Claim: A video shows buildings collapsing during the deadly earthquakes that struck Venezuela in June 2026.
Fact: The video does not show scenes of destruction from the earthquakes that hit Venezuela. The clip is old and likely fake as it may be from a gaming simulation.
Soon after deadly earthquakes were reported in Venezuela last week, multiple users posted footage apparently showing two buildings collapsing amid the natural disaster. One such post stated [translated from Urdu into English]: “A few seconds earthquake caused devastation in Venezuela
O Allah, how terrible will be the Day of Judgment”.
Screenshot of the Facebook post.
Twin deadly earthquakes, a 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquake, hit Venezuela on 24 June just 39 seconds apart. The death toll from the earthquakes has risen to 1,450 as of the time of writing.
This article only fact-checks the clip circulating online.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse searched keyframes from the video and found that the clip is old, and likely fake as it may be from a gaming simulation.
A user posted the same clip on Instagram on 13 February 2025, with part of the caption stating: “(Earthquake Animation). Variation of Earthquake Effects Depending on Soil Type…” This indicated the clip was old, and “animation” in the caption suggested it likely does not depict real events.
On the left is the clip shared after the earthquakes in Venezuela in June 2026, which is the same as the one from February 2025 on the right.
The same clip was also shared on TikTok on 21 March 2024, with text on the footage stating [translated from Russian into English via Google]: “Protect yourself and yours… we produce bunkers”.
Further searches yielded other footage depicting similar buildings collapsing under different circumstances, which indicated it is likely from a gaming simulation.
A YouTube user posted a video showing buildings that resemble the ones in the clip being fact-checked on 6 May 2026, with the title, “Wrecking Ball Destroys Apartments!” These visuals show a giant ball crashing into the buildings, which start collapsing upon impact.
Footage on YouTube depicting the destruction of buildings.
An analysis of this YouTube user’s account shows they uploaded several such clips of different buildings collapsing. In one instance, we see a plane crashing into similar buildings. This indicated a high likelihood that the footage being fact-checked was part of some game simulation.
An-Nahar, a Lebanese fact-checking and news platform, also debunked the same footage falsely linked to deadly earthquakes in Venezuela on 26 June 2026. The article found the exact footage as the one being fact-checked, uploaded to YouTube on 2 October 2023.
Soch Fact Check reviewed this footage in question, titled “The two towers collapse! (Earthquake simulation in Teardown)”, which depicts the exact unrealistic scenes like the one circulating in June 2026, confirming it is old. Furthermore, the caption says the clip is from a simulation and, therefore, is not real. This user has also uploaded different gaming footage on their YouTube channel, another confirmation that the clip does not depict real-world events.
Furthermore, running the clip through Hive Moderation, an AI-detection tool, yielded a 97.2% score, which means “this input is likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content”, confirming it is fake.
Results from Hive Moderation.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, rates the claim as false.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that the clip appeared on Facebook at least 21 times.
On X, it was shared in at least seven instances, with one particular post garnering over 5.5 million views, reposted 3,400 times, and liked 13,000 times.
On Instagram, it was shared at least three times.
Conclusion: The video does not show scenes of destruction from the earthquakes that hit Venezuela in June 2026. The clip is old and likely fake as it may be from a gaming simulation.
Background image in cover photo: Al Jazeera
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