China's bad moon rising
Saturday May 17, 2008
Categories: China
Things go from bad to worse for the Chinese in the quake zone. Thousands are now fleeing the prospects of floods caused by landslides having blocked the flow of rivers. It sounds downright apocalyptic. God help them. I found this...
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Amazing. I don't know about these things, but I find it entirely plausible that animals behaved strangely before the quake struck, and for natural, not supernatural, reasons. I assume that some animals are more sensitive to things like earth tremors that escape human detection. Am I wrong?
Nope. Animals' sensitivity to impending disasters is fairly well-documented. In 2004, two or three days before Hurricane Frances hit, our cat decided she was not going to leave the top shelf of my parents' closet for anything, and our dogs became increasing restless. Once the storm passed, they were perfectly calm. I think it may have something to do with subtle barometric pressure changes that we don't notice.
On the main subject though, I fear that the Communist Party has simply brainwashed the people enough that they'll bemoan the failings of the local party leadership, the national party will perform some show trials and execute those responsible, and the Chinese people continue on their merry way to becoming little consumerists. Sort of like America, just bloodier.
Morning Edition on NPR did a story about this the other day (the idea that the Chinese regard natural disasters as a withdrawal of the "mandate of heaven"). The following day they played an audio letter sent in by a Chinese professor at an American unversity, who suggested that these attitudes (interpreting natural and man-made disasters as evidence of divine wrath) are found in many societies, and that they are not any more prevalent in China than anywhere else. The example she cited was the attempt by some on the religious right to interpret Sept. 11 as a sign of God's anger at America. (I would that that, at the time of the Civil War, many people interpreted it as God's punishment on America for slavery.)
The First Emperor is returning to reclaim his empire.
I have lived on the Chesapeake Bay for all of my life (or its tidal tributaries) and I can tell you with assurity that sea birds act totally differently a day or so before a big storm hits or, especially, a hurricane. In fact, that's how I have always determined if a hurricane is really going to hit land....by the behavior of sea birds. When they start moving into land and hunkering down somewhere safe, I start battening down the hatches even if the weather forecasters predict the storm is going to bypass us.
"The First Emperor is returning to reclaim his empire."
Awesome.
All kidding aside, there is a very real reason why animals make good earthquake predictors. They can hear at frequencies that humans cannot and when tectonic plates move they make a hell of a lot of noise at those lower end frequencies. The volume is probably roughly that to the sound of a jet engine a few hundred feet away.
This means, in very practical terms, an earthquake prediction system would be relatively easy to create, but the problem is making it able to predict the exact location and time of the earthquake. So, if the oscillograph shows the indicators of pre-earthquake conditions, that could cover an area of thousands of square miles and the time frame would be impossible to tell, making the predictions pretty worthless because everyone would ignore them and go about their business as usual.
I can't find the link right now, but there was a government website in Sichuan that a few days before the quake had a post about the "earthquake hoax", which was causing enough panic that the government felt the need to issue a statement about it. SMS messages are often used to spread rumors and the government acts quickly to dispel them, but in this case they were unlucky. A screenshot of the web page is being passed around the Chinese net.
The toad thing is step two.
Watch out for gnats, flies, boils, cattle diseases, thunder, locusts, and darkness.
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