How an Earthquake Feels

A primer for those who have never had the pleasure

Photo of an adult walking down a paved asphault road that has been mostly destroyed by natural disaster. The top half of the image is gray, cloudy sky. The background landscape is mountainous and forested. The camera is set in the damaged part of the road. Photo by Dave Goudreau on Unsplash.

My early life was spent in the safety and security of a place with little by way of natural disasters. Forest fires were our biggest issue. We had one tiny tornado once in 20 years, and it hurt no one. We never had earthquakes.

In my early 20s, I lived in Oklahoma while it was still being heavily fracked. Did you know fracking causes earthquakes?

Then I moved to Japan, where more traditional earthquakes occur frequently — multiple times per year. Many are too small to notice, but some really rock your world.

(Don’t pardon my joke. I want to stand trial for my sins.)

Child-me saw earthquakes in movies, which do a reasonable-if-exaggerated portrayal of what a common earthquake is like. What I couldn’t have anticipated, though, was the feeling of actually being in one. For those of you who have lived your lives so far without experiencing an earthquake for yourself, I’m going to try to describe it for you using other experiences you may have had.

Physically, earthquakes have a few sensations. There’s the ground moving underneath you. There’s vibration throughout the building you’re in. There’s the sound of doors rattling in their frames. Maybe a car alarm goes off, maybe you hear the crash of something falling to the floor. The stronger the earthquake or the higher up in a building you are, the more intense the physical sensations will be.

Emotionally, earthquakes are rattling in a different way.

Have you ever stood up too fast, or gotten overheated, and had your vision black out? There’s an unnamed feeling there. An internal gasp. A blankness. A helplessness, but not in a sad way. Sadness takes up space, and there is no space there. An honest-to-God, frozen-in-place, “Oh, fuck.”

“What should I do?” I ask myself.

“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing. There’s nothing to do.”

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