I gotta show this to a guy who keeps spewing about how much better off he is having to deal with earthquakes instead of the occasional midwest tornado.
Your friend is right of course, unless he lives in a third world country. Not much chance any quake is going to kill a million people on the west coast. Might happen in the Midwest when the New Madrid goes off, of course.
Show him this too:
“The total number of people killed by earthquakes in the United States since 1950 was 398. Compare that with the number of deaths from tornadoes in that same period. That number, excluding the current outbreak, totals 4,857.”
-http://coastcontact.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/tornado-zone-or-earthquake-zone/