On March 27, 1964, the second greatest earthquake in recorded history struck the state of Alaska.

It was an absolute monster of an earthquake, completely devastating communities, including Alaska's capital,

Anchorage. The quake was so great that people could feel it

1200 miles away in Seattle. Despite its power, the secondary effects of the

earthquake may have been even worse.

Learn more about the 1964 Alaskan Good Friday earthquake on this episode of Everything Everywhere

Daily. of everything everywhere daily. The 1964 Alaskan Earthquake registered 9.2 on the Richter scale and I want to reiterate that. It was a 9.2 earthquake on the

Richter scale. And before I get into the details of the Alaska earthquake I want to do something that I have yet to do on this

podcast, which is explain exactly how the Richter scale works because many people

aren't aware of exactly what the numbers mean. The Richter scale is actually called the Richter

Magnitude scale, and the key word here is magnitude. The Richter scale is a logarithmic scale.

What this means is that an earthquake that measures 6.0

isn't twice as powerful as one that measures 3.0.

It's actually a thousand times more powerful. The key is measuring orders of magnitude which is basically

measuring the number of digits. To create an analogy, let's make a logarithmic scale for money. If you are a two on this scale, then you have $100, because

100 has two zeros. If you are a four on this scale, then you have $10,000. A six is $1 million and a 9 is $1 billion.

The richer scale measures the amplitude of seismic waves generated by an earthquake.

Every point on the richer scale is a 10-fold

increase in power. It also so happens that the more powerful the earthquake, the fewer

of them there are. Earthqu's below 3.0 happen every day around the world

and they usually can't be felt.

There are millions of earthquakes below 3.0 every year.

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