Episode Seven: Earthquakes

 Episode summary: Back in the 70s, only the Earth itself was trying to kill California. Now it's all the elements. 

Bike summary: 2.6 miles, 131.6 calories 

Another largely fact-based episode that really takes advantage being based in California. There's lots of footage of the San Francisco earthquake from 1906, the Long Beach earthquake of 1933, images of then-contemporary San Francisco and the Good Friday earthquake in Alaska in 1964. (Supposedly, many of the fires from the San Fransisco earthquake, which really devastated the city, were set deliberately because people had fire insurance but not earthquake insurance.) 

Nimoy says that 28,000 buildings were destroyed in San Francisco. If it happened today, the NIMBYs there would not let it be rebuilt. (Another thing that's never talked about, but which I suddenly wonder: how local were the effects? The Bay Area was, of course, not nearly as developed back then, but no one ever talks about the effects on Oakland or Marin County.)

Earthquakes seem to have been in the zeritgeist somehow. Two major movies, 1978's Superman and the last James Bond film with Roger Moore, A View to a Kill in 1985, featured villains who wanted to destroy California by setting off the San Andreas Fault. 

A lot of the episode is, however, taken up by speculation -- or Nimoy was pitching a screenplay. He says two British scientists predicted that the combined gravitational field of all the planets lining up on one side of the Sun in 1982 would play havoc with the Sun's magnetic field, causing lots of solar flares and this would somehow result in devastating earthquakes breaking out across the world.

In SF this would cause the Golden Gate Bridge to fail, the Embarcadero to collapse full of cars, huge firestorms would result from downed powerlines sparking ruptured gas mains, etc, until everyone was dead (except for one, gravelly voiced geologist-hero, played by Nimoy, who would lead survivors out of the burning city and find love at the same time). It's incredibly over the top. 

There's also a bit about studying animals' activity to see if they predict earthquakes, especially cockroaches. I know that dogs and horses have been reported acting strangely before earthquakes, but I can't imagine most insects care that much about them. They're pretty hardy. 

Podcast summary.

Jeb and Blake were joined by geologist Sharon Hill, who was amused there was an add for Rice-a-roni in the 1906 footage. 

She said that the 1964 Alaska eartthquake was signifigant because geologists from the United States Geological Survey were able to get on the scene very quickly and it was also the first earthquake understood in terms of plate tectonics, which was a very new theory then.

As far as the animals predicting earthquakes, she said that she wants it to be true and despite there being a large number of anecdotes, there's no good data. Similarly, she said that one technique geologists are looking at to predict earthquakes are emissions of electrons from the earth, but they only happen sometimes. 

Blake mentioned a Japanese legend that earthquakes are caused by a giant catfish trapped in the earth and its attempts to break free. He said earthquakes will continue "Unless we find that catfish and kill it."

I think we're gonna need a bigger pot of gumbo. (And now I'm sad that the Border Cafe in Harvard Square, that served great Tex-Mex and Cajun food, shut down.)