The World Geological Council (WGC) decided to “sell” earthquakes for charity. Similar to the names of low-pressure areas and high-pressure areas that you can buy from the meteorological agencies, everyone can now apply for buying the name of an earthquake as a gift to friends or relatives. The decision on the application is made by a control board of the WGC, the procedure will be managed by the USGS. The website BUY-AN-EARTHQUAKE.com will go online during the next weeks. All proceeds from this will be given for charity to help earthquake victims. Since the earthquake magnitude scale is logarithmic, rates will increase with increasing magnitude as well.
Here’s the (preliminary) price list:
- M6.0 $10
- M6.5 $50
- M7.0 $300
- M7.5 $700
- M8.0 $9,000
- M8.5 $25,000
- M9.0 $270,000
The WGC control board secures that “names of religious leaders, terrorists, and annoying actors will be banned” for ethical reasons.
A good idea, imagine an event called “Tom Cruise Earthquake” that killed 2,000 people…
fj | 2011-04-01|13:18 (UTC)
Are there any fixed conventions as in meteorology (lows have female names in odd years and so on)? I could imagine male names for earthquakes and female names for tsunamis. “Big Tom kicked Nicole into action” or something like that…
Still, there’s potential for volcanos and landslides!