minimizing the cost of life and damage to property ideally this would be no major injuries, deaths, papercuts and no builfings collasping.
we have the technology to build buildings that will survive and earthquake of a decent magnitude. no buildings collapsing means no one dies. garented, people might fall down, things fall of and hit people, but no one dying would be a definate plus. granted the whole point of the quote is to show the futility of war, but quotes like this become dated when people with too much time on their hands think it through to much.