Pakistan

Pakistan is one of the world's most seismically hazardous nations, compressed between the Indian Plate pushing northward and the Eurasian Plate above. The country contains several of the world's most dangerous active [[fault]] systems. The Chaman Fault runs 900 kilometres from the Quetta region to the Makran coast — a left-lateral strike-slip fault comparable in scale to the San Andreas that accommodates the margin-parallel component of oblique India-Eurasia convergence at roughly 25–30 millimetres per year. In northern Pakistan, the Main Karakoram Thrust (MKT), Main Mantle Thrust (MMT), and the broad Hazara Kashmiri Syntaxis create a complex zone of intense shortening where the Himalayan thrust belt and the Hindu Kush-Karakoram collision zone meet. The Quetta fault system in Balochistan and the Makran [[subduction-zone]] along the Arabian Sea coast add further diversity to Pakistan's seismic landscape.

Pakistan's earthquake history is defined by catastrophic loss of life. The 2005 Kashmir earthquake (magnitude 7.6, epicentre near Muzaffarabad) remains one of the most deadly earthquakes of the 21st century, killing approximately 86,000 people, injuring 138,000, and making 3.5 million homeless across Pakistani-administered Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The [[aftershock]] sequence included a magnitude 6.4 event and hundreds of smaller earthquakes over subsequent months. The 1935 Quetta earthquake (magnitude 7.7) killed between 20,000 and 60,000 people in the provincial capital, then a British Indian Army garrison town, within minutes of the early morning strike. The 1945 Makran earthquake (magnitude 8.1) destroyed fishing villages along the Balochistan coast and generated a tsunami. The 2008 Ziarat earthquake (magnitude 6.4) killed 166 people. The 2013 Awaran earthquake (magnitude 7.7) in Balochistan created a new island in the Arabian Sea from submarine mud volcanoes liquefied by the shaking.

The deeper tectonic framework of Pakistan involves the suturing of multiple crustal terranes along the Indus Suture Zone. The Indian Plate is underthrusting Eurasia beneath the Himalayas in the north and is being overridden by the Makran accretionary prism in the south. In central Pakistan, the Chaman Fault system accommodates the oblique collision by partitioning slip between thrust components (absorbed in the Suleiman Ranges and Kirthar Ranges) and strike-slip components (on the Chaman Fault itself). The Suleiman Ranges form a convex-to-the-south arc reflecting the northward indentation of the Indian Plate into the Asian continent. [[intensity]] maps from Pakistani earthquakes reveal the amplifying effect of the deep basin sediments in the Indus Plain and the Punjab on distant earthquake shaking, and [[seismic-wave]] modelling shows that Karachi, though not close to the most active faults, faces significant hazard from both the Makran subduction and the distant Chaman Fault system.