Is ‘San Andreas’ A Cryptic Warning About What Is Going To Happen In America’s Future?

እኔም፡ እነደ ሌሎች ታዛቢዎች፡ ምናልባት መጪው መስከረም ላይ በካሊፎርኒያ እና በጃፓን ኃይለኛ ጥፋት ይመጣል የሚል ተመሳሳይ ግምት አለኝ። ለካሊፎርኒያ አላሚ ወገኖች የማስተላልፈው መልዕክት፡

“መስከረም ሲጠባ ወደ አዲስ አበባ!”

Hollywood has a long history of inserting political messages, social commentaries, subliminal effects and even cryptic warnings about the future into big budget films. So is someone attempting to use “San Andreas” to tell us something? For many years, doomsayers have been warning that the “Big One” is going to come along and rip the coastline of California to shreds. Up until this moment, it hasn’t happened, but without a doubt we have moved into a time of increased geological activity all over the globe. As you read this article, 42 volcanoes around the planet are currently erupting. That means that the number of volcanoes erupting right now is greater than the 20th century’s average for an entire year. In addition, we have been witnessing a great deal of very unusual earthquake activity lately. Just in the United States, we have seen unusual earthquakes hit Michigan, Texas, Mississippi, California, Idaho And Washington within the last month or so. Could it be possible that our planet has entered a period of heightened seismic activity? And could it also be possible that someone behind “San Andreas” is aware of this and is trying to warn us about what is coming in our future?

Of course just about everyone in the scientific community acknowledges that the “Big One” is eventually coming to California. In fact, the U.S. Geological Survey recently came out and said that the probability of a megaquake along the west coast is greater than they had previously been projecting.

A recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey shows the inevitability of just such a quake, which is predicted to hit within the next couple of decades.

“The new likelihoods are due to the inclusion of possible multi-fault ruptures, where earthquakes are no longer confined to separate, individual faults, but can occasionally rupture multiple faults simultaneously,” lead author of the study and USGS scientist, Ned Field says. “This is a significant advancement in terms of representing a broader range of earthquakes throughout California’s complex fault system.”

And it is undeniable that California has been hit by an unusual number of earthquakes recently. Could this be a sign that our portion of the “Ring of Fire” is heating up? Just over the past few days, there have been significant earthquakes at dormant volcanoes all over the state of California and in Nevada. I don’t know about you, but to me all of this shaking is reason for concern.

If the state of California does get hit by a major earthquake in the near future, the damage that would be caused would be immense. Among those trying to raise awareness about this is Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti…

“I hope this movie can be a gut check and a visceral reminder to people of the danger from quakes,” Garcetti said before the screening. “But then that people will also do a head check about how they can really be prepared…to react by looking at some good research and using their heads about the dangers we really face.”

Garcetti has recently introduced a series of proposals called “Resilience by Design” to try to make sure the city’s buildings, telecommunications system and water supply are able to withstand a large earthquake. Emphasizing the challenges Los Angeles faces, the mayor noted how mobile phone service largely went down after the 1994 Northridge quake. And he said the water supply could also be challenged in the next big shaker, considering that the San Andreas Fault (depicted as causing the giant temblor in the Warner Bros.’ film) crosses the California Aqueduct in 20 places.

But not everyone appreciates this new film. One of the features of “San Andreas” that has been heavily criticized as being “unrealistic” is the giant tsunami that engulfs San Francisco. According to the Daily Mail, it is not possible for the San Andreas fault to even cause a tsunami…

And, unlike the film, the San Andreas can’t spawn tsunamis.

Most tsunamis are triggered by underwater quakes, but they can also be caused by landslides, volcanoes and even meteor impacts.

So why is a giant tsunami in the film?

Is it just there to make a summer disaster movie a little bit more spectacular, or is there something more to it?

In the United States today, 39 percent of all Americans live in counties that directly border a shoreline, and there have been many that have been warning about the immense devastation that will happen when a giant tsunami hits either the east coast or the west coast.

Could it be possible that the tsunami was in the film because someone believes that a giant tsunami is in our future?

Very few filmmakers make movies purely for entertainment. Most of them want to “say something” through their films.

So what is “San Andreas” saying to us?

Whatever your opinion on that is, what is undeniable is that the Ring of Fire has been extremely active lately. In fact, just this week Costa Rica was hit by a cluster of 23 earthquakes near a volcano not too far from the capital…

Continue reading…

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Scientists Find Our Planet’s Inner Core Has ANOTHER Core of its Own

Geologists have used earthquakes to study the interior of the Earth’s core

• Half of the 750 mile wide inner core appears to have a different structure
• Scientists believed the inner core was thought to be a solid lump of iron
• The new findings will mean that school textbooks may need to be rewritten
• The iron crystals in the outer half of the inner core are aligned north south
• Those in the innermost portion of the core point in a east/west direction
• Scientists believe the inner core could tell us about how the Earth formed

While there’s no prehistoric land hidden at the centre of our planet, as author Jules Verne imagined, the Earth’s core may not at all be like what scientists have led us to believe.

Geologists have discovered that the Earth’s inner core – previously thought to be a solid lump of iron – may in fact have its own even smaller core within it.

Using the seismic waves that reverberate across the planet after earthquakes, researchers have been able to gain new insight into what lies at the centre of our world.

The findings could mean that our understanding of Earth’s interior, and its history, will need to be rewritten.

Scientists found that rather than a solid ball of iron lying within the molten mass of the outer core, the inner core changes in structure about half way through.

They discovered a distinct inner inner core that is about half the diameter of what was believed to be the solid inner core, which is about the size of the moon.

Professor Xianodong Song, a geologist at the University of Illinois, said the structure of two inner cores could help reveal new details about how the Earth first formed.

He said: ‘Even though the inner core is small – smaller than the moon – it has some really interesting features.

‘The fact that we have two regions that are distinctly different may tell us something about how the inner core has been evolving.

Magma bursting to the surface like in the lava fountain above on Erta Ale, Ethiopia is from only the second layer of the Earth’s interior but the planet has a complex structure with a solid metal core at its very centre

Rotating liquid and solid cores at the centre of the Earth create the planets magnetic field, illustrated above

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Hurricanes: Nature and Nature’s God

“The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.” [Nahum 1:3]

“The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they can’t speak. They have eyes, but they can’t see. They have ears, but they can’t hear; neither is there any breath in their mouths.Those who make them will be like them; yes, everyone who trusts in them.” [Psalm 135: 15-18]

“The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, [Revelation 9:20]

My note: I was thinking about the above Bible verses lately – and this particular image which captivated New Yorkers exactly proves those words. The man-made collapsed crane which is now called, ‘Hurri–crane’ is dangling over New York City – while real state tycoon, Donald Trump ‘could see the crane from his apartment window’. Coincidence? Can he see it now? Well, hopefully he is not going to fire someone over this – I assure him that King Kong was not there.

It’s of course, a horrible tragedy what we are witnessing in and around New York these days. Hurricane Sandy, which disrupted the lives of millions of Americans this week, is “a reminder of what the world really is like. Sandy is short for Cassandra, the Greek mythological figure who epitomizes tragedy. The gods gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy; depending on which version of the story one prefers, she could either see or smell the future. But with this gift also came a curse: Cassandra’s warnings about future disasters were fated to be ignored. That is the essence of this tragedy: to know that a given course of action will lead to disaster but to pursue it nevertheless.

The so-called superstorm flooded New York City and battered much of the East Coast. At press time, the storm had killed at least forty-three people and caused an estimated $32 billion in damages to buildings and infrastructure—figures expected to increase in the coming days.

While affluent people can usually insulate themselves from the ordinary effects of nature, we are all ultimately vulnerable, as New York Mayor Bloomberg rightly said yesterday: “I think people don’t understand just how strong nature is”.

Somewhere in the future, each of us has an inescapable appointment with irresistible force. For each one of us, the waters will someday rise, the winds spin out of control, the roof will come off the house and the power will go out for good.

May God have pity on the souls of those who died, and may The Almighty help the victims of those who were lost to move on and readjust their lives.

 

Nature and Nature’s God

While the lights went out across Manhattan tonight, and the city that calls itself the capital of the world was cut off from the mainland as flood waters thundered through its streets, many people around the world watched the spectacle and were reminded just how fragile the busy world we humans build around us really is.

Manhattan is one of those places where nature seems mostly held at bay. Except for the parks, oases of carefully preserved nature deliberately shaped by the hand of man, every inch of the city’s surface has been covered by something man-made. The valleys have been exalted, the mountains laid low and the rough places plain.

Those who live and do their business there pay very little attention to the natural world most of the time. It can be hard to get a taxi in the rain, and the occasional winter snowstorm forces a brief halt to the city’s routine, but the average New Yorker’s attention is on the social world, not the world of nature. What’s happening to your career, your bank account, your friendships and loved ones, the political scene and the financial markets: those are the concerns that occupy the minds of busy urbanites on their daily rounds.

Into this busy, self involved world Hurricane Sandy has burst. Sharks have been photographed (or at least photo shopped) swimming in the streets of New Jersey towns; waves sweep across the Lower East Side; transformers explode on both sides of the Hudson as salt water surges into the tunnels and subways. For a little while at least, New Yorkers are reminded that we live in a world shaped by forces that are bigger than we are; tonight it is easy to identify with the sentiments in John Milton’s paraphrase of Psalm 114:

Shake earth, and at the presence be aghast

Of him that ever was, and aye shall last,

That glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush,

And make soft rills from the fiery flint-stones gush.

Soon, though, the winds will die down and the waters recede. The bridges will open, the roads will be repaired, the water will be pumped from the subways and service restored. New Yorkers will go back to their normal pursuits and Hurricane Sandy will fade into lore.

But events like this don’t come out of nowhere. Sandy isn’t an irruption of abnormality into a sane and sensible world; it is a reminder of what the world really is like. Human beings want to build lives that exclude what we can’t control — but we can’t.

Hurricane Sandy is many things; one of those things is a symbol. The day is coming for all of us when a storm enters our happy, busy lives and throws them into utter disarray. The job on which everything depends can disappear. That relationship that holds everything together can fall apart. The doctor can call and say the test results are not good. All of these things can happen to anybody; something like this will happen to us all.

Somewhere in the future, each of us has an inescapable appointment with irresistible force. For each one of us, the waters will someday rise, the winds spin out of control, the roof will come off the house and the power will go out for good.

We can protect ourselves from a storm like Sandy by taking proper precautions; at the Mead manor we have candles, firewood and food stocked against the possibility that our power will go out. But one day, dear reader, a storm is coming which neither you nor we can survive. The strongest walls, the sturdiest retirement plans stuffed with stocks and CDs, the best doctors cannot protect us from that final encounter with the force that made and will someday unmake us.

Coming to terms with that reality is the most important thing that any of us can do. A storm like this one is an opportunity to do exactly that. It reminds us that what we like to call ‘normal life’ is fragile and must someday break apart. If we are wise, we will take advantage of this smaller, passing storm to think seriously about the greater storm that is coming for us all.

A grand and powerful woman I once knew died after two encounters with cancer and a devastating stroke took her from the realm of normal life into the storm tossed waters that surround us all on every side. She’d never been a religious woman and, growing up in a segregated South where so many churches and churchgoers defended a brutal system of institutionalized injustice and cruelty, she was always a rebel against the conventional piety and ritualized religious life she saