
big trouble. Um. But you're also you have to take
into account the area around um the dam, what was
normally once just dry land with a river running through it,
(04:42):
and probably some villages. You know Lake lan Ear. I
think there's no natural lake in Georgia. They're all man
made it from what I understand. That's what I understand too.
But Lake Lanear specifically has a town beneath it. And
when the um, when the reservoir lowers, decreases. Uh, you
can see a gulf have any sixth time popping up
out of it? Have you ever seen that? It's creepy?
(05:03):
That is creepy. That's why. Also they can never find
somebody who dies in likely near because they get caught
up in like power lines or in a convenience store
or something like that. Shopping yeah, under the water, shopping dead. Yeah. Um.
But around this area and what was what used to
be dry land, there's also dirt and rock and oftentimes
mountains sometimes fall lines. Because you want to use the
(05:27):
natural geography of the area to hold this water. Right.
You ever been to the Hoover Dam. I haven't. I've
flown over it. Does that count. I got a good
gander of it at like ten thousand feet. Yeah, if
you ever go this is I mean a lot of
people drive over the Hoover Dam, or they stand on
the edge of the Hoover Dam, like Bob Will suggests.
But I suggest that if you're there, take the time
(05:48):
to pay the dough it's like, I don't know how
much it is tin bucks and go down and take
the tour. Wow. It's my only my only tip tip
of the day. I've seen it on the TV. It's
really cool looking and you can stand there and rbl
at it, but when you get down on the guts
of it is when you're really like whoa. Yeah. So
it's a marvel of engineering, absolutely right, And like I said,
it utilizes the surrounding geography to hold the water. Um.
(06:12):
But when you do this, you're applying a lot of
water that didn't used to be there to the surrounding
same mountains. Yea, And all of a sudden you have
something that we call landslides, right, yes, And that's what's
usually you think of. You don't think of earthquakes when
you think of um, that kind of activity. You think
of landslides. You want to tell them about the Italian
(06:33):
landslide because you love to do the accents, but do
it in a really somber tone. Well there, I'm not
gonna do it an Italian accent. But it is one
of the deadliest in history and it was in northern
Italy and sixty three and it killed people. An entire
village is wiped out when four hundred million cubic yards
of mountain rock fell into the reservoir. I'm not going
(06:56):
to pronounce that the v damn. Yeah, it looks French. Yeah,
well it's in the Alp so it's close to France. Yeah,
and it basically created a tidal wave eight hundred and
fifty six ft tall, right, So this um four hundred
million cubic yards of rock goes into the reservoir, just
places all that water. And yeah, the the wave I read,
(07:19):
this wave that was generated by it crested over the
top of the damn. It washer than that. It was
twenty It was equal to a twenty eight story building.
Imagine that on top of the damn and it just
came down crazy and washed villages away. You're you're just
sitting there in Italy and sixty three enjoining your grappa,
(07:40):
having a good time. Not for long now, but apparently
it took full two minutes to get down there to
wipe out the village. How long two minutes from what
I read, that's like the MUDs like in Guatemala, no warning. No,
And there's also some in China that apparently have been
pretty disastrous thanks to it. A damn there, the three
(08:03):
gorgeous damn, which is pretty famous. Dam it's on the
Yanks River, right, Yeah, they were kind of worried about
that one. Yeah, and they kind of should be from
what I understand. Uh As whenever just about any time
they raise or lower the um the reservoir or when
they initially filled it, landslide started happening. And there was
one in two thousand seven that buried a bus. I
guess it just kind of caught him unawares. What a
(08:25):
horrific death to be buried in a bus, but well,
to be buried alive in any way, but bus would
probably be badly bus You ever taking a bus trip? Yes,
I would not want to bury a bus trip, Nor
would I because you're like, I can't believe I'm surrounded
by these people while I'm alive, you know. Yeah, not
to make light of it. No, when to come across
(08:46):
as insensitive. No, so chuck. Um, these are just landslides
we're talking about. That's that's a totally different you know,
destabilizing the dirt that holds up mountain rock is totally
different from an earthquake. Right. Indeed, so how do we
get to uh, the reservoir induced seizedmicity? How do we
(09:07):
how do we get to a dam creating an earthquake? Well,
in the case of the one in China, um, the
Zipping Poo dam. It's fifty stories tall. It can store
more than one billion cubic meters of water from the
min Jong River. So all of a sudden you have
a regular river and then all of a sudden it
(09:27):
weighs you know, a billion cubic meters more. Well, that's
not a weight, but you know what I mean. So
that's gonna create some a lot more pressure on the
ground beneath it. Right, there's a fault line there, then
you're in big trouble. Yeah, and um, we don't really
know whether there are fault lines there. Um, when we're
constructing dams. It turns out, apparently there is a survey
(09:48):
in n by the World Bank that found that forty
nine projects, like more than three quarters of them that
were surveyed all had unexpected geology geological activity, right, And
apparently it costs millions of millions to do a survey
of an area and you may find that, yeah, there's
a fault line there that we didn't know about. So
(10:10):
companies who build damns oftentimes don't want to know that
whether or not there's a fault line there. I've seen
that that not a lot of research goes in well,
I don't want to say not a lot of research,
but many times not enough research goes into the underground situations. Right.
