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10 Largest Earthquakes Ever Recorded (Updated 2025)

#10. MAGNITUDE 8.6 (1950). Arunachal Pradesh, India - Referred to as the Assam-Tibet earthquake, this quake produced intense shaking, triggered sandblows, ground cracks, and large landslides across the region. All told, 780 people died.

This is an icon used for the Earthquake Notification Service product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

This is an icon used for the Finite Fault product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

This is an icon used for the ShakeMap product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

This is an icon used for the Aftershock Forecast product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

This is an icon used for the Ground Failure product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

This is an icon used for the PAGER product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

This is an icon used for the Earthquake Scenarios product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

This is an icon used for the Moment Tensors product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

This is an icon used for the ShakeAlert product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

This is an icon used for the ShakeCast product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

This is an icon used for the Did You Feel It? product as illustrated on the Earthquake Hazards Program products page.

Map of the United States and its territories showing 2024 International Building Code Seismic Design Categories and Risk Categories.

Map of the United States and its territories showing the distribution of average annualized earthquake losses by region (modified from Jaiswal and others, 2023). Economic losses from earthquakes in these nine regions are estimated to average \$14.7 billion dollars per year.

Seismic hazard model for Hawaii from 2021 showing peak ground acceleration where warmer colors are higher levels (Petersen and others, 2022).

A cross section through the area of Anchorage, AK showing earthquakes at depths along with subduction model linework from Slab2 and inputs from the 2007 NSHM. The image shows the seismic catalog (for the 2023 NSHM seismic hazard model for Alaska; Powers and others, 2024) for the crust (yellow), interface (orange), and intraslab (red).

Snapshot of QFaults for the area including Yellowstone National Park from https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/faults

Aftershock Forecast Sequence-Specific Model Parameters equation 

The probability distribution for the number of aftershocks, P(N), and the forecast can then be computed using the same procedures as for the generic model, using P_seq-spec(a) instead of P_generic(a).

An example of Bayesian updating of productivity parameter (a-value) for the 2010 Mw 8.8 Maule, Chile, earthquake. Immediately following the earthquake, the SZ-GENERIC region-specific a-value distribution can be used.

Screenshot of the Aftershock Forecast for an earthquake in California, showing the information box at the top of the forecast and the four tabs of forecast information.

Equation 2 for the Aftershock Forecast probability distribution to compute the forecast