On May 27, 1998 I posted a warning to the sci.geo.earthquakes Internet Newsgroup stating that I was expecting an earthquake in either Iran or Afghanistan to occur by May 30, 1998. And I gave some magnitude ranges that I believe were later shown to be accurate.

I actually knew exactly where in Iran or Afghanistan the earthquake might occur but did not want to put those precise locations in my warning out of concern that people in those areas might get upset and go into a panic condition.

What I was hoping is that some government or disaster mitigation officials would contact me for more details so that the possibility of alerting the populations in those areas could be considered. However, I never heard from anyone before or after the earthquake.

The expected earthquake occurred exactly when and where I thought it would in Afghanistan on May 30, 1998. And as I said, I believe that my magnitude projection was about right.

The earthquake reportedly claimed some 4000 lives.

That was an unusual set of circumstances. The strong EM Signals that were detected in that case were so clear that it was possible to generate time, location, and magnitude projections. However, for other earthquakes the signals are almost never that clear.

So, that proves that earthquakes can be predicted. And if and when a more advanced version of the program that I am using becomes available it will probably be possible generate fairly accurate predictions for a good percentage of our approaching powerful and destructive earthquakes.

In comparison to the damage an earthquake can cause it would not take a lot of time, energy, or expense to get that more advanced program version developed. However at the moment I myself don’t have those resources available.

When dealing with threatening natural disasters etc. people in the scientific community try to do what they can with whatever is available. And they try to gradually improve things. That is the present situation.

Waiting for someone to begin generating perfect forecasts is something like waiting for cancer researchers to find a single drug that will cure every possible type of cancer. It isn’t going to happen any time soon. Knowledgeable medical researchers and earthquake forecasting researchers are aware of these things. They know what needs to be done. And they keep moving forward with what is available.

That is the way science works.