It unzipped the fault beneath Nepal from west to east in about a minute — shaking Kathmandu, avalanching Everest's base camp, and sliding the capital three metres south.
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DownloadThe 2015 Gorkha earthquake struck on April 25, 2015, registering magnitude 7.8 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 501× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 28.23°N, 84.73°E, at a depth of about 8 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 8,957 people were killed.