On June 22, 2022 there was an earthquake of magnitude 6.1 in Afghanistan, the waves of which were also felt in Pakistan, Uzbekistan and India. As a result of the natural disaster, more than 1.5 thousand people died and about 2 thousand more suffered. All of them lived in provinces, which 70 years ago Soviet geologist and seismologist Georgiy Gorshkov identified as potentially dangerous for underground shocks in this region.
According to scientists, seismic hazards in many parts of the world are increasing every year. Four of the 13 most devastating earthquake-related disasters in human history have occurred since 2004 alone. In 2005, earthquakes and their aftermath killed 86,000 people in Pakistan, 87,000 in China in 2008 and 100,000 people in Haiti in 2010.
There is a widespread opinion that the increased risk is connected with economic development of seismic active regions and location on their territory of nuclear power plants, hydraulic engineering constructions and other large engineering and production objects. However, the problem lies much deeper, in the direct sense of the word. Earthquakes cannot be explained by anthropogenic factors alone. For example, the rural areas of Afghanistan that were razed to the ground this summer had virtually no capital buildings. Most of the private dwellings were built of clay and without any foundation.
In this context, one of the most complex and responsible problems of modern seismology is zoning, designed to reduce numerous human casualties and huge material damage caused by the elements. The scientist who came up with such an initiative, proved its necessity and created in 1937 the world's first official seismic zoning map (applied to the territory of the former USSR) was the Soviet geologist Georgiy Gorshkov. It was he who laid the beginning of their regular compilation as a basis regulating the design and construction in seismically active areas, became the founder of this new direction in science and made a great contribution to solving the problem of seismic forecasting.
Georgiy Petrovich was born in the village of Pudlovtsy, in the Podolsk province. In spite of the fact that several generations of his ancestors were illiterate serfs, many members of his family turned out to be very outstanding people and were able to "go out into the world." His father became a professor and dean of the LSU Mathematics and Mechanics Department, his uncle - an honored teacher of the RSFSR, twice awarded the Order of Lenin, and his brother - the youngest navy admiral in Russian history, commander in chief of the Soviet Navy. Georgy himself graduated from high school as an external student, but since at the time he had to reach the age of 17 to enter the Mining Institute, he had to wait three years. And it was worth it - his teachers were the winner of the Lenin and Stalin Prizes, geologist Dmitry Nalivkin, Director of the Institute of Geological Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the founder of petrochemistry Alexander Zavaritsky, founder of the Paleontological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences Alexey Borisyak and Chairman of the Geol Committee Dmitry Mushketov.
In 1931 Gorshkov successfully graduated from the Department of Geology majoring in Paleontology and, thanks to Mushketov's sponsorship, was assigned to the newly created Seismological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. There, for five years, he worked under the guidance of his former teacher in the Department of Seismotectonics. It was the first scientific institute of geophysical profile in Russia, where along with seismology works on gravimetry and geotectonics were carried out, the systematic study of seismicity of certain regions of the country began.
In his works Georgiy Petrovich studied geological conditions of the Zangezur earthquake on April 27, 1931, which destroyed 254 villages in Armenia and Azerbaijan and established connection of earthquake focuses of Tajik depression with systems of scaled thrusts of Mesozoic and Cenozoic strata.
For the first time, the study of the young scientist on gravitation and field theory aroused the interest of the international scientific community. He found that in addition to the usual level surfaces, on which the condition of constancy of the gravity potential is observed, it is necessary to distinguish "isogravitational surfaces". Georgii Petrovich developed a theoretical model and established their physical nature. The article had a wide resonance, was published in France, and received numerous responses from different countries.
However, a completely different work became revolutionary. Back in 1931, almost immediately after graduating from the Mining Institute, Gorshkov had the idea of the need to map the distribution of possible future earthquakes. He zealously defended it for several years, and as an example, he carried out regional seismotectonic zoning of the territory of the southern part of the USSR, identified the centers and gave earthquake forecasts by specific seismic energy and zoning. The work was highly appreciated by the leadership. Having received the "permission", Georgiy Petrovich created the world's first map of seismic zoning of the entire USSR, which turned out to be extremely demanded. The country was intensively building new industrial facilities, for the design of which it was necessary to know what external destructive effect the strength of structures should be calculated for.
