Let’s first put a little perspective on the tsunami that was caused from the Dec 2004 earthquake off coast of Sumatra. It was about a M9.3, depending upon which magnitude scale you go by. The vast amount of energy that went into that tsunami was not from the earthquake, but actually was released from a sub-oceanic landslide triggered by the earthquake. In March 2005, a M8.7 earthquake also happened in the Sumatra area, but it did not trigger a landslide, and the tsunami was only considered of moderate size, and died out before causing great damage to anywhere far, as is often the case. Now, let’s consider the actual energy released from an earthquake. Take the Assam, Tibet 1960 eq about M8.6. It killed 780 people, destroyed 70 villages mostly by landslides, and blocked a river with landslide debris. 8 days later that broke through and killed another nearly 600 people. San Francisco 1906 about a M8.0 had the equivalent energy of about 1 billion tons of TNT or about 10 of the largest thermonuclear weapons. Scale that up to M9.3 and you’ll have about 42 billion tons TNT, or over 150 thermonuclear weapons worth of energy released. This would likely heavily damage if not destroy towns and cities within about 200km of the epicenter, or ground zero in this case, depending upon what soil or rock type these habitats were built upon. To put some perspective on this, the total solar energy received from the sun is equivalent to about 160 trillion tons of TNT, equivalent to about M12.0 earthquake, thought to be able to tear the earth apart if centered in one place.
