ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by earthquakes.

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Cut 'em some slack. It's not always their fault.

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All right, check out the following passage.

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The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. All right.

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Well, the 2004 megathrust earthquake was especially deadly because... what?

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And here are the potential answers.

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The last line of the passage makes option A a tempting answer choice.

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But upon closer inspection, the passage isn't telling us

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that subduction was what made the earthquake so deadly.

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So A is out.

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Likewise, the shifting of tectonic plates wasn't the reason

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why this earthquake was deadlier than others.

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So D can go, too.

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Wow, look at that, we're already halfway home.

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Option B is also tempting because we would expect

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a heavily populated area to suffer more casualties.

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But that would be deduction,

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and we wanna stick to the stated facts.

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So see ya, B. The correct answer here is C.

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Let's take another look at the first line of the passage.

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"The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea earthquake

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that triggered several devastating tidal waves."

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In this sentence, we can see the undersea earthquake

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was the cause of the devastating tidal waves,

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which ultimately caused the most destruction.

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Look, we're not ones to complain, but we could really go for

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some more natural miracles here.

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No offense, rainbows. You're pretty cool, too.

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[ whoa ]

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