And for the three gorgeous um damn there were there.
Actually it's built over two fault lines and they're just
(10:31):
waiting for this thing to blow apparently, Yeah, and they
said it might be a big one too. So with
the two thousand and eight earthquake, China kind of got
into this issue of reservoir induce seismicity, and it's already
kind of cloudy. It's kind of one of those um walks,
like a duck scenarios, because you have um, you have
increased seismic activity in areas as reservoirs are being filled,
(10:53):
you have um earthquakes that that people weren't expecting, right obviously,
but even geologists weren't expecting seismologists um with an epicenter
under the dam. Right, So it's like, yes, damns are
creating earthquakes, um. But again there's a lot of money
at stake. If people become more aware of r I s,
(11:17):
which is what people in the NO call it, then
people who live downstream from a dam are gonna want
their houses earthquake proof, which is gonna raise the costs
through the roof. And they're not gonna do that, right,
And like I said, with China now and it's it's
become obviously scated even further. Yeah, because in a case
of China, there's probably a lot of houses that need
(11:38):
to be retrofitted. Well, not just that the the government's
politically in the hot seat right now and the earthquake
in two thousand and eight, they tried to distance themselves
because it was a government project. And building a damn
in and of itself is it's a very utilitarian pursuit.
If a dam can create an earthquake and kill people
or their landslides, and that kills people because you're helping,
(12:00):
you know, x number of people, Like the Zipping Pooh
dam generates like sixty kilowatts kilowatt hours of electricity. Oh yeah,
sure you do. But at the same time, so it's
kind of like, Okay, well there's a bus full of
people that just got buried, but we have all this electricity.
So when you throw that in, when you throw the
(12:21):
money in and then um, paper in the journal, uh,
the Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation. Do you get
that it sounds like a it does? It concluded that
people in other countries who were um affected by reservoir
and in due seismicity from American built dams had legal
(12:43):
grounds to see those people in the US for damages. Basically,
there's a lot of people out there who are like
rs doesn't exist, but it does. Yeah, uh. And you
know it's not just the water pressure sitting on top
of these plates that can cause it. What also happens
is the water seeps down in there and fills up
all the little cracks. And if there's way more water
(13:03):
doing this, then that can cause uh, fractures to become
larger or to shift around, and that you know, that
might be one of the reasons to right. And it
also lubricates, it doesn't it. It goes down to these
faulans because you think about it, like you have tectonic plates,
you have fault lines where the earth is basically sitting
like just on the tiniest ledge of one plate over another,
(13:25):
and if you get some water in there and loop
it up, then they slip and you have an earthquake.
It's called poor pressure, my friend. It's poor pressure is
the fluid pressure in the pores and the fractures of
the rocks, and um the acts against the weight of
the rocks. So when poor pressure is low, the imbalance
of what they call it in situ earth. Have you
(13:46):
ever heard that phrase? Uh doesn't mean like um stable
bedrock or something like that sort of it's Latin egg.
