It is not a mere coincidence that nuclear tests in several cases have often been followed by earthquakes occurring in nearby regions, because, a nuclear test has the potential to trigger an adverse movement of tectonic plates. Nuclear weapons on the other hand have the capacity to obliterate all lives on earth.
It is a scientific fact that nuclear tests have the potential to knock the earth 16 degrees off its axis. Earthquakes and fluctuations of the earth’s axis are reflected in a direct cause-and-effect of the testing of nuclear devices. Underground nuclear tests are the probable causes of abnormal polar motions of the earth. In a 150-kiloton explosion, the position of the pole could radically slide.
This might explain why North Korea’s latest 5th underground test could be the possible reason for an earthquake of 5.2m in nearby South Korea, only days later.
When Pyongyang detonated its third nuclear device in February 2013, it had caused an earthquake in the northeast of North Korea.
During 1978, the Soviet Union conducted a 10-megaton nuclear test at Semipalatinsk, in northern Kazakhstan. Then a seismic laboratory in Uppsala, Sweden, had recorded the underground test. Only 36 hours later, an earthquake in Tabas, Iran, occurred, killing 25,000 people.
A catastrophic 8.2 earthquake struck Tangshan, China, in July 27, 1976 killing 800,000 people. Five days earlier, France had tested a bomb at its Moruroa Atoll in the Pacific. — Farouk Araie, Johannesburg
Triggering earthquakes
