What’s With All the Earthquakes?
When I was a kid, we had a family friend who was a Jehovah’s Witness. Those Watchtower pamphlets she left all over our house often detailed the coming destruction of the earth in all its flaming glory. Now I’m not a religious person, but when I read about all the earthquakes occurring these days, I start to think, Is this Armageddon? Or do you view it through a more scientific lens: increased seismic activity due to tectonic-plate shifting? Whaddya think? Opine here, please.
March 11th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
I’ve been through a lot of small earthquakes, including one in Switzerland! My mother, who lived all her life in California, experience two big ones: in Santa Barbara when she was a girl and the more recent one in the San Francisco area.
Chile has had giant earthquakes on a regular basis, including one that caused a destructive tsumami here in Hilo. And then there was the one in the Aleutians that caused another destructive tsunami in Hilo. There was a huge one off the coast of the Pacific Northwest in 1700 or so. The incredible shaker on Hawaii island around 1880.
And so on.
Oh, and then there was the Missouri quake of 1811. And the 1775 Lisbon quake!
I just think we are more aware of quakes happening around the world than we used to be.
March 11th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
It just seemed like a heckuva lot of earthquakes. I hadn’t even realized Chile was as active — earthquake-speaking — as it is.
March 11th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
As usual, we can blame the media. The number and frequency of earthquakes has not increased, just media attention following the devastating quake in Haiti. Here’s a Christian Science Monitor article that talks about it:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0308/Turkey-earthquake-kills-51-scientists-say-earthquake-frequency-not-rising
March 11th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
I think Hattie has it right. We hear more about earthquakes now than we used to. News gathering, and communications in general, is so much speedier, and the “if it bleeds, it leads” mantra so much more prevalent, it would be surprising if we were hearing about fewer quakes.
March 11th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Well, in a semi-scientific explanation (I was a Zoology not a Geology major)… Taking pressure off of one tectonic plate just shifts it to another. As we don’t really know where the shifting is going on way below in the earth and oceans they just seem to pop up randomly along the different seismic zones. Although Chile and Haiti are not along the same fault lines.
However, if you like I could blame it on a right-wing conspiracy.
March 11th, 2010 at 11:52 pm
I believe mother has been shaking things up since the beginning of time, the media does bring it to us at lighting speed.
What concerns me is the financial ramifications that follow these disasters. We best start getting back to basics.
March 12th, 2010 at 7:16 am
Funny, a friend and I were just discussing this yesterday. I’m sure there are earthquakes all the time but what it seems to me is that there are more powerful ones, more frequently.
Here in Michigan we tend to be fairly casual observers of Mother Nature always shaking things up in other places. What most people don’t know, though, is that there’s a very major fault that runs through here. We’ve just been really lucky.
As to your question about Armageddon – I personally lean to a more tectonic-plate shifting explanation. It’s just easier for my 58 yr old brain to process than the alternative.
March 12th, 2010 at 9:25 am
I agree with Hattie and Brian that we only hear more about natural events like quakes and tsunami’s these days. The world is getting smaller and smaller both seismically and technologically.
March 12th, 2010 at 9:46 am
One things for sure, it has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with what’s happening in the earth’s crust. So don’t take it personally.
The main difference is that we HEAR about every little thing that happens around the world so quickly now. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.
Laura Lee aka The Queen
March 12th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Thanks, Emily, for the scientific information,
I think there is a consensus that we are just hearing about quakes more often.
March 12th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Did you hear the item on NPR this morning? About how big quakes can trigger other quakes many, many miles away.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124604129
March 14th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
I agree with the theory that with internet and instant communications, we just hear about more of them. The fundamentalist church I went to as a child talked a lot about Revelations “there shall be wars and rumors of wars” and said the Rapture would be soon. That was 35+ years ago, so they might want to revise their definition of soon.
March 15th, 2010 at 7:57 am
I think that as Erin said a big quake can trigger other quakes and that earthquake are in cycles. I think that this latest series of earthquakes started back in 2004 with the massive 9.1 earthquake in the Indian Ocean off Indonesia that triggered the tsunami.
April 7th, 2010 at 3:53 am
Personally, I am 25 years old. I know a few things, I believe, it is signs, the bible says it would happen. “There will be earthquakes in diverse places, it also talks about how things will be like a women having birth pains, the pains will increase, dramatically. I think if you want to the truth, read it for yourself. Believe me, its scarey, but you know what, when you see prophecy coming true, right before your eyes. Its freaky. Thats not all the bible talks about anyways. It talks about love. How can we love? We would have never known love, until jesus loved us first.