Nuclear testing and seismic activity...

[K. A. Pital]

http://ufn.ru/en/articles/2010/3/e/

A quite crazy correlation.

http://ufn.ru/ufn10/ufn10_3/Russian/r103f.pdf


A) The annual combined energy of underground nuclear explosions by the US and USSR
B) The most powerful earthquakes with magnitude over 8,3. During the period of underground nuclear testing, no such powerful earthquakes were observed in the US and USSR

Uh...

[Duckie]

While I'm not dismissing this out of hand, being neither a seismic geologist nor a nuclear weapons expert, the graphs and cited information look like statistical trickery to me- 8.3 is an oddly specific magnitude for a cutoff. I'd want to see the full graph of the average strength of earthquakes or the magnitude of the largest earthquake each year, and proper statistical power data quoted on whether the average decrease was statistically significant, not just two graphs- lies with graphs are some of the easiest.

And I'm not even a statistician, and my warning bells of 'published because they needed to publish something' are going off.

[Simon_Jester]

There's also the matter of the position of the earthquakes. Is the plot of earthquake events of all quakes, or all quakes in the "affected" countries? What other powerful quakes occurred in those years, and where?

[LaCroix]

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ ... orical.php

While it isn't illogical per se that underground detonations might have massaged the worst 'kinks' out of Mother Gaia's epidermis, there are several above 7.5 in the list for that period (US only), and a cursory glance shows no obvious difference between the graph's era vs. others.

Also, nearly all BIG ONES happened in Alaska (and Hawaii), before, during and after... I don't think there were too many tests there to have an influence on this...

What IS noticeable is that there is a vastly elevated number of <5 Magnitude quakes per year from 2002 on and most continental - maybe the recording was improved, back then? Otherwise the data might as well lead to the assumption that Nuclear testing made the US more unstable.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ ... orical.php
worldwide list - seems incomplete, because I can't find that many earthquakes to make the above graph in US and SU combined (like 1910-1920, for example).
So either the Russian quakes are unknown to the USGS, or the graph is falsified.