But not all earthquakes are created equal and the ground you walk on can make all the difference.
“The local geology definitely matters — what you’re sitting on,” said Dr. Susan Hough, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey. “What the topography is, it definitely matters.”
The surface of the Earth is made up of a variety of soil types – from sand to clay to rock and many others, so the damage resulting from those basic wave types can vary as an earthquake travels through these varying types of terrain.
Hough explains further that while the waves themselves travel the same way, in…
