The world's favorite places to live often owe their popularity
to local geology that provides benefits, like earthquake faults
that line up valleys and trap groundwater — but that also pose a
hazard to the nearby population. With the planet's growing
population crowding more and more into these earthquake-prone
regions, a new study predicts that 3.5 million people will have
died in catastrophic earthquakes between 2001 and 2100. The toll
will add additional stress to strapped aid agencies, said study
author Tom Holzer, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey
in Menlo Park, Calif. "The more people [there are] on the
planet, the higher the probability of more catastrophic
earthquakes," Holzer told OurAmazingPlanet. "Most earthquakes
don't actually kill anybody. What is required is a concentration
of people in harm's way." Massive population growth Four
catastrophic quakes (those that kill 50,000 or more people) have
already hit since 2001. There was only one per century before
1900, and seven between 1900 a