It can mean a bunch of different things, but in
case of the Earth, it means uh. In the place
is in water or oil that hasn't been extracted yet
oh yeah, yeah yeah, or gas. Let's say, whatever is
down there, any kind of natural earth. UM. So the
(14:08):
imbalance of the institute earth stresses UH will cause the
occasional earthquake. And if the poor pressure is increased, then
it takes a lot less of an imbalance for these
to get out of whack. And one of the reasons
that that might happen is if you inject something into
the subsurface, or if you extract something from the subsurface,
(14:29):
like maybe oil or water or gas. Yea. And that
all made sense because I've I've often posed the question
does the earth need it's oil, Like, you know, we're
extracting oil, but maybe it has a really vital function
down there, maybe it's a lubricant. I kind of found
out that that wasn't necessarily true that you know, if
(14:49):
we pull out all the oil from me, well, we
can't pull out all the oil. I think it leaves
about a third they they leave at least a third
in all reservoirs because we just don't have the technology
to get But what I what I gathered from researching
this a little bit today is that it doesn't necessarily
it's such a small amount still compared to the density
of the earth that these like small empty pockets might
(15:12):
make things move around and cause like some minor tremors,
But it's not like we're going to have the big
one one day if we tap the oil out of
the earth. But we also use like water injection technology
to BINGO and that can cause an earthquake, right, Yeah,
and that's when you you inject like steam or water
or c O two to either move the oil around
(15:32):
or heat it up make it more viscous, and that
means it will flow to a channel where it's easier
to tap it. Or they do that for water wells too,
to make water more readily available. I think there were
some earthquakes and surprising earthquakes in Colorado in the nineties
that had to do with natural gas drilling. Yeah. Well,
you know the other thing they do is they inject
(15:53):
waste water into the earth. I did not know that.
I didn't either. I always wondered where it went. Well,
a lot of they read assume we were all drinking it. Well,
I think it's a certain amount we do, but there's
way more wastewater than there are mouths to drink it.
So evidently they'll drill down into the earth and inject.
They'll supposedly clean it. They supposedly they clean it. Yeah,
(16:16):
I've never witnessed it. But why would they lie? Why
would they lie? I don't know. I mean, who would
lie when money is at stakes? So they inject the
waste water back into the earth. And that's you know,
hasn't create any problems thus far. Yeah, yet, who knows. Uh,
there was I remember we talked about like carbon sequestration.
(16:37):
Uh once were we were talking about taking C O two, remember,
capturing it from smoke stacks and then putting it into
the and we were wondering, like, what what effect is
that going to have? Who knows? Probably well, we'll all
find out what when we do hit the big ones
from removing oil and then injecting like carbon c O
two into the earth, what happens. So many of these
(16:59):
studies are all like, O, don't no, it's not doing anything.
But like I'm of the belief that holding a cell
phone up to your brain it's gonna cause some damage.
Another saying no, it doesn't. But we haven't studied anyone
who's done it for thirty years every day, right, Yeah,
it's a good point. And then I found like a
little computer, you know, I know it's like d d
D D D d D. I think we're gonna see
some fallout from that in about years. Brother, you know,
(17:20):
conger over it stuff. Mom never told you wrote it? Uh?
An article on cell phones making a sterile, keep it
in your pocket, yeah, next to the boys. Yeah, I
don't want to do that, so chuck. One more thing.
We should say very specifically that even though people it
seems like there is a consensus that r S does exist, right, yes, um,
(17:43):
and there's a lot of people who want to downplay it.
Like the Chinese pointed out that prior to this earthquake
that the in in such Uan in two thousand and eight,
the biggest r a S linked earthquake happened in nineteen
sixty seven in India and it was like six point
five and they point that that was the biggest ever
(18:04):
that was induced by a dam. So we're not entirely
certain how how how big these things can be UM
or how how much dams can contribute. But again, we
don't really know what we're doing building dams either do
we mining too that can cause them? And I also
read that UM building construction like that tower in Taipei,
(18:27):
that that caused some minor earthquakes because it was so big.
That's gotta put hair on your chest if you're the
project manager of of of a project that causes earthquakes. Yeah,
and we should also point out lastly dams can't create
earthquakes all by themselves. They have to be a bunch
of factors present. Like it has to be built on
a fault line. It has to be huge. The dam,
(18:49):
I think, has to be at least a hundred meters
high to create earthquakes that really register. But pretty much
anytime you build a dam like around a fault line,
seismic a activity increases as you fill it up. So
it's gonna happen. Yeah, we're not anti damn. We should
point that out. We love damns. Yeah, I guess that's it, right,
(19:12):
I think, so, I won't have anything else. All right, Well,
if you want to read a little more about this
and see some gripping pictures, you can type in humans
and earthquakes. I think that'll probably bring this article up right. Probably,
So this episode of stuff you should know. It's brought
to you by go to Meeting the affordable way to
(19:33):
meet with clients and colleagues for your free thirty day trial.
