With my forecasting program a signal is detected which indicates to me that a destructive earthquake could be on the way. It has no direction information included with it or much in the way of time window information. So I have to use these complex sun and moon position and tide crest and trough location based computer programs to try to generate some location and probable time information.

5 possible locations might be identified for example. And I might then try to contact each of those governments and advise them to check and see if they themselves are seeing any signs of an approaching earthquake. With luck one of them will be able to spot its approach.

If it looks like an especially important earthquake, instead of trusting my location data which might be accurate only 50% of the time on the average, I will try to contact as many governments as possible and tell them to check for warning signs.

Such an approach can be successful some of the time.

Regarding posting forecasts here, the object is to save lives. And there are two ways to do that. You can forecast an earthquake and get people evacuated from cities etc. And you can alert disaster response groups so that they can more rapidly respond to the earthquake. That can save at least a few lives.

As I pointed out in that series of reports I wrote not too long ago, one of the main problems here is with communications. There is presently no good, organized way for people to circulate earthquake forecasting information. So if you want people to get prepared for an earthquake you have to presently contact them directly by e-mail or FAX etc. At times just a few hours can mean the difference between life and death. So communications have to be fast. If you post a forecast to some Web site and the necessary people do not see it for 2 days because it was posted on a Friday night and they are off work until Monday morning then nothing was accomplished. No lives were saved. You wasted your time.

This situation is in my opinion the clear result of a lack of enlightened and concerned leadership among our government officials. But that is the way things are. And if you want to save lives you have to find a way to get the job done in spite of them. Complaining is important. But by itself it isn’t likely to get much done.