Top 5 Ways to Cause a Man-Made Earthquake

"In the past, people never thought that human activity could have such a big impact, but it can," said Christian Klose, a geohazards researcher at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. 

It turns out, actually, that the human production of earthquakes is hardly supervillain-worthy. It’s downright commonplace: Klose estimates that 25 percent of Britain’s recorded seismic events were caused by people. 

Most of these human-caused quakes are tiny, registering less than four on geologist’s seismic scales. These window-rattlers don’t occur along natural faults, and wouldn’t have happened without human activity — like mining tons of coal or potash. They occur when a mine’s roof collapses, for example, as in the Crandall Canyon collapse in Utah that killed a half-dozen miners last year. SEE HERE

1) BUILD A DAM: The New Croton Dam (also known as Cornell Dam), part of the New York City water supply system, stretches across the Croton River near Croton-on-Hudson, New York, about 22 miles (35 km) north of New York City. Construction began in 1892 and was completed in 1906. NEW YORK HAS 21 DAMS!

2) INJECT LIQUID INTO THE GROUND: Hello New Yorkers - Do see my Dangers of Fracking post!!! New York has many fracking wells causing many earthquakes.

3) MINE A LOT OF COAL: This website was formed to snapshot and catalog the numerous abandoned mines of NY/NJ. These mines all have a story to tell, and a few secrets to share. All mines wielded influence and had impacts to the history of our localities, our current lives dot back to their presence. All mines were unique in every respect. Inside here, you will find research information of our cataloging of these mines, along with tales. This is the story of mining.

4) DRILL A GUSHER DRY: Three of the largest human-caused quakes occurred near a natural-gas field in Uzbekistan, the Gazli. The combination of liquid extraction and injection changed the tectonic action in the field. The biggest of the trio registered as a 7.3. According to a major analysis (.pdf) by Russian scientists, "Few will deny that there is a relationship between hydrocarbon recovery and seismic activity, but exactly how strong a relationship exists has yet to be determined." They caution that in regions where tectonic activity is already high, extracting oil and natural gas could trigger strong quakes.

5) CREATE THE WORLD'S BIGGEST BUILDING: Back in 2005, a geologist claimed that the world’s then-tallest building, the Taipei 101, which weighs in at more than 700,000 metric tons, was triggering earthquakes in a long-dormant fault in Taiwan. Klose doubts that the building actually did so, but said that it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility for a building to create an earthquake. The weight of the building, however, would have to be much greater than the Taipei 101’s, and even much larger than the Burj Dubai, currently still under construction but already the world’s tallest building.

SEE THE LISTS OF TALLEST BUILDINGS IN NEW YORK  when I research the metric tons of each building, I will update.