Top 10 deadliest earthquakes of the 21st century: Mega-quake lurking around the corner?
Early warnings could help save many, say experts: could AI help predict deadly tremors?
With two strong, 7.0+ earthquakes slamming Alaska and Japan just days apart in early December 2025, seismologists are understandably jittery — could a bigger shaker be next?
First up, Alaska got rocked on December 6 by a 7.0 magnitude beast near the Canadian border. Lucky for everyone, it was in a remote spot, so no major damage, but this temblor could have wrecked havoc if it hit a populated area.
Then Japan's northern region took a 7.6 mega-quake on December 8, sparking tsunami alerts (later cancelled), injuring at least 30 people, and forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes.
Aftershocks are still rumbling.
Japan's authorities aren't messing around: on Dec. 8, they warned of a possible even stronger quake in the coming week, urging high alert from Hokkaido all the way down to Chiba east of Tokyo.
These quakes pack serious punch.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) notes that in a typical year, we expect about 16 major ones worldwide — 15 at 7.0+ and one at 8.0+ — based on records since around 1900.
Over the last 40-50 years, we've topped that average about a dozen times, so clusters like this aren't unheard of.
Such "megaquakes" represent a natural phenomenon that keeps the world on the edge.
Here’s a list of the top 10 deadliest earthquakes since 2000, ranked by casualties (descending order):
Top 10 deadliest earthquakes of the 21st Century
Data draws from established seismic records up to 2025, prioritizing confirmed fatalities from quakes and related tsunamis.
Magnitudes are moment magnitude (Mw).
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake
Date: December 26, 2004 | Location: Off Sumatra, Indonesia | Mw 9.1-9.3
Casualties: ~227,898
Massive undersea megathrust rupture triggered devastating tsunamis across Indian Ocean nations, killing tens of thousands in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand; waves up to 30m destroyed coastal communities.2010 Haiti Earthquake
Date: January 12, 2010 | Location: Near Port-au-Prince, Haiti | Mw 7.0 Casualties: Up to 316,000
Shallow strike-slip fault collapse crumbled poorly built structures in capital; aftershocks worsened chaos, with aid delays amplifying death toll in crowded urban slums.2008 Sichuan Earthquake
Date: May 12, 2008 | Location: Sichuan Province, China | Mw 7.9 Casualties: ~87,476
Thrust faulting on Longmen Shan shattered mountainside schools and homes; landslides buried valleys, exposing weaknesses in construction amid rapid urbanisation.2005 Kashmir Earthquake
Date: October 8, 2005 | Location: Pakistan-administered Kashmir | Mw 7.6Casualties: ~87,351
Himalayan thrust quake leveled remote mountain villages; pre-winter collapses and landslides trapped survivors, straining rescue in rugged terrain.2010 Chile Earthquake
Date: February 27, 2010 | Location: Off Maule Region, Chile | Mw 8.8Casualties: ~525
Powerful megathrust shook central Chile, spawning tsunamis that flooded coasts; modern building codes limited deaths despite intense shaking.2003 Bam Earthquake
Date: December 26, 2003 | Location: Bam, Iran | Mw 6.6 |Casualties: ~26,271
Blind thrust fault razed ancient citadel and mud-brick homes at dawn; poor seismic retrofitting caused near-total urban collapse.2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquake
Date: February 6, 2023 | Location: Kahramanmaras, Turkey/Syria | Mw 7.8Casualties: ~59,259
Strike-slip on East Anatolian Fault triggered sequential ruptures; substandard buildings pancaked, worsened by conflict zone delays.2011 Tohoku Earthquake
Date: March 11, 2011 | Location: Off Sendai, Japan | Mw 9.0-9.1 Casualties: ~22,300
Megathrust subduction unleashed 40m tsunamis, flooding Fukushima nuclear plant.2001 Gujarat Earthquake
Date: January 26, 2001 | Location: Bhuj, India | Mw 7.7 |Casualties: ~20,023
Intraplate reverse faulting flattened Kutch region on Republic Day; unreinforced masonry crumbled, burying festival crowds. 2015 Nepal Earthquake
Date: April 25, 2015 | Location: Gorkha District, Nepal | Mw 7.8 Casualties: ~8,964
Main Himalayan thrust uplifted Kathmandu Valley; avalanche on Everest killed climbers, ancient temples toppled in dense heritage sites.
Note: Casualty estimates vary by source due to indirect deaths and reporting challenges; recent events like 2025 quakes had lower tolls from better preparedness.
(Sources: Visual Capitalist, World Atlas)
How AI could revolutionise earthquake early warning systems (EEW)
Using "deep learning" techniques, AI is being proposed to enhance earthquake early warning (EEW), a study led by K. Lalithavani published in May 2025 in the Journal of Engineering Research and Reports showed.
This is made possible, researchers said, by rapidly analysing seismic waves in real-time, detecting precursors like P-waves seconds before destructive S-waves arrive, enabling alerts for evacuations, shutdowns, and hazard mitigation.
Machine learning models process vast sensor data — outpacing human analysts — to filter noise, classify events, and predict magnitudes with unprecedented speed and accuracy, slashing false alarms and extending warning times from seconds to minutes.
Key AI advancements
Experts to ways the advantages of using "deep learning", which is proven to excel at pattern recognition in complex waveforms.
Using USGS data for training, picked up from pipelines deployed for live alerts before shockwaves hit, convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and ResNet algorithms are able to distinguish earthquakes from non-events with 98.2% accuracy and low "latency" (delay), researchers led by Aming Wu of South Korea's School of Computer Science and Engineering, Kyungpook National University, published in Nature in March 2025.
Using what researchers call "transformer-based models" (to analyse both P- and S-waves across heterogeneous internet-of-things sensors), it boosts detection in diverse environments via attention mechanisms that capture subtle seismic signals.
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