Enrico Caruso performed the opera Carmen on Tuesday, April 17, 1906 in San Francisco. In the morning his hotel, the Palace, was destroyed along with the homes of at least 227,000 of 410,000 people. The city had been the 9th largest in America and the largest on the coast. Enrico Caruso vowed never to return. A road in Marin county immediately north of the city was moved 20 feet. Over a hundred miles down the coast the Salinas river was moved 6 miles further south. 80% of San Francisco’s buildings were destroyed by fire and quake.
The New Madrid earthquakes were a series of 4 quakes on three separate days that occurred over 9 weeks from December 16, 1811 to February 7, 1812. Two of those quakes reversed the flow of the Mississippi river. The Mississippi is the fourth longest river in the world.
The New Madrid earthquakes were felt strongly over roughly 130,000 square kilometers (50,000 sq mi). The San Francisco earthquake, by comparison, was felt over roughly 16,000 km2 (6,200 sq mi). The New Madrid earthquake rang church bells as far away as Boston.
But suppose those earthquakes happened today with modern America’s infrastructure and greatly enhanced population. The San Andreas fault runs a distance of about 810 miles (1,300 km). A 2006 University of California study concluded that a Mega Thrust quake is more likely to occur on the southern third of the San Andreas fault. The southern section of the fault has not seen a quake in over 300 years. The northern third erupted in 1906 and the central third in 1857. There are many other California fault lines likely to rupture. The Hayward fault is across the Bay from San Francisco. The San Gabriel runs through Los Angeles. Both are overdue.
The primary differences between America in 1906 and today is that we have 2 nuclear power plants near California fault lines and 11 near the New Madrid fault zone. This poses the very real threat of half a dozen or more Fukushima like events for America and the world.
Another difference is our electrical power grid which could go down. This is serious as nuclear power plants need reliable outside sources of electrical power. Otherwise they could meltdown as their batteries could not power the cooling systems for more than 4 to 8 hours.
Other differences include our dependence on pipes to deliver water, oil, natural gas and gasoline and on sewer pipes to take way the waste. There are 800,000 miles (1,287,475 Kms) of water pipes and aqueducts in the US. Americans use almost 400 billion gallons of water a day. The US has 600,000 miles (965,606 Kms) of sewers.
In 1906 30 fires were caused by ruptured gas mains. The fires burned for four days and nights. The major problem was that there was no water to fight fires. A side note to Californians looking for affordable homes. Temporary shelters were built and rented out for $2 a month. Recently, one of those 720 sq ft (67 m2) ‘temporary shelters’ was sold for more than $600,000.
The US has more than 300,000 miles (482,803 Kms) of natural gas pipelines and 150,000 miles (241,402 Kms) of crude oil and gasoline pipelines. The New Madrid fault line is in the center of America and is near most oil and natural gas production.
If quakes severed these pipelines, America would grind to a halt for an extended period of time.
If any of the nuclear power plants melted down and spilled into the Mississippi-Missouri river, they would turn the Gulf of Mexico and hence the Atlantic Ocean into a toxic waste dump.
California’s Salton Sea and surrounding basin sits terminates near the San Andreas fault. There have been earthquake swarms in the area. The USGS is studying four active volcanoes on the south side of the Salton Sea. There is a large pool of magma 2 to 4 miles below the volcanoes. They think an earthquake would send the magma to the surface in a giant volcanic eruption. The volcanoes have been emitting a rotten egg smell (Hydrogen Sulfide) which has been detected 120 miles away in Los Angeles and San Diego. It was this same smell that preceded the eruption of Vesuvius which buried Pompeii in 79 AD.
Imagine a realistic disaster movie set in modern day Los Angeles. Suppose early one morning a major earthquake erupts and it takes down the freeways. Overpasses fall to the ground making escape by auto impossible. The quake lasts more than 2 minutes. In the second minute the sewers and the water pipelines rupture. The natural gas pipelines break and cause fires. There is no water to fight fires. There is no electricity so 20 million people cannot buy food and gasoline with credit cards, debit cards and EBT Food Stamp cards. In any event the gas pumps won’t work without electricity though a few battery operated pumps could be set up for emergency vehicles but none of the gas will be given to civilians.
They will have no drinking water. Most people did not understand that they were supposed to store water for emergencies and that the first thing to do is to fill the tub and all available containers with water.
