Following a 7.4 magnitude earthquake that struck western Colombia on Monday, killing at least 270 people, conspiracy theories have circulated on social media attributing the disaster to the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP. The research facility, located in Alaska, studies the upper atmosphere’s properties and behavior, but played no role in causing the earthquake, according to scientific experts and research institutions.
The U.S. Geological Survey determined that the earthquake resulted from strike-slip faulting, a natural geological process in which two sections of Earth’s crust move horizontally past each other. The epicenter occurred within Colombia’s Pacific region, an area situated along the Ring of Fire—a major seismic zone encircling the Pacific Ocean where the majority of global earthquakes take place. Suzan Van der Lee, a seismologist and professor at Northwestern University, emphasized that no human activity caused the event and noted that the region experiences frequent natural seismic activity.
Experts point out that while human activities such as gas extraction or wastewater injection in shallow areas can trigger small to moderate earthquakes, the Colombia earthquake occurred at a depth of 110 kilometers—substantially deeper than any earthquake produced by human actions. Dean Whitman, a geophysicist at Florida International University, stated there is no physical basis for radio-frequency transmissions causing earthquakes, noting that the energy released by the Colombia earthquake was millions of times greater than HAARP’s capacity. Additionally, HAARP’s equipment is directed upward toward the atmosphere, not downward toward earthquake zones, and the electromagnetic waves it produces operate on completely different physics than seismic events.
HAARP has been operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks since 2015, following decades under U.S. military control. The facility has been the subject of conspiracy theories since the 1990s, with unfounded claims alleging it functions as a weather-control device and mind-control instrument. Search and rescue operations for those trapped in the earthquake rubble continued, while regional partners began delivering humanitarian assistance to Colombia.
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