It levelled the capital of Soviet Turkmenistan and killed perhaps a hundred and ten thousand — yet the true toll was hidden for decades, the disaster barely admitted to have happened.
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DownloadThe 1948 Ashgabat earthquake struck on October 5, 1948, registering magnitude 7.2 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 53× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 38.08°N, 58.36°E, at a depth of about 15 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 110,000 people were killed.