This activity is a warm-up/raising awareness activity which can be used directly before and after viewing the programme, or it can be used independently of the programme to discuss the main issues/key ideas inherent in the causes and consequences of earthquakes.
(a) This part is meant to be a whole class and/or group discussion lasting 5—10 minutes.
(b) This part can be used after viewing the programme and is meant to be a whole class and/or group discussion lasting 20—30 minutes. It can also be used independently of the programme.
This activity is meant to be a whole class and/or group discussion lasting 10—15 minutes.
Seismic Sentries
Sonoma, Calif., July 8 — Oh, dear. I don’t know quite how to proceed with the information I gathered today. To hear geologist Jim Berkland tell it, you’d get the impression that thousands of lives could be saved if the whole world paid attention to lunar cycles and lost dogs.
‘The strongest tidal forces in 600 years were on January 4, 1912,’ Jim tells me this afternoon in a Sonoma park, where his Lions Club is preparing a barbecue. ‘There was a 5.5 in Bishop (Calif.) on January 4, 1912.’
This is the opening round in a salvo of numbers and dates, locations and accusations, which leaves my head spinning.
‘When I brought that up with the USGS,’ he says, his pale eyes faintly amused, ‘they said, "Oh, Jim, haven’t you heard of coincidence?" I said, "Haven’t you heard of corroborative evidence?" Coincidence. Coincidence. I hate that word. They say, "Jim, if it was that obvious, we would have thought of it long before you did."’
That was the 1970s. Next, Jim, then the official geologist of Santa Clara County (south of San Francisco), got a call from a Xerox physicist who had noticed that the number of lost pet ads in area newspapers rose around earthquake dates.
‘I said, "Hey, my cat fits his theory!" That’s when I became convinced,’ Jim says. ‘What’s so great about science?’
A theory was born. And Jim is running with it. In two hours, he allows me to interrupt with only three questions, none of which he answers directly. In a breathless and far-reaching indictment, he accuses ‘high science’ of ignoring the predictive potential of lost whales, disoriented pigeons, psychics, stray kitties, over-friendly deer, eclipses, seagulls, headache-plagued ‘earthquake sensitives’, El Niño, a temperamental geyser and a whimsical waterfall, and the myths of ‘native peoples’. And he credits himself with a 75 per cent record of predicting earthquakes, using tide charts supplemented with ‘local conditions’.
After enduring much ridicule and one suspension for his predictions, Jim retired to predict earthquakes full time.
‘I’ve stopped being so frustrated after starting a website (www.syzygyjob.com),’ he says before he heads off to bake potatoes for the Lions. ‘I can just lay it all out there. I’m gonna be a thorn in their [USGS’s] side for another 30 years or so.’ My dilemma: yes, most categories of what Jim calls ‘seismic sentries’ suffer a tenuous link to conventional seismology. (The brain of many animals, for instance, contains magnetite, which serves as a built-in compass; and Sun-Moon alignments do exert extra gravitational force on the Earth.) But Jim’s presentation of these links is scattershot and theatrical.
(At one point, he waves a purple velvet bag of magnetite crystals over his magnetic field meter to demonstrate how the Earth’s magnetic fields are disturbed by ... well, if not by an earthquake, then by a velvet bag of magnetite.) And ‘high scientists’ point out that most predictions are so broad, and earthquakes so numerous (700 dish rattlers a year, worldwide), that it would be hard to miss. But pointing out Jim’s inconsistencies would be as satisfying as debating a Jehovah’s Witness: science is no match for passion.
But what’s so great about science? The USGS scientists haven’t exactly been predicting up a storm. And some former earthquake myths have actually borne scientific fruit. Much-doubted ‘earthquake lights’, which a certain crowd attributed to quake-loving UFOs, are now understood to be electrical side effects of the energy generated by huge earthquakes. And a very high-science researcher at Stanford is now eavesdropping on tectonic radio waves.
Predictors
Animals? While high science insists animal behavior has been investigated and proven utterly invalid, I’m open to Jim’s position on this one, only because so very many people along the Fault have told me their animal stories.
The geyser? We drive north through wine country east of the San Andreas to query it. Purportedly, its squirting interval grows more irregular as an earthquake approaches. USGS scientists had naturally warned us that the geyser is as predictive as, say, a disoriented whale. The geyser is shooting on a 15-minute cycle, meaning no quake in sight. (Jim, nonetheless, predicts a 6 in northern California by the end of summer.)
Psychics? Some do claim predictive capabilities, though outside the Internet, we haven’t encountered one. Jim is partial to one ‘Z’, who I believe has a website. To each his own, I suppose. Most of us amble around in the scientific era holding onto an irrational passion or two.
For instance, when we return to Bessy the Camper this evening, I slap in a Dwight Yoakam CD and I hear, ‘This old earthquake’s gonna leave me in the poorhouse; it seems like the whole town’s insane ...’
Coincidence?
Mike is likewise affected: He is fiercely wedded now to the belief that the Big One will arrive when and only when — he finishes eating the beef jerky he bought today.
Quake Quirks
Campbell, a Syracuse native, is visiting the Old Faithful of California in Calistoga today. He was in Santa Cruz on business when a four-point-something hit last month. ‘I was sitting in the hotel watching TV. It was like after you have a couple of drinks, you know? The floor kind of shifted. It moved the chair left and right. I called my wife right up.’
Reprinted from ‘Waiting for the Big One along the San Andreas Fault’ by Hannah Holmes
This activity is meant to be a whole class and/or group discussion lasting 10—15 minutes.
