[Porsche-O-Phile]

Can be, but it's all in the detailing. You can make masonry just as good as any other material in a seismic zone.

The reality is 99% of the "brick" you see today is just veneer anyway. But even if you go with honest-to-goodness load-bearing brick exterior walls, they can be tied back & reinforced to make them plenty strong in earthquakes.

You're probably thinking of unreinforced masonry such as is seen in third-world countries and used to be seen in very old structures (before seismic retrofits were required). Those are just basically piles of bricks w/ grout. Yes, very dangerous when the ground starts moving.