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Building the Earthquake Tracker

Short notes on the data and the design choices behind the tracker.

Every earthquake shown on the tracker comes directly from the USGS real-time GeoJSON feeds — the same public data that powers many official and news earthquake maps. LK Forge does not detect or measure earthquakes itself; the first post below explains why we build on USGS rather than any other source, and what that means for how current the map is. It shows events already reported, usually within minutes, so it is not an early-warning system and cannot predict shaking before it starts.

The second post covers the "Near me" feature: tap it, allow location access, and the tracker sorts every event by distance using the haversine formula, computed entirely in your browser. Your position is only ever used for that calculation — it is never uploaded, stored, or sent to USGS or anyone else, and typing a city name into the search box works the same way if you'd rather not share your device location at all.

Neither post requires reading the other first — pick whichever question you actually have right now. If you want the fuller background on how earthquakes themselves actually work, rather than how this particular tracker was built, the earthquake articles are a better starting point for that.