This is most of the text of a report that was just posted to a number of Newsgroups including sci.geo.earthquakes

EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING AND EARTHQUAKE TRIGGERING RESEARCH COMPUTER PROGRAM

http://www.meteoquake.org
http://www.meteoquake.org/indexa11ed.html
http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/Etdprog.html

Newsgroup Readers - Please circulate copies of this report to any government and disaster mitigation officials and earthquake researchers who you believe might be interested in the subject matter.

AN EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING COMPUTER PROGRAM IS NOW AVAILABLE

A freeware earthquake forecasting and earthquake triggering research computer program is now available for downloads. It can be accessed through the Meteoquake Web site. Just follow the computer program download links at the site until you reach a Web page named Etdprog.html. There are links on that page for the download file. There are also download links for it on the Freewebz Etdprog.html Web page.

The Etdprog.html and ReadMe.html Web pages at the Web site contain a considerable amount of documentation for the computer program. There is also an Archive.zip file stored there that contains the Perl computer language source code for an earlier version of the main computer program. Efforts are in progress to fully document the source code for the latest version.

HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS

The times when certain types of electromagnetic pulses or signals are detected are fed into the computer program. It then generates charts, maps, and reports that indicate where it determines the fault zones responsible for the signals might be located. People at those locations can then check the area to see if there are any strong indicators or precursors that suggest that an earthquake could be approaching. They might be things such as large, fresh cracks in building foundations, excessive static noise on radio and TV transmissions, and abrupt changes in ground and well water levels.

When such precursors are observed, scientists and government officials might want to make a serious effort to determine if there could in fact be some significant approaching seismic activity.

One of the main difficulties involved with watching for approaching earthquakes is the fact that they occur so infrequently at any given location. One might not occur in some area for a hundred years or more. And it can be difficult for people living near fault zones around the world to constantly watch for the precursors for such long periods of time. What this computer program is designed in part to do is let people know when they need to start checking for the precursors.

COMPUTER PROGRAM USAGE

The first downloadable version of the computer program became available around March 4, 2009. Professional and amateur computer programmers around the world are being invited to participate in program development efforts. And the computer program might start evolving fairly rapidly. The present version is intended for people who have some familiarity with computers and who are seriously interested in forecasting earthquakes or doing earthquake triggering research.

It will presently run only on a regular PC type computer using Windows Vista, XP, 2000, or NT. With time, versions will hopefully become available that will run on other types of computers and with other operating systems.

The program will run "as is." But a day or two of reading and experimentation would probably be required for someone to become familiar with all of its different options. That might sound like a lot of work. But, as far as I am aware, this computer program is presently the only thing available for free to most people around the world who might want to know if an earthquake could be approaching.

Even after the data are generated it can take quite a bit of time and effort to evaluate them. More sophisticated procedures for doing that will likely gradually be developed.

ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSES

Now that the computer program is finally available efforts are getting underway to create one or more online repositories for storing and making available information regarding the times when the electromagnetic pulses it processes are being detected. Until such a repository is created people might use the program to compare earthquakes with one another and determine if they could have been triggered by the same forces.

Many people around the world are reporting that they hear occasional high pitched tones that last up to twenty seconds, frequently referred to as "Ear Tones." They can reportedly be heard at the same time by people living considerable distances apart. Present theories propose that they represent biological responses to earthquake fault zone activity related electromagnetic energy field pulses.

I have run quite a few Ear Tone times from people around the world through the computer program. And they appear to produce surprisingly good results. At least two researchers have reported that they have built radio receivers capable of detecting those energy pulses. The exact nature of the pulses will probably become widely known in the next few years. They might be similar to the electromagnetic pulses presently being evaluated by medical researchers for treating depression and migraine headaches.

COMPUTER PROGRAM AVAILABILITY

The Meteoquake site is presently the only download site for the program. And I don't know what the download capacity is for the server on which the program is stored. Additional download sites are being organized. In the meantime, if there are too many downloads and the site temporarily stops running, interested parties can try contacting me for an E-mail copy of the program. The complete package is about ten megabytes in size in a zip file. Unzipped it is roughly forty megabytes in size.

COMPUTER VIRUS PRECAUTIONS

The main forecasting computer program is an exe type program. And the download files are all stored in a zip file. That should not cause any problems for expert computer users. People who are not expert computer users should always be careful about downloading and running exe and zip files. And in this case for safety sake they might try running the program on an older computer that does not contain any irreplaceable data.

The program does not install itself on a computer. When the subdirectory it is in and two text files created by the Gnuplot graphics program are deleted there should be nothing left of the program in the user's computer.

PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT EFFORTS

Governments around the world are being formally notified about the existence of the computer program now that it is available. And it is my expectation that the U.S. government will be the most likely organization to do research and development work on it in the future. In the meantime I would be interested in hearing from anyone who tries running the program even if he or she is not planning on doing any earthquake forecasting work or earthquake triggering research in the future.

These are personal opinions.