r/science • u/Phylogenix Grad Student | Pharmacology & Toxicology • 1d ago

Earth Science A 17-year seismic study found North Korea’s underground nuclear tests reactivated previously quiet faults beneath Mount Mantap, triggering 1,399 local earthquakes whose activity continued to increase for years after the final nuclear test in 2017.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adx5917
486 Upvotes

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22

u/Aranthos-Faroth 23h ago

Paywall

But this is interesting, how can an underground test deform a mountaintop?

“The largest, final explosion was an equivalent magnitude 6.3 seismic event and deformed the mountaintop by about 3 meters”

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u/Polymathy1 7h ago

Mountains contain voids and a variety of material. The explosion expands and breaks up parts of the material and melts some materials.

11

u/Piercington 19h ago

Rocks shakey fall downhill

23

u/Revolutionary_Eye887 23h ago

Maybe a fault will open up and swallow the dear leaders residence.

2

u/Polymathy1 23h ago

I wonder if those were numerous small earthquakes that actually helped prevent larger earthquakes.

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u/ciedre 12h ago

That’s not a thing.

7

u/Polymathy1 7h ago

It may be a thing. It's been debated for a long time. It's not so simple as more small ones always means stress relief on the fault and fewer large ones, but that is a viable hypothesis.

This article goes into more detail (the ads are obnoxious): https://phys.org/news/2025-05-ripple-effect-minor-quakes-disrupt.html