EARTHQUAKES ARE FAR MORE DANGEROUS THAN PEOPLE ARE AWARE

Posted by EQF on March 23, 2011

Something that I have been telling people far and wide for quite a while is that earthquakes are probably 10 to 100 times more dangerous than people are aware.

The physical damage is easy to see. But there are additional “collateral” types of problems that can result when a powerful earthquake occurs near heavily populated area and when one spawns a destructive tsunami (tidal wave).

For several examples,

--- Undersea communications cables carrying Internet types of information and TV and radio signals, important financial data etc. can be damaged or destroyed.

--- Important industries can be crippled for lengthy periods of time. For example, the recent powerful Japan earthquake has reportedly resulted in the loss of something like 20% of our world’s capacity to produce certain types of semiconductor chips. A powerful earthquake in Taiwan years ago had a tremendous impact for quite a while on the semiconductor industry. The manufacture of some critically important drug might be halted for an indefinite period of time.

--- Hundreds of thousands and even millions of newly homeless people can suddenly place a tremendous burden on the affected country’s economy and even on the economies of nearby countries as people cross the border to escape aftershocks and to find food and shelter.

--- Many governments including the U.S. will usually send money, food and provisions, and aid workers including military personnel to countries that have been affected by an earthquake. And all of that is paid for with tax dollars collected from the general public and private companies.

--- There can be secondary types of life threatening problems that develop such as:

***** Nuclear power plant operations can be disrupted resulting in radioactive materials being released into the atmosphere. Those materials can then affect the health and lives of people around the world. Many people could then become ill and die in countries where earthquakes never occur.

***** In some countries where health problems already exist, conditions can worsen rapidly with the result that major epidemics can occur. That can be an especially dangerous situation when those are countries where the government will not allow outside disaster mitigation groups to enter the country and move around as needed to threat ill people.

Many people believe that because earthquakes are occurring elsewhere they are not a problem for them. And they don’t need to worry about them. But as that list of reasons shows, earthquakes can have an impact on people in every country. And I have just scratched the surface here with this list regarding problems that can result when a major earthquake occurs.

Things can be done to reduce the impact of earthquakes such as enforcing adequate building codes and making certain that nuclear power plants have adequate backup systems so that they don’t go critical. But, there is still no substitute for predicting an earthquake in the first place so that people can get out of the way and so that cities and industries can get prepared for its approach by shutting down fuel pipelines etc. beforehand so that widespread fires that can be extremely difficult to extinguish can be avoided.

My own forecast data show that accurately predicting earthquakes might be neither difficult nor expensive.

But, earthquakes are not being predicted largely because this science is being totally controlled by a complex mixture of Special Interest Group government and international scientific community politics.

The consequences of those politics are that people living near fault zones are being exposed to the direct risks from earthquakes such as physical injury etc. And people living everywhere on the planet are being threatened by risks such as the release of dangerous radioactive materials etc. into the atmosphere.

These are personal opinions.