The year 1937 went down in history as a period of the most massive repressions. The Seismological Department of the Seismological Institute was liquidated, many scientists, including Dmitry Mushketov, were arrested. Gorshkov left Moscow for Leningrad and then for Voronezh. There he accepted a position as associate professor of general geology at Voronezh State University and in just a few years became dean and vice-rector of the university. In 1941 the scientist transferred to Ashgabat, where he was invited to head the Institute of Geology of the Turkmen branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In 1944 Gorshkov returned to Moscow and headed the department of seismotectonics of the Geophysical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1949, a graduate of the Mining Institute and by then already renowned scholar was invited to Moscow University, where he became the first dean of the Geology Department. During the organization of educational and scientific activities, the scientist relied heavily on his own student experience and work in the specialized research institutes of the country. At his insistence laboratories of experimental tectonics, neotectonics and mathematical geology were opened, the Geophysics Department was transferred from the Physics Faculty to the Geology Faculty, and major specialists were involved in teaching work. Georgiy Petrovich prepared an original course and textbook "General Geology", later recognized as the best textbook of its kind, translated into English, French and Spanish and reprinted in 1957, 1962 and 1973.
Georgiy Petrovich was actively involved in the study of seismicity of the countries of the Eastern Hemisphere and Europe. During the two-year business trip to China (1955-1956) he compiled the first map of China's seismic zoning and a catalog of all past earthquakes. Similar work was carried out in respect of Burma, where he was sent as a UNESCO expert, the seismotectonic situation of Hungary and Japan was studied, seismicity was analyzed and main dangerous zones of Africa were determined, the fields of compression stress and sources of earthquakes in the north-east Afghanistan were determined. There were many trips, as a result of which Gorshkov made a map of earthquake epicenters of the world at a scale of 1:20 000 000, which was included in the physical and geographical atlas of the world.
Since the early seventies the scientist supervised all researches on seismic zoning of the USSR, he coordinated the work of more than 40 scientific and industrial organizations of the country on the problem.
Georgy Petrovich was a member and chairman of the working group of the Interdepartmental Council on Seismology and Earthquake Engineering under the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, expert commissions of Gosstroy, Gosplan of the USSR, Institute of Hydroproject of the USSR. He was responsible for the conclusions on Toktogul, Nurek, Ingur, Irganai, Andijan, Kurpsai hydropower plants, nuclear power plants, BAM and dozens of other construction projects.
In 1980 Georgy Gorshkov, at the age of 70, received the State Prize of the USSR. Four years later he died in Moscow.
Since 1949 the map of seismic zoning became an official state document, mandatory for all construction organizations and GOST of the USSR.
One often hears that earthquakes are impossible to predict. Indeed, the scientific complexity of the problem is that it belongs to the category of forecasts based on incomplete information, not always successful experience and on insufficiently clear methodological positions. However, the world is full of things we do not fully know and do not understand, but this does not mean that we should give up and admit the inevitability of defeat. Each of the general seismic zoning maps produced in the past years, as information about earthquakes is accumulated and profile studies are improved, is updated and fragmentarily specified.
Favorable engineering and geological conditions for the development of seismic areas and areas particularly dangerous with respect to the formation of landslides, rockslides, large rockslides, landslides and mudslides are defined. On the basis of this "predicted threat" clear rules and restrictions are developed, which should be adhered to in the development of such lands.
For example, today, based on maps, scientists say there is an 82 percent chance that within the next 30 years there will be an earthquake of at least magnitude 7 under Southern California. This state is doomed to suffer three-quarters of the damage projected for all national earthquake losses. As a result, Los Angeles is now undergoing a public building renovation program, under which virtually all of them are undergoing very substantial renovations that take into account increased seismic protection.
