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

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

Three-fourths of China's communist Gang of Four dead within the same year a fireball-toting earthquake kills several hundred thousand people? No wonder the year is known in China as the "Curse of 1976."

China and its possibly man-made earthquakes in Tangshan, and now in Sichuan, both predicted by Geng Qingguo, have now unspooled into speculation that even the geologists at the United States Geological Survey cannot keep pace with.

"What's HAARP?" USGS geologist Walter Mooney asks, before I interview him about the possibility of using Earth itself as Tesla's directed-energy weapon. "You would have to be pretty advanced to induce earthquakes by electromagnetic waves or pulses to faults. Even tidal forces are not powerful enough to trigger earthquakes. In science, you can never say something is impossible, but it would seem to be unlikely in the extreme to assume humans could weaponize earthquakes."

Others were less diplomatic about the idea. "This sounds like UFO stuff to me," USGS public affairs officer Mike Gauldin cracked, when I contacted him about speaking to some of his scientists about the issue. Of course, his suspicions are well-founded, as are all suspicions, until they are confirmed or denied. Earthquake weaponization is still a severely speculative prospect. It conjures images of Gene Hackman's unhinged Lex Luthor, who launched nukes into San Andreas Fault in an attempt to split the state in half Richard Donner's film, Superman.

"The weapon with enough energy to initiate a fault rupture in a region that has sufficient build-up of stress, presumably a nuke," adds Sitar, "would create such devastation, that the earthquake damage would be completely incidental. Could one use an underground explosion with less fallout? Possibly, but I don't know of anyone with the know-how to actually determine how much would be needed and where exactly to put it for maximum effect. So, no concern. We have much nastier things to worry about."

For now, as the possibility resides in fringe science. But fringe science has a way of coming true; ask anyone who has experienced the displeasure of Raytheon's pain ray (thanks, Tesla!) or worked alongside an armed robot in Iraq. If the 20th century has taught us anything at all, it's that our science is only limited by our imagination. And we can dream up some seriously crazy shit, especially when we want to kill someone.

"There is a continuing interest in Tesla from Air Force guys saying, 'Say, wouldn't it be great if we had a ...' " McNichol cracks. "The government always comes back to him. And Tesla himself made claims during his tenure that were wildly out of line compared to what he actually had in his hands. He was his own conspiracy theorist before anyone could use him, so you can run with him in almost any direction you want.

"I went full circle on him. But I wouldn't at all be surprised if someone came up with weaponized earthquakes, or anything else, because of him."

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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