It kind of reminds me of when I took acting school down in Chicago and drove down there every Tuesday or Wednesday for a lot of weeks and paid a certain amount of money for those classes, all the while waiting and wondering if I would ever get enough acting jobs to pay back all the money I had into those classes. Originally my work with earthquakes made me feel that way, too. I knew I was starting to put a lot of my time into it and was also giving up a lot of my script writing that was supposed to be eventually making money, too, however I never would have guessed back in the hours and days following the Northridge Earthquake that the first check I would earn from all my work with earthquakes would be one for writing an EQ Blog on the internet!
As I write this today I still have that check right here and have not cashed it! I took some pictures of me with it yesterday and want to get a scan of it, yet if everybody thinks that would be ok. All along the way up to this point it has been my opinion that there might not be a way to ever make back any of the money I’d been putting into this project due to thinking along the lines of wanting to get the word out to as many people as possible and therefore such concepts as charging for the information were never an option for me. Granted there are outfits who do ask you for a fee in order to access their information or to receive their E-Mail, newsletter, or whatever with their latest earthquake information. Having spent a considerable amount of time contemplating the ethics involved with their methods, I decided quite early in my mission that it seemed I would probably NOT EVER be able to incorporate any money making angles into my work with earthquakes at all whatsoever. Reason being that all my efforts to get all of this key information out to the people in all of the affected areas who really need it the most, should probably not ever be slowed down, impaired, or hindered in any way especially so that a guy can be turning a dollar on the whole deal.
A fine example of that is the fact that I paid ninety-nine cents for the globe that I use to track earthquake energy all around the world and now having made my first income from all of that work, you could also say I more than paid for that globe!
Now on to the main subject of this chapter, and that is the business of how I track earthquakes. The globe is among the newest tools that I decided to employ along the way and the straight line tool that I use to make a straight line all the way around it is even newer. Maps are useful because you can follow a lot of the smaller lines directly to Major Earthquakes such as the line West from the landfall of Hurricane Hugo at Charleston, South Carolina in 1989 directly to the epicenter of the World Series Earthquake. I still have the map today where I originally tracked that event right after I had discovered the correlation and decided to check that one out to see for sure. That was actually the day in history when although I already probably knew there WAS a correlation. . . I did not know that it was straight line energy. I recall looking and all of the sudden just realizing that if you draw a line over the Alleghenies, across the plains of the Mississippi, over the Rocky Mountains, and Sierra Mountains, you actually come right out at San Francisco!
Knowing that this kind of a hypothesis just might have some basis in reality, I looked very closely at Charleston and carefully placed a straight edge on what I thought the exact point of landfall might have been that day with the leading edge of the straight line now laying directly over the top of Northern California!
My words right at that moment were, “This can’t be true! It can not be this easy in the future to predict a Major Earthquake by using something so simple and basic as a straight line tool.” I was very familiar with the fact that Newton said something about energy traveling in a straight line, but I did not have any idea what kind of energy we were talking about right at that moment while all of this was happening on the map right in front of me. All in just the couple of moments that I looked down at whatever I was using for a straight line tool that day, laying across the map such as those I continue to use today for basically the same purpose. I seem to remember using a T-Square that day. Only difference being that it is now days for the purpose of trying to predict where the next Major Earthquake might strike. I can’t say for sure if it actually occurred to me right that moment that I would be using this system in reverse some day to track potential earthquake energy. That would be drawing a straight line from a hurricane that has just made landfall to the nearest major fault line for the purpose of then trying to guess where an earthquake might strike. Although it was still sort of early in the day when I made this discovery. . . by the end of that day I was sure to be Bringing Earthquakes To Life!
The concept of using the globe if I have not discussed it earlier, I originally discovered one day while I was visiting at UW Wisconsin Geology where they have a huge globe in the lobby out front of their Geology Museum. One day I was happening through there, and I know I discuss those visits elsewhere, and I ran into the big giant globe there. I couldn’t believe how all the continents looked so much different on this big globe! Next, I glanced up at the region where a hurricane had just made landfall around Florida bearing west, or southwest and following what I knew at the time to be the exact straight line I can clearly recall coming out somewhere around Guatemala or Guatemala City. This struck me as even a rather curious finding at the time possibly due to my not knowing much about the exact geography of the Gulf of Mexico and Central America. Probably thinking or mumbling to myself something like, “That line can’t possibly come out all the way down there in Guatemala or Guatemala City,” or wherever it came out on that day. The real great kicker in this whole story came when just a few days later whatever point on that globe I managed to track to using that ever so straight line and even just eyeballing it at that, brought me out somewhere down in Central America, BUT at the EXACT POINT where the epicenter of a Major Earthquake struck almost immediately!!! WHEN I saw the name of that city, whatever one it actually was because I do not recall for sure, I was astounded! I looked, looked, and looked at the map showing the epicenter and asked myself HOW did I manage to come up with the name of that city? Then it occurred to me it was the name I came up with when I followed the line with the use of that big giant globe up there in front of the Geology Museum at the University of Wisconsin, Madison!
