Can Humans Cause Earthquakes and Use Them As Weapons? We'll Probably Find Out Soon Enough

By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted March 10, 2009.

"Rumors and Tesla go together," says journalist, humorist and author Tom McNichol, who wrote about Tesla's public feud with Thomas Edison in AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War. "Tesla was the mad genius, equal parts madness and genius. Whenever anyone comes up with a superweapon, they usually say it is inspired by him. And though he was interested in beam weapons, telegeodynamics, death rays and more, he died almost penniless. But never rule anything out. I bet you when one of these weapons comes to fruition, Tesla's hand will be in there somewhere."

It would seem logical that Tesla's indirect hand is currently in the Air Force Research Laboratory's High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, colloquially known as HAARP, in Alaska.

In short, HAARP is military project that is conducting bleeding-edge experiments in ionospheric measurement, communication, enhancement and, according to some persuasive conspiracy theorists, weaponization. HAARP critics explain that the facility is capable of manipulating the ionosphere, at best causing artificial light shows on par with Alaska's aurora borealis and, at worst, flooding Earth with electromagnetic waves that could do everything from disrupt satellites and missiles to create earthquakes and modify weather patterns.

In 1995, concern hit a crescendo upon the publication of Nick Begich's and Jeane Manning's Angels Don't Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology, which was passed off as conspiracy theory, no doubt fueled by the fact that Begich's father, Rep. Nick Begich Sr., D-Alaska, mysteriously disappeared in Alaska in 1972. Throw the continually controversial Tesla into the mix and you have a nearly bottomless source of plausible deniability for the military.

But for how long? From recent revelations on the various military uses of HAARP to mysterious sonic booms and visible atmospheric phenomena in the sky preceding earthquakes in China, including the Tangshan tragedy, which by death toll is reportedly the most devastating earthquake of the 20th century, it is getting harder by the day to chalk these events up to Mother Earth.

It didn't help matters for those opposed to conspiracy theories that the New York Times allegedly reported that minutes before the Tangshan earthquake:

... the sky lit up like daylight. The multihued lights, mainly white and red, were seen up to 200 miles away. Leaves on many trees were burned to a crisp, and growing vegetables were scorched on one side, as if by a fireball.

Nor did it help that the Tangshan earthquake -- following on the heels of the timely deaths of Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Mao Zedong -- drove a stake through the Cultural Revolution's heart, kick-starting the regime of Deng Xiaopeng, who opened China's once-closed doors to global economic expansion.

See more stories tagged with: china, conspiracy theory, earthquakes, sichuan

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

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