The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake, at a magnitude 7.3 M_w, occurred on 6 October 1948 near Ashgabat, in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic. Due to censorship by the national government, the Ashgabat earthquake was not much reported in the USSR's media. Historians tend to agree that the ban on reporting the extent of the earthquake casualties and damages did not allow the Soviet government to allocate enough financial resources to adequately respond to the disaster. Admiral Ellis M.