There will be no hospitals.
Most people in southern California and in the New Madrid fault zones do not keep their gas tanks as nearly full as possible at all times. In Los Angeles 5 gallons of gas after the freeways collapse could easily be burned up looking for relatives, gasoline, water, food and other supplies. Wealthy people near the ocean will flee the area on boats if there is no tsunami warning. The Uber Rich will flee by helicopters. This might anger poorer blacks, Hispanics, Asians and whites to see the wealthy Jews of Hollywood overhead in helicopters.
The San Onofre nuclear power plant is about five miles from a subduction plate zone. An earthquake tsunami would be a real disaster for San Diego county. The San Onofre operators were shut down by regulators. They tried to save money using cheap substandard pipes. That plant is a meltdown waiting to happen. San Onofre is not producing electricity but nuclear plants are potentially dangerous until the fuel assemblies have been removed. A nuclear meltdown would cause a real panic in the 20 million nearby residents.
There is a difference between then and now in terms of population. In 1812 Memphis was an Indian village and St Louis only had a few thousand people. In 1906 the psychologist William James went from Stanford to San Francisco and noticed how well people worked together. In the modern world races are taught to be divided and to think only of themselves.
In Hurricane Katrina the federal government cut off communications for local authorities so all help had to come through them. They even blocked truck loads of donated supplies because they were not sent by the federal government. Another difference was mentioned by YouTube blogger George Hemminger who is part Filipino. He talked to people (not necessarily his fellow Pinoy) who said they would be going door to door committing robbery, rape and mayhem as soon as the earthquake strikes. People who do not loot the stores will not eat unless they have stored food. Going door to door and robbing people would not be a good idea in the New Madrid areas of Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri and southern Illinois. These people usually have at least one gun per household.
America already has a deficit of 4 trillion dollars in repairs it needs to make to its aging infrastructure. The people who think they own the government of the United States prefer to spend money on foreign wars and subsidizing Wall Street. 8.5 trillion dollars in Pentagon spending from 1996 to today cannot be adequately traced. That 4 trillion dollar repair bill will have to be added to earthquake damages to America’s roads, hospitals, bridges, sewers, water pipes and plants and schools. America is currently running trillion dollar deficits so increasing the budget deficit will not be an option. The US Treasury deficit for the last 3 months of 2013 was $613,787,258,252.83.
Instead of talking about how many tens of millions of people will die after the sixth nuclear power plant melts down, I would prefer to talk about solutions.
One. We need to stop subsidizing Wall Street. We need to tell them they cannot steal money from the taxpayers. Nor can they require us to buy products from select companies they own as exemplified by Obamacare.
We need to take away the right of the Bankers to create our money out of nothing and to charge us interest for the use of the currency. Money should be interest free and created as a public utility. There should never be a national debt. These actions will give us the money to repair our infrastructure.
We need to get control of the government and force them to release the advanced scientific knowledge they have accumulated in secret. They have planes that fly 40,000 miles (64,373 Kms) per hour. They also have Tesla technology. Nikola Tesla discovered alternating current electricity. In 1934 He said he had a mechanism for generating tremendous electrical force and a means of intensifying and amplifying the force developed by that mechanism. The government seized 155 boxes and crates of lab notes and equipment when he died in 1943.
Adopting his technology would reduce our dependence on power lines. Electricity could be generated locally. We would not need 450,000 miles of natural gas and oil pipelines. Cutting the cost of energy would cut the cost of living so we would free up money for savings and investment to repair our infrastructure and to create new industries and jobs.
But none of that will happen until we can get control of our government.
There are too many earthquake fault zones in California to be named. They also have a couple of active volcanoes.
This short video about the Salton Sea volcanoes is from a San Diego TV station.
Other Articles Of Interest
Memo To Bilderbergers: If You Do Not Release Tesla Technology, You Will Die With Us.
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/memo-to-bilderbergers-if-you-do-not-release-tesla-technology-you-will-die-with-us/
Video: Monsanto + Google + Bilderberg = End of Humanity
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/video-monsanto-google-bilderberg-end-of-humanity/
Video: Fukushima is Frying The World.
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/video-fukushima-is-frying-the-world/
Dianne Feinstein: Thy Name Is Corruption
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/dianne-feinstein-thy-name-is-corruption/