Is it go to meeting dot com slash stuff And
this is a short one, chucklin't it. Yeah, I have
some stuff to inject here at the end, and to
our subsurface, we have some announcements about New York, right
and T shirts. Yeah, New York. You know we're going
(19:53):
to New York. We're gonna like throw our hat and
do a little twirl in the middle of Times Square
because we've made it a for all. Um, we're gonna
be at the Knitting Factory. We're having a stuff you
should know meet and greet, happy fans, happy hour, come
hang out with us. Um, you pay for your own
drinks or whatever, but we're not charging anything to get in.
(20:14):
We may or may not be wearing shirts. Uh. And
it's gonna be at the Knitting Factory. We're gonna have
shirt We're gonna have T shirts. We can go ahead
and say that that's right, we are. We're gonna have
shirts stuff you should know. T shirts the very first
ones and Josh designed it. That's how awesome. Oh go on, Yeah,
it's pretty cool. Anyway. That's at the Knitting Factory in
Brooklyn on Monday, June seven, from five thirty seven thirty right, Yes,
(20:38):
and a concert will follow in the main space, sponsored
by The Onion newspaper. Who are buddies now? And I
think that's like ten or twelve bucks if you want
to get into that and we'll be hanging out all night,
so yes, we'll be there. Um And then Wednesday, June nine,
we're doing an all star team trivia, yes, featuring us,
Joe Randazzo, who is the editor of The Onion and End,
(21:00):
and a couple of other famous type nerdy famous people
that are funny. But we can't commit to those just
yet because we don't want to disappoint you in case
they don't show up. I guess we should tell them
where it is, right, You don't think they should just
like drive around New York looking for it. Uh? Yes,
it's at the Bellhouse, Josh, and that is in Brooklyn,
(21:21):
New York. And um, it goes from seven to nine
as as trivia start to seven. Doors at six thirty,
So show up early and rub elbows with us and
uh drink an adult beverage with us and trivia starts
at seven. Is game on for the next two hours
and should be a really fun time right on, Chuck
sounds good, huh. And we'll also put this on the
(21:42):
Facebook page to just so people know. And if you're
not um a fan of ours, or if you don't
like our fan page on Facebook, go check it out.
It's um, we're on there a lot, and actually Chuck
is just killing it well talking to people. He walks
around and shaking hands, kissing babies crazy. It's awesome. And
we have a Twitter account s y s K podcast.
(22:04):
You're killing the Twitter. You're very funny on there. And Uh,
one last thing, if you listen to our Guatemala podcast
Part one and two, UM, you know that we worked
with an organization down there called Cooperative for Education and
they have a text donation drive going. And if you
aren't a super cheap skate, then you should give AM
easily five dollars five bucks to get textbooks for Life
(22:27):
for Guatemalan student. Yeah, you don't even have to actually
spend any money. You just pay your bill plus five
bucks at the end of the month. You'll never even that. Uh.
You just text the words stuff s t U F
F T two zero to two two. You'll get a
text back and it'll say you sure or something like that,
(22:48):
and you text yes back and there you go by
the boom. But the being and uh, what data and
wireless rates apply? Maybe yes, they definitely do, uh in
certain cases. And if you live outside the United States,
you um can go to the website co ed dot
u C C o E d u C dot org
(23:09):
and you can donate there if you live outside the
United States. Worthy cause, let's do listener mail. Now do
we do T shirts? Uh? No. T shirt contest is
officially on, has been going on. It closes at the
end of the month May thirty one, at midnight and
Eastern time, Eastern time. If you submitted once, you've got
(23:30):
to resubmit, do a one sided design, not on both sides.
And that's pretty much only limitations at this point, except
you have to be American. Yeah, it's crazy, like you
can't be a part of this. Yeah, if you have
to be a bystander, an innocent bystander, we hope, but um, yeah,
a bystander if you're not Americans an American except you
(23:53):
should know T shirt throw down, Yes, and we would
love for it to be everybody. But it's that the
laws of Earth, is what I've been saying. And I
can't win a contest in um Africa. So well, Chuck's
going to night school right now to study international laws,
and once he gets his masters, we will be holding
(24:13):
contests elsewhere right indeed, Uh, if you want to send
us a listener mail you just shoot it in an
email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
(24:34):
check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
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Josh Clark
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