Social media. A mixed blessing, at best.

Up-to-the-minute news … up-to-minute bad information.

A social-media-driven rumor of a 9.99-magnitude earthquake, hitting the UAE between April 25 to April 30 apparently was taken as truth by some nervous people here.

To the point that The National did a story to knock down the rumor.

People here are not very knowledgeable about earthquakes, because they so rarely are felt here.

The notion of the U.S. Geological Survey predicting an earthquake (as the rumor went) did not strike some of them as ridiculous. As it would for those who know no U.S. agency predicts earthquakes.

Nor that the predicted magnitude would be higher than any earthquake ever recorded.

So, one of our reporters went to a lecture about earthquake safety, where a local seismologists explained, again, why a 9.99 could not be predicted … and is essentially impossible here.

He noted, for starters, that the greatest magnitude quake ever recorded was a 9.5 in Chile in 1960.

He also noted that the nearest earthquake zones are in Iran, hundreds of miles from Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

He handed out some good advice. If you feel a quake while in one of the UAE’s many towers … stay put. Don’t take 60 floors down the stairs, don’t get in an elevator.

“While the earthquake is happening you will not have any time to get outside,” one of the experts said. “Just find a safe place to be, such as near a wall or support beam, away from the edge of the building, or in a doorway.”

The only serious threat to a multistory building would be something falling loose and bonking a person on the head.

In reality, people in Dubai towers have no more to worry about than did Chicken Little, no matter what they are saying on Facebook or Twitter.