posted on Oct, 24 2010 @ 02:18 AM
Blaine91555, I think the Katrina experience is a good example for the "should we warn them?" question. There was a good deal of warning about
Katrina -- a zillion times more than you'd get with a quake! -- the people getting out was a big mess, plenty of people didn't bother, the disasters
predicted multiple times happened to the surprise of nobody except apparently the people living there, the local, regional and state didn't do crap
that would let the feds override/join their own efforts for far too long, which (like everything else in our world) of course ended up being entirely
the fault of George W. Bush (who is still, despite not having been president for years, is guilty of all evil on earth and most of that by 9am. He was
so good for taking that on, why stop now?).
I used to live in Ventura County CA (mid-southern coast between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles), and I was overwhelming crashed on metaphysically with
the GET OUT message, to the degree that one reason I left was solely in the hope my peace of mind would restore -- which it did. I was having whole
visions about it (never had that about anything else). Actually I seriously pondered at one point that maybe geological effects had some kind of
psychological effects on a certain small % of our population -- like how some animals react to impending geological events, maybe a tiny % of the pop
gets stuff at an even more subtle level, but it actually filters up to the brain in some fashion that they become 'cognizant' of it in
dream/fantasy/vision kind of ways (rather than it being unconscious, or buried in unremembered dreams or something). (Or, I'm just crazy and
surprisingly highly functional given that, which is equally possible.)
I thought, back then when I was living for awhile in L.A. and thinking about quakes, about the idea of being trapped between a collection of millions
of people, in a culture best known for gang members, anorexic barbie dolls and tort lawyers, and it made me feel a little like nuclear war makes me
feel -- like I don't actually want to survive in the outer radius of that please, I'd rather just go with the blast and not have to deal with
the nightmare of the fallout!
I don't think there is any way that you can predict an earthquake close enough to be 'responsible' in warning people. If you're too early on the
date, they call it fraud and are on their way home when it hits, or back home. If you're late on the date it's nonhelpful, at least. If you're
right on the date, half the people ignore it, and those who don't ignore it, get in massive snarled traffic jams trying to get the heck out, if they
can get out at all before it arrives.
As a last note, the problem with earthquakes is that the experience of them -- I've been in about half a dozen -- really varies depending not only on
the quake, but on the ground you're on. For example, I was living in Camarillo CA when the Northridge quake hit. That one was unique in that the
first jolt from it was massive. I was deeply asleep. A male voice inside me commanded GET UP!! with such force that my *body* reacted to it, and I was
literally stumbling forward as I woke up on maybe step 3 completely confused, and on the next step the world jerked sideways a bit and on the next
step (mildly crashing into a hallway wall) I heard the 10' wide, 10' high designer block and wood bookshelves that covered two walls of my room
start crashing down. (My bed was covered with 30# bricks, 3 in the pillow area. I'm pretty sure I'd have been killed or really seriously injured if
I hadn't moved. My subconscious saved me, apparently!)
The aftershocks (constant) from that went on for a bit. One day, I was talking to my friend on the telephone, another friend was with me. I lived in
the valley in an apartment and she lived maybe a couple miles away if that, up on the hill (shale). An aftershock hit while we were on the telephone,
and it was so severe that both me and my friend ran outside to the open grass. (My apartment was just not a good situation for any degree of possible
collapse, long story.) The swaying of the building as we watched was so ridiculous that as we agreed, watching it conveyed the gut feeling that just
half an inch more and it would SNAP and fold like a house of cards.
As it finally subsided, I went back to the house and talked to my other friend -- she was still on the phone -- and she said, "Oh. Was there another
aftershock? I thought maybe I felt something but I wasn't sure." I mean... we couldn't believe it. It was a *major experience* for us. For her,
she didn't even really know anything happened.
The morning that one had hit, it was really an extreme experience, and we weren't even near the epicenter. People's refrigerators got thrown over,
big display cases and bookshelves, some water pipes broke in our complex, it was damn frightening in severity and just went on and on. My friend on
the hill however, her family woke up with some shaking, and in bemused curiosity, went outside to their great view and gradually watched as green and
blue lightning from transformers blowing out lit up the sky and the whole region crashed into darkness. For them, it was an earthquake but just enough
shaking, mostly from the first jolt, to wake them up. For the people in my apartment complex less than two miles away, it's was a huge trauma.
The maintenance guy and I talked about this, and he said that the whole complex and he theorized a good chunk of the valley, was on such soft ground
it was like sitting on an ant hill.
So the point to this (long, sorry) story is that even if you know a date and a time and you tell people to leave, unless there is some giant tsunami
and you know how tall/far it'll go, you don't even know who to tell that is most appropriate. My friend's whole neighborhood on the hill didn't
consider the earthquake any big deal. (Her husband, my boss, came into the office later that day, where I'd gone to be sure everything was ok there,
and -- power off -- asked me why I wasn't working. Seriously, for him it was a non-event. He couldn't understand why everybody was making such a big
deal of it.) But even a slight difference in one of a thousand factors, and it could have been vastly worse for the people in my apt. complex. I, at
least, probably would have been killed, by the very shelving units that I kept asking the guys at the stone and lumber places how to 'anchor' in my
walls and they just laughed at me about how nothing that heavy was going anywhere under any condition.
Some people are better off staying where they are. Some people are better off getting the hell out. This even includes people who live incredibly near
each other, but on different kinds of ground. And of course, were the climate different (eg heavy rain), the hills could have been the most dangerous
place instead, with everything sliding down them.
It's just impossible to estimate well enough to say much of anything except, we know one is likely to arrive soon, please be as prepared as you
can.
RC