Talk:Drive Knight/@comment-2001:5B0:2A66:3DF0:280:AEFF:FED6:2C1B-20171224174139/@comment-86.165.144.116-20190824082223

I think the threat levels are similar to the scales used in natural disasters like the Richter scale, a quantitative measure of the magnitude of earthquakes.

"The earthquake’s magnitude is determined using the logarithm of the amplitude (height) of the largest seismic wave calibrated to a scale by a seismograph. Although modern scientific practice has replaced the original Richter scale with other, more-accurate scales, the Richter scale is still often mentioned erroneously in news reports of earthquake severity as the catch-all name for the logarithmic scale upon which earthquakes are measured."

Source: https://www.britannica.com/science/Richter-scale

Having said this, merely using scales is not suffecient. For example, a magnitude-6.3 earthquake shook Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011, collapsing buildings, triggering landslides and flooding, and killing dozens of people. A more powerful magnitude-7.1 quake rattled the city the previous September but didn't cause nearly as much damage, with no fatalities.

So why was this?

Answer: damage an earthquake can inflict can be influenced by many different factors such as:

1) Depth (shallow earthquakes are usually more damaging than their deeper counterparts)

2) Location- population density, proximity to infrastructure, etc

3) Local construction methods and architecture

4) Underlying geology- soggy and sandy soil can liquify if there are vibrations

5) Secondary effects- landslides, tsunami, flooding, fires, etc

In a similar kind of way, even those beings who are considered to be 'lower' in terms of their quantified threat level can still inflict significant damage if situatonal factors prove to be favourable.