Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 17:07:23 :
In Reply to: Re: Rock and roll, baby! posted by Clint Dixon on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 12:37:51 :
Those earthquakes were something most people have never heard of, but when you read the first-hand accounts, they're absolutely astounding. I doubt that people have ever experienced earthquakes as severe as what happened around New Madrid, not so much for the strength of one quake, but for the number of very large quakes that happened over a long period of time. Buildings were literally throw into the air (vertical acceleration greater than 1 G), which not even modern buildings can survive. The duration of the earthquakes and their repetition would naturally make anyone think that the world was about to end, or a volcano was about to erupt, or the continent was about to split in half. The last possibility is the current geological explanation. They're calling that area a "failed rift", which means that it almost but not quite slit apart like the Rift Valley in Africa.
The stories of people who lived through those earthquakes make fascinating reading, and one can't help but wonder, "what if it happened today." No doubt the Republicans and the Democrats would blame each other, and a lot of people would blame global warming, and when giant earthquake followed giant earthquake day after day and week after week, lots of people would demand that the government do something about it, but regardless of the blame, the level of death and destruction would far surpass any other natural disaster. The only reason we don't hear more about the New Madrid quakes is that only a few pioneers lived there to tell the tale, and even back their day, people thought they were exaggerating.
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