Talk:Shaanxi Earthquake

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Disaster Management.
Collaboration of the week Shaanxi Earthquake was the collaboration of the week for the week starting on November 6, 2005.

For details on improvements made to the article, see history of past collaborations.
Article assessment An assessment of this article took place along with other articles about Natural disasters during the week starting 20 February 2006.

Contents

[edit] Most devastating?

List_of_earthquakes has: 1201, Upper Egypt or Syria 1,100,000 deaths. But no details. If this is true, the Shanxi earthquake would only rank as the second most devastating natural disaster on record. dab (ᛏ) 12:23, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC) The most devastating disaster is the the earthquake which took plac in China in 1971 and neither of the above.--Sugreev2001 18:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

You're right. A lot of places say the Shanxi earthquake is the most deadly, but the NGDC does list the Egypt quake as 1.1M deaths [1]. The USGS does not have that quake on their list, though, which might be the reason why. --Plutor 12:41, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The upper Egypt and Syria one used to be in Guiness, but was taken off. I think after investigation it turned out that it was a cluster of Earthquakes in 1201 that did the damage rather than a single earthquake plus aftershocks. Or some such, I remember one issue of Guinness had a note about why they removed it.--T. Anthony 18:58, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Date?

The article says 14 February, the ext lk says 2 February, and the quake is listed on the 23 January days-of-the-year page. –Hajor 18:34, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I just noticed that, I think they should all be mentioned in the article until it is clarified Astrokey44 05:03, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I found this from a translation of the 12th paragraph of this webpage, a report by China's Institute for the History of Natural Science. It insinuates that February 14th is the 23rd day of the first Lunar month:
"the Jiajing 35 years on first lunar month 23 (on February 14, 1556) the night of Henan Deng County, Neisiang"
That would eliminate January 23rd, I think. Or is at least something to consider. --RobbyPrather 17:58, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Possible Move?

Are there any other big earthquakes that happened in Shaanxi? Because currently, Shaanxi earthquake redirects here, wouldn't Shaanxi earthquake be a better place for the article? - Hahnchen 16:38, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I just found a message at a chinese forum site which listed some other earthquakes that happened c.750, c.1300 at Shaanxi, but I dont think theyre commonly known ones. darn it ive lost the thread but it was at [2] Astrokey44 05:33, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
As an unnamed event, the correct name should be "1556 Shaanxi earthquake" or possibly "Shaanxi earthquake of 1556" (compare to 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, 2005 Pakistan earthquake, etc.). "Shaanxi Earthquake" is quite incorrect since "Earthquake" should not be capitalized. The rename is trivial, but unfortunately only an admin can do it because redirects already exist at all of those locations (except "Shaanxi earthquake of 1556", but that one's unnecessarily verbose IMO). Jdorje 23:08, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Source to look at

I did a bit of research on Google Print, and here's an academic source which talks about the Shaanxi earthquake:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0442251912/

All the reports are the same-- 830000 deaths, 8.3 Richter scale-- which makes me think they are drawing from a single, 20th century academic source, which itself draws from a single Chinese primary source. Ashibaka (tock) 23:43, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Thats how it seems looking at the google results, I had thought alot of them had come from wikipedia. Theres about 50 different sources that say almost exactly the same thing! Astrokey44 05:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] mao

removed "Mao-Tse-Tung, for example, personally claimed to be responsible for the deaths of over 60 million people." and replaced it with a sentence about the Three Years of Natural Disasters Astrokey44 22:20, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I took the paragraph out altogether. To what extent the famine was "natural" is certainly a point of dispute. And as disasters come, the famine took about as many lives as the Japanese invasion. Both of these seem to me strange animals to compare an earthquake to. Plus, 830.000 was of course many more per cent of Ming China's population that it would be today. 00.30 January 2006

Some one must have put it back in, I agree that this paragraph should be removed, I don't see how it adds to the article and it smacks of a politcal agenda, even with in it's modified state. An article about thhe Tunguska event would not say, "No one was killed by the meteorite, however 25 million Russians died in the Great Patriotic War." MarcusGraly 17:15, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Still a stub

I put it as a stub, because it still is. It's just 3 short paragraphs. Needs lots of improvment. --Weirdperson11 21:37, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Thing is theres almost no detailed info about it on the net. Ive been looking round and I think every scrap of info about the quake now on the net is in this article. Really need someone to find a book about it at a library. Astrokey44 23:26, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
The book I suggested is available at many local libraries, but it seems nobody has gone to take a look. (Personally, I have work to do :) ) Ashibaka (tock) 21:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
see http://print.google.com/print?q=shaanxi+earthquake&hl=en --Jiang 03:04, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thanks for that, I did find a quote from the 'annals of china' which I added to the article. Astrokey44 03:31, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh, excellent work! This is probably all the collaboration nominator was after. Ashibaka (tock) 04:42, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Ok, now its longer, thanks for the Google Print stuff. It does help a lot. --Weirdperson11 20:16, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed outline

I've been thinking it would be good to come up with an appropriate outline for this article. Maybe that will help get things rolling and help organize thoughts. So, based loosely on 2005 Kashmir earthquake, I've come up with a proposed outline:

(Intro paragraph)

The earthquake

Information about tectonic plates colliding, approximate epicenter location, aftershocks, etc. Was this one big earthquake or a series of earthquakes? (This section is scientific explanation/description of the earthquake.)

Casualties

Here we detail how many died as a direct result of the earthquake. How many died as an indirect result of the earthquake? Address differing reports on the death toll. A little Information about the loess caves (more detailed info in the Damage section). Any information about numbers injured who survived, if available. Information about rescues (if available). (This section is about how people were effected.)

Damage

Here, information about damage and destruction should be included/detailed. More details about the loess caves. Including the stone classics, steles, Small Wild Goose Pagoda, etc. If known, how did this effect commerce, government, etc.? Is it true that we cannot estimate the damage in monetary terms?

References

All references, including websites, should be listed here.

External links

--RobbyPrather (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Unit of area

The article says "A 520-mile area was destroyed". This is nonsense. Mile is not a unit of area. Thue | talk 13:15, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hmmmmm...

maybe they meant square miles. plus, i don't think they use miles as a unit of measure in china anyway. also, the spelling of "shaanxi" looks a little wrong. in the title they spelled it that way, but in the first paragraph, they spelled it "shanxi".

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/h/a/Talk%7EShaanxi_Earthquake_ec83.html"