Attention. This post could contain spoilers light, so if you haven’t seen anything from the last season of stranger things, we recommend that you leave the way you came. Now that it’s just the connoisseurs left… do you remember the “earthquake” scene? Yes, the one that happens in the second part of Stranger Things 4and that divides the town of Hawkins into 4 parts through huge cracks.
While viewers know that these massive fissures are due to Season 4’s iconic villain Vecna, the people of Hawkins, as usual, know nothing. For this, fictional media Stranger Things 4 they try to explain it as an earthquakein search of something that gives meaning to such an unusual event.
Well, we’ve been wondering, could an earthquake cause such serious damage in the real world? Let’s remember that the cracks of Hawkins swallowed houses, people, and everything that was on them at the time of the event. Although Stranger Things 4 this disaster is due to a supernatural power, could we be running the same danger without knowing it? Of course, without Vecna….
Can an earthquake fracture the earth’s crust as in Stranger Things 4?
A fracture may occur, but not to the level seen in Stranger Things 4. Let’s see, an earthquake could cause shallow cracks during landslides induced by tectonic movement. Nevertheless, fault lines do not open during an earthquake.
In fact, the very nature of an earthquake prevents faults from separating. It is a friction movement between two blocks of the earth’s crust. Both pieces slide, one next to the other, creating the seismic vibration. If the fault could open, the earthquake as such would not exist since there would be no friction.
Likewise, these shallow cracks that open during an earthquake could hardly swallow a house. Let’s not even talk about an entire town or city and dozens of people at the same time. Meanwhile in Stranger Things 4for example, we can see huge cracks with brightness inside that makes us intuit the existence of combustion under the surface, it is unlikely that something like this would happen in real life.
And we are not only referring to the part of the fire, but to the apparent depth and width of the cracks. The largest cracks in floors have been recorded between one and a half and two meters horizontal distance. Here several people could fit, but we also have to take into account the depth of them.
The cracks produced by an earthquake are usually not very deep.. In fact, it is a myth that movies like 2012 They have managed to sell us quite well. Such a dramatic destruction of the earth’s crust would require such high power that, should it occur, a large crack would be the least of our problems.
Has there been any victim of these cracks?
In fact, it was believed that this had already happened. Greg Anderson, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, commented on this in the old website of the University. According to Anderson, there is only one such case in which one death could be confirmed after falling into the crack caused by an earthquake.
It happened in the year 1906, being the protagonist in question an innocent cow of Paine Shafter, a rancher located around Olema, in Point Reyes. The story describes how the ground beneath the cow opened up, swallowing her.
But even this does not seem to be true. According to the website Real Clear Science, the alleged story of the cow never took place. Apparently, many years after the earthquake, Shafter’s cousin HH Howard sent a letter to historian Robert Iacopi. In it, he explained what actually happened that night with the innocent cow. plot twist: was always dead.
“Look Pax, the cow had died and we had to bury it. That night the earthquake came and it opened a big crack and turned it upside down, with its legs sticking out. Then those journalists came and…we weren’t going to spoil a good story…”
Paine Shafter to his father, Pax