Shake, Rattle and Role?

Weren't we just here a month ago? It's enough to make one ask, "What the Hell is going on around this little planet?"

In the old days, our ancestors would have thought God was angry or something. (I remember touring the ruins of a Cathedral constructed in Cartagena, Costa Rica in 1525 that was destroyed by a series of earthquakes. In the end, it was determined that the disaster was God's retribution for the dead babies sealed within the church's walls and conceived between a priest and some of the nuns then serving the community. And I admit that a just God would do well to chastise such heinous acts, but why kill gobs of other innocent people just to make your point?--no one ever asks that question!) So, if not God; then what?

Well, first of all, Chile is no stranger to earthquakes. Chile tops the list of all time largest quakes ever recorded with the May 22, 1960 magnitude 9.5 "Valdivia" earthquake. Today's quake jumps into the list at #7 with its 8.8 magnitude. The 10th strongest magnitude level of quake, 8.5, also occurred in Chile on December 16, 1575. The fact that Chile is basically an isolated nation contributes to fact that the average citizen of the United States might find this event unexpected. But who ever expects an earthquake?

Chile is a modern nation. It has in the last 30 years moved from a "banana republic/US puppet" nation to the full fledged independent and stable democracy. It's current president, Michelle Bachelet is one of the few and newly emerging female heads of state on the planet (and a graduate of my public school system here in Maryland!). She is one of the only heads of state to have personally visited Haiti since its disasterous earthquake.

And yet, the death toll in Chile thus far is being calculated in the hundreds. It could clearly enter the thousands or even tens of thousands when all is said and done. While Haiti's carnage has reached epic proportions in the range of 250,000 to 300,000 casualties. It's a complicated calculus no matter how you view it, but here's a whopper of an idea: today's Chilean quake was 500 TIMES STRONGER than Haiti's 7.0 quake. In other words: Do something. Then do it twice as hard. Now do it 500 times as vigorously! You can't. It's not a magnitude of power that we even have the ability to replicate.

The earth is really shaking. And how! Study this map of South America. It shows the earthquake activity for the past week. A quake can likely be felt at a magnitude of 3.5. At 4.5, it will knock things off of shelves and bounce you around a bit--most nations with frequent tremors at this level will automatically shut down power grids until they can be securely restarted.

In the past week Central America has had two well felt quakes: one ont he Guatemala/Mexico boarder, the other between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Today, a quake of similar proportions occurred under the Altantic Ocean, and a much larger quake rattle northwestern Argentina.

The world is like a ball of fabric that is stretched and torn along various seams. When one patch moves, it places pressure on all of the other tears. Eventually they are so taut that they move, too. Were the pair of Central American quakes precursors to today's Chilean disaster? It's hard to say, but they are not unrelated. The trick is to figure out how to understand all of the patches and tears so as to predict their movements.

A curious after thought would be the set of quakes in central Oklahoma. Three tiny quakes that probably went unnoticed, and then just hours ago a 4.4 magnitude quake that would have been clearly felt by anyone within a radius of 15 miles of it's epicenter. Still a small event, but one likely to be talked about by those who were there.