Startup Tinker-erUpdated 13y
Estimating a pre-record-keeping earthquake's magnitude with a Richter Scale or similar modern scale's equivalent is generally done by using historic record (any available, pertinent evidence) to determine the amount and level of damage done to structures and land during said earthquake.
This damage data is then used to estimate how much force would be needed to cause the damage, what would be too little, what would be too much, what kind of land movements occurred or could be ruled out, etc... Through sophisticated number-crunching that's far beyond me and some general 'guidelines' as to what types of quakes cause what types of damage, a pretty surprisingly accurate determination can be made.
Strongest is one thing, 'Most Devastating" is another...
What's more devastating, a 6.0 that kills 500, or an 8.0 that kills 50?
Here are some stats from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes:
Most Costly: Tōhoku Japan/March 11, 2011 - 9.0 - $122,000,000,000.00
Most Deadly: Shaanxi China/January 23, 1556 - 8.0 - 820,000+ deaths
Strongest recorded Magnitude: Valdivia Chile/May 22, 1960 - 9.5
(Yikes! - I have felt mid-level "4's" - I will pass on 9.5! Scary to even type.)
If we can all agree that anything 8.0 and over is simply what life would be like inside a running blender, and probably just as horrifying, the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake referenced in the question wins in my book, too. The 8.0 is enough to cause catastrophic damage on-par with the strongest quakes known to man, and the 820-830k deaths is far more than anything else in history. The closest body count was Tangshan China, 1976, with estimates varying from 242,000 to a maximum 779,000. Even if you assumed the high estimate was 100% accurate, it's still a significant difference, but given that some estimates were as low as 242k, one can somewhat assume the actual death toll was well below the 779k high figure.
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