It was very nearly impossible to believe that going from all of those maps that I have been using up to that point in time, that simply trying out the use of the globe in the Geology Museum could make that much difference. . . it did, though! It appeared right at that moment that the use of the globe gave me the ability to accurately track potential seismic energy everywhere around the world, I just had yet to actually prove it somehow.
I made a number of trips to check something out on that big giant globe which has actual raised surfaces where the different mountains of the world are located, and valleys of the world as well as the depths of the deepest oceans carved into its surface.
Finally at some point in all my work back in those days I started thinking if all the built in graphics on that big globe were all that necessary to do my work. I stopped and wondered if there was really anything different about that big globe that I needed specifically THAT globe for besides the fact that it is positioned strategically at the front entrance to the Geology Museum. I gave some thought to how I might be able to use just any old basic globe and possibly have to try discarding the ability to view all the built in graphics and if all the graphics had ever had that much to do with the accuracy I was achieving in the first place. Looking back I want to say today that the graphics are very valuable, but it was mostly the globe showing me where Central and South America are positioned in relation to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico that I’d been sold on all that time. Of course all of those graphics were certainly instrumental in all of this, since it was only two days ago July 25, 2013, I was up there using it to check out the Himalayas and where they are situated with respect to Mandalay, and Taiwan.
It wasn’t long before I spotted a globe for ninety-nine cents at a store and grabbed it! First using a piece of string to delineate a straight line around it, then eventually going to the edge of a sheet of paper and after wrapping it nicely around the globe on a few occasions realizing I should put a piece of tape on it and make it a permanent tool specifically for that use. Eventually I would need another tool to calibrate it so that it would automatically adjust to the 24,000 mile circumference of the earth, although automatically adjust is hardly the word for that operation. That is the system I use today and it works well for typhoons and tropical cyclones out in the islands of the Pacific that might be sending their energy towards our West Coast as well as Major Typhoons that strike Japan, especially from the South China Sea which routinely send their potential seismic energy directly towards Southern Oregon and Northern California as well as probably many other specific points up and down our West Coast.
I was thinking along the lines of somebody, somewhere having the desire to track some of these using basically the same method as I have been using and therefore thought it should be this one specific chapter in my new book, Bringing Earthquakes To Life.
Along the way I have spent a certain amount of time wondering if there will ever be a point in time when folks who live in shaky places will ever know enough to watch those distant and far, far away places for tropical cyclones and major typhoons, in addition to hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific, in order to help them know there just might be a major earthquake heading for them. Well, if this describes you, then it is now time to start paying very close attention to every single major windstorm striking basically anywhere in the world. You will also want to be watching for major winter storms and major blizzards especially. We had one particularly severe month over this winter and I can honestly tell you I heard the weather people say more than once that it was as bad or worse than December of 2003, or December of 2009! I can hardly believe what I am hearing sometime when they say such stuff! I’m still astonished to this day when they just blurt out such stuff without giving any thought to what they’re saying, although it’s probably just me who realizes that. Oh, and those severe winter conditions of December 2003 preceded the Paso Robles Earthquake of December 23, 2003, and I actually had sent out an EQ Alert based on all that snow in the days prior to that earthquake. December 2009 experienced some pretty severe winter conditions, too, and December 22, 2009 was the date of one of my all time best Official Predictions for a Major Earthquake to Strike California before January 12, 2010. That was when the Eureka, California earthquake struck on January 9, 2010 and on the final day of that O.P. at 4pm in the afternoon the Haiti Earthquake struck!
Major Tropical Cyclones making landfall at Australia, which they will from time to time do, don’t usually immediately affect us here in the United States and so you might not just be so interested. However they will immediately affect New Zealand and the other outlying islands there and eventually Indonesia and Japan for those of you reading with some concern for those places, and pretty much everywhere up around the Himalayan Arc eventually, too, and I’m sure there are a few who will want to know that, too.
That is one area where I will remain hopeful into the future that we will come up with some way of even MORE accurately tracking the movement of the Indian Ocean Tectonic Plate or the Australian Tectonic Plate or the more commonly referred to combined movement of them together referred to as the Indio/Australian Tectonic Plate. Although in reality they are two separate tectonic plates, of course. Only the slightest of movements ever recorded in between them, although I have seen one of around a 6 in recent years. As I write this there does not seem to be any way to accurately guess the movement of this plate other than to watch around the perimeter when we know it is moving, aside from direct contact with a straight line of earthquake energy.
When a huge tropical cyclone strikes it from the Pacific, watch for it to turn and push north. Occasionally a cyclone will also make landfall in the Bay of Bengals and could have the same effect, but can commonly also cause the straight line effect at least up into those Himalayas and out into the islands of Indonesia and up into Japan. I’ve also heard they can get major earthquakes in Taiwan but haven’t seen one, yet.
Only very recently I have correlated the “Path on the Ground” of a Major Tornado with major earthquakes and it was only a few days ago as of this writing that I followed that straight line directly from the path of the El Reno, Oklahoma tornado to the islands of Antiqua and Barbuda out in the Caribbean on Friday and put that in the headline of an EQ Blog, when early that Sunday Morning a 3.8 hit two miles off the coast of Antiqua. I have to say, though, that the path on the ground of a tornado remains still somewhat difficult to get. There is a sort of general assumed path that usually just goes like due east and maybe a little to the north and I find myself occasionally sometimes using that for a line to get started, but some lines go in other directions and getting this sort of information remains a problem right up to today as I am writing this. Another tiny fact that will probably need to be collected a little more expediently in the future for the purposes of much more accurate and speedy earthquake forecasting all around the world.
That Antiqua Earthquake just so happened to also occur within what I only recently began referring to as a “New Moon Window,” and have incorporated the New Moon in a manner similar to how I have been using the Full Moon for a couple years, now. Based solely on the fact that it has been said that the chances of a Major Earthquake seem to increase with the Full Moon, and as you might have already read I have put that to use.
Then one day somebody said that if the full moon has that effect, then the New Moon must also have the same effect due to both, apparently according to him, causing that same increase in the pull on Earths gravity or whatever. That was when I began using my today still brand new “New Moon Alert.” There have just since I began using it, been several good ones, too, now as of the June New Moon of 2013, including Antiqua! So you can add the June New Moon of the year 2013 to the list of things that are helping us at Bringing Earthquakes To Life.
This chapter was supposed to give the reader everything he or she would need to know in order to track potential earthquake energy and be able to predict about when and where the next major earthquake might strike.
One of the biggest reasons I thought some of you might be interested in learning a little something about how I have been doing this for many years now is for the purpose of figuring out when and where one might strike and if one of these just so happens to be your neighborhood, then you might wish to share this information with your neighbors or friends or basically just about anybody in the general area or region. Especially if you happen to have gotten a hold of this volume before there is yet such a thing as regular warnings when me and you both know there MIGHT be a Major Earthquake coming. If not then it may still be up to you the reader, to watch for huge hurricanes, tropical storms, and typhoons to make landfall and then look on a map or globe to see if there’s an earthquake heading for you and then simply tell everybody you know in the area you think might be affected like via E-Mail, or maybe a friendly call or text message.
A rule of thumb I like to use here is small windstorm, say under 100mph, equals small earthquake say about a 5. Bigger windstorm, of say 100mph, equals bigger earthquake, say a 6. Huge windstorm, of say 150 or 175mph, equals huge earthquake of say like a 7 Magnitude. Finally, the very biggest of all Hurricanes and Typhoons of all time equals the very biggest of all Earthquakes of all time!
This was at one time an entire manuscript that I even had a literary agent for as well as a Compact Edition that I shopped to publishers myself calling it How To Predict Earthquakes--The Compact Edition, but never actually getting it published. I always wondered if the title made it sound too much like a “How To” book or not, although I guess it sort of was one, anyways. I’m thinking right now about renaming the chapter Tracking Earthquake Energy to reflect my current lingo I’m using. These days I kind of like the idea of tracking them.
So we can always watch TV and newspapers and the news in general and watch for all of these things that precede earthquakes, but I also want to say buildings CAN be constructed to withstand ever bigger earthquakes and existing buildings can be rated for exactly how big an earthquake they will hold up to. Buildings can also be strengthened to stand up to greater and greater shaking all the way up to what they call Seismic Isolators, like a shock absorber, that can take ALL the earthquake energy and leave a building with only minimal damage.
So knowing when and where a major earthquake might strike helps, but earthquake proof construction and retro-fitting is also needed in order to mitigate some of the existing hazards that are out there in some of the shakiest areas of the world.
Finally after you have the process of tracking every potential earthquake mastered, then there is one final thing you will someday also need to know and occasionally someone will ask this one, too. That is they want to know if there are currently ANY earthquakes heading for them or their friends or family wherever they might be.
Of course you must always remind people that earthquakes CAN still strike just about anywhere at any time, but if and when it just so happens that there are NO earthquakes heading for either yourself and your neighbors, or your friends and or family or any one specific place. . . then you might have to say, “All Clear!” Mumble might be the word because of course there is always that one chance something could strike some out of the way place without warning, however once in a while it happens that there are NO earthquakes especially heading towards, say L. A. or San Francisco. Whenever this does happen I might casually mention that it just may be sort of an All-Clear, but anymore that disclaimer always seems in order, too.
You might need to keep track of all this in a notebook, or on cards, so that you can keep track of the timetables once a huge windstorm strikes somewhere. Then it won’t be too long before you start noticing that earthquakes ARE striking on YOUR watch!
When all of that happens you should be ready to be the local EQ Guy or Gal in your neighborhood and you too can now be on your way to Bringing Earthquakes To Life!
