A prediction of earthquakes went viral. Are you giving people false hope?

Brent Dmitruk calls himself a predictor of earthquakes.

In mid -October, he told his tens of thousands of social networks that an earthquake would soon hit the westernmost point of California, south of the small coastal city of Eureka.

Two months later, a magnitude 7.3 hit the site in northern California, placing millions under a warning of Tsunami and cultivating the following online of Mr. Dmitruk while they resorted to him to forecast the next.

“So, for people who rule out what I do, how can you argue that it is just a coincidence? It requires a serious skill to discover where the earthquakes will go,” he said on the eve of the New Year.

But there is a problem: earthquakes cannot be predicted, scientists who study them say.

And it is exactly that unpredictability that makes them so disturbing. Millions of people living on the west coast of North America fear that “the great” can attack at any time, altering landscapes and innumerable lives.

Lucy Jones, a seismologist who worked for the United States Geological Service (USGS) for more than three decades and is the author of a book called The Bigo, has focused much of his research on the probabilities of earthquakes and improving resilience to resist such cataclysmic events.

While she has studied earthquakes, Mrs. Jones said there have been people who wanted an answer when “the great”, which means different things in different regions, will happen and affirm that he has deciphered the code.

“The human need to pattern in the face of danger is extremely strong, it is a very normal human response to be afraid,” he told the BBC. “However, it has no predictive power.”

With about 100,000 earthquakes that feel worldwide every year, according to the United States Geological Service (USGS), it is understandable that people want to have warning.

The Eureka area, a coastal city of 270 miles (434 km) north of San Francisco, where the December earthquake occurred, has felt more than 700 earthquakes only in the last year, including more than 10 in the last week, as shown in data.

The region, which is where Dmitruk correctly meant that an earthquake would occur, is one of the most “seismically active” areas of the United States, according to the USGS. Its volatility is due to a meeting of three tectonic plates, an area known as Mendoza Triple Junction.

It is the movement of the plates in relation to each other, either above, below or next to the side, which makes the stress accumulate. When stress is released, an earthquake can occur.

To guess that an earthquake would happen here is an easy bet, said Jones, although a great magnitude seven is quite rare.

The USGS notes that there have only been 11 earthquakes or stronger since 1900. Five, including Mr. Dmitruk promoted on social networks, occurred in that same region.

While the assumption was correct, Mrs. Jones told the BBC that it is unlikely that any earthquake, including the largest types that destroy society, can be forecast with any precision.

There is a complex and “dynamic” set of geological factors that lead to an earthquake, said Jones.

It is likely that the magnitude of an earthquake is formed as the event occurs, he said, using a piece of paper as an analogy: the RIP will continue unless there is something that stops or slows it down, as a water mark that leaves the wet paper.

Scientists know why an earthquake occurs, sudden movements along failures, but predict that such an event is something that USGS says it cannot be done and something “we do not expect to know how at any time in the predictable future.”

The agency indicates that it can calculate the probability of earthquakes in a particular region within a certain number of years, but that is as close as possible.

Geological records show that some of the largest types of earthquakes, known as “El Grande” for the locals, occur with a certain amount of regularity. It is known that the Cascadia subduction zone slides every 300 to 500 years, regularly flying the northwest Pacific coast with 100-foot (30.5 meters) mega-tesunamis.

While the guilt of San Andreas in southern California is also the source of another “large” potential, with bone noise earthquakes that occur there every 200-300 years. Experts have said that the “big” could happen at any time in any of the regions.

Mrs. Jones says that during her career, she has had several thousand people to alert her about such predictions of a large earthquake, including people in the 1990s who would send faxes to her office in the hope of alerting them.

“When you get a prediction every week, someone will be lucky, right?” She says with a smile. “But that would generally go to their heads and predict 10 more that were not well.”

Such scenario seems to have happened with Dmitruk, which has no scientific history. For a long time he has predicted that an earthquake of 10.3 incredibly large would hit the southwest of Alaska or islands on the New Zealand coast, such a strong magnitude that he said he could interrupt global trade.

The USGS says that a prediction of earthquakes must have three defined elements: one date and time, the location of the earthquake and magnitude, to be of any utility.

But Mr. Dmitruk’s timeline continues to change.

At one point, he said that he would come immediately before or after the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.

Then he said that it would definitely happen before 2030.

While that considerable earthquake has not yet attacked, Dmitruk said he still believes will happen.

“I don’t think it’s just by chance,” Dmitruk told BBC. “It is not random or luck.”

This type of thought is common when it comes to earthquakes, Jones said.

“Random distributions may seem that they have patterns, we see constellations in the stars,” he said.

“Many people really fear earthquakes, and the way of dealing with it is to predict (when) it will happen.”

But the fact that it cannot predict when an earthquake will attack does not mean that it does not have to be without preparation, experts said.

Each year, on the third Thursday of October, millions of Americans participate in the world’s largest earthquake simulation: the great shaking.

It was created by a group at the Southern California Earthquake Center, which included Mrs. Jones.

During the exercise, people practice the guide of drops, covered and cling: they fall on their knees, cover themselves under a resistant object like a desk and cling for a minute.

The exercise has become so popular since its inception that it has spread along the coast prone to earthquakes to other states and countries.

If in the open air, people who reach an open space away from trees, buildings or energy lines are advised. Near the ocean, people practice fleeing to a higher land after the tremor stops to prepare for the possibility of a tsunami.

“Now, although the soil is not shaking, although it is not a very stressful situation, it is really the best time to practice,” said Brian Terbush, earthquake programs manager and volcano for the Emergency Management Division of the Washington state.

In addition to the exercises, the residents of the states of the west coast use a telephone alert system maintained by USGS called Shakealert.

The system works by detecting pressure waves emitted by an earthquake. While it cannot predict when an earthquake in the distant future will occur, it gives seconds of warning that could save lives. It is the closest to a “predictor” of earthquake that has been invented so far.