the.com/aftershock
the tremor that mocks you for thinking the disaster was already over
means A smaller earthquake that follows a larger one in the same region, or by extension any secondary jolt of consequence after a major event.
from A transparent compound of "after" plus "shock," both good old Germanic stock — "after" tracing back to Old English æfter, "shock" arriving later from French choc, the noise of two forces colliding. Yoked together as a seismological term, it names the literal trembling that lingers once the ground's main fury has spent itself, before geology lent it to every other delayed blow.
- can be bigger
- Sometimes the aftershock outpunches the original quake
- lingering
- They can rattle on for years after
- naming swap
- A bigger aftershock gets demoted to mainshock
- thousands
- One quake can spawn endless smaller jolts
- not just ground
- Stars and ice sheets quake with aftershocks too
christchurch earthquakes 2011 — 6.3 magnitude quake on feb 22, 2011 killed 185 people; followed by 15,000+ aftershocks over months
nepal earthquake 2015 — 7.8 magnitude on april 25, 2015; strongest aftershock was 7.3 magnitude on may 12, destroying more structures
turkey syria earthquakes 2023 — 7.8 magnitude on feb 6, 2023 killed 50,000+; largest aftershock was 7.6 magnitude hours later