One of the most important reasons that U.S. and other countries should start taking a major interest in developing earthquake forecasting technologies is because of the potential for what might be referred to as “Earthquake collateral damage.”

This is damage etc. that does not involve buildings falling on people but rather problems that arise because of how the earthquake affected some country’s economics etc. Haiti, for example was not in very good shape to start with. And after their devastating 2010 earthquake the country just about collapsed. Tremendous amounts of money had to be donated from other countries to prevent mass starvation and disease. I have never seen any actual data regarding how many orphans the earthquake created. But is sounds like the number is quite high.

The nuclear power crisis in Japan is another example of that type of collateral damage. The earthquake resulted in radiation being released into both the atmosphere and ocean. Stocks of fish and seaweed used for food in Japan and perhaps elsewhere are apparently now of no use because of radiation contamination. And, there are innumerable other collateral damage type problems that can occur.

Efforts to construct buildings that are resistant to earthquake damage are important. But for the foreseeable future they will not be able to prevent massive numbers of earthquake deaths in impoverished countries. And they won’t prevent many forms of collateral damage in developed nations as we just saw in Japan.

It is in my opinion important that the earthquakes be accurately predicted so that people can reduce fatalities and also prevent as much of that collateral damage as possible.