2012, the Japanese Earthquake, and Basic Geology

There are plenty of people trying to claim that the tragic Japanese earthquake is a sign of their own preferred End of the World scenario. You have people like Timothy Lahaye, “co author” of the Left Behind novels claiming that the earthquake was foretold in the bible. (Why didn’t you warn us? More importantly, why didn’t you try to warn Japan?) There are also people arguing that this is earthquake was triggered by solar flares, or is an early warning of massive polar shift. Of course we can not forget those who would say that the earthquake was caused by the “loosening of tectonic plates” prior to the arrival of Planet X.

The truth is that none of these things has anything at all to do with what is happening right now in Japan. What is happening right now in Japan is that people are suffering. People are dieing. Perhaps, most importantly, people are surviving, and people are working to help each other. Please, remember to take the time to do something to assist in the efforts of those heroes who are struggling right now to help those in need in Japan.

There is as it turns a very normal explanation for what seems like destruction on a mythic scale. It is geology. Japan is part of a global chain that surrounds the Pacific Ocean and is known as the “Ring of Fire.” This is a volatile region were tectonic plates are colliding and volcanoes are pushing magma from the Earth’s core to the surface. Seismic activity is common on the Ring of Fire. In fact, 90 percent of all earthquakes occur somewhere along this chain.

While those wishing to incite panic will point out that the intensity and frequency of earthquakes “seems to be getting worse and worse” they typically do not take into consideration how long we have been able to actually quantify earthquakes. The Richter scale wasn’t developed until 1935, and the now more accurate moment magnitude scale developed in the 1970s. While devices that could measure local seismic activity are quite old, the idea of a standard measurement for earthquakes and similar events is a new invention. To say that these disasters today are “far worse than ever before” is deliberately misleading. The accurate statement would be “this is the most activity we’ve recorded in the 85 some odd years we’ve bean measuring these things.” Which, when one assumes at the least, 6000 years of history, (or the more widely believed millions of years) is not saying very much at all.’

The Japanese earthquake is a tragedy. Feel free to do what you can to help those suffering there. But this was not foretold in the bible, it was not caused by a solar flare or another planet, and it does not mean the entire crust of the Earth is going to radically shift all at once. Don’t be bothered by such bedtime stories, there are real problems to worry about in this life.