It is my hypothesis that all areas of the world have exactly the same seismic risk. That's because most places are very slack if there are no earthquakes in living memory. As well, seismic hazard and risk are determined mostly by soil conditions, since there is amplification by a factor of 10 to 100 in the peak ground velocity.
Earthquake engineering has detached from the physics, as much as weather, and other traditional occupations. Everybody wants to have an 'untouchable' gravitas, created by jargon and looking serious on TV. People fall for that all the time.
And then we have Toronto. To talk to the hard-drinking bigwigs, they'll tell you they are 'prepared for anything', but if you raise earthquakes, they will say we don't have earthquakes here, not like California. This is their standard garbage. The media goes for that, and we are all happy-happy.
I have no gravitas, and as fair warning I go against the leftwinger dogma and say that we are heading towards a major ice cycle. There, you can dismiss me, since I find that all our comforting groupthink lacks physics. But physics only hits back in the long term. Any earthquake area, like Turkey, usually doesn't have a big earthquake in any one area for hundreds of years, and they build accordingly.
I did an earthquake scenario quite a few years ago, and I'll update it. We are a factor of 10 below 'earthquake areas' in 'magnitude exposure' but we make up for it by building on very soft soils, willy nilly, using outdated design methods, and no earthquake maintenance. It will all come to bite us in the long term.
-- to be continued.
ps. not that interested now to bust groupthink. I think if the Turkey earthquake gets my expected big rupture, then I might. Otherwise, I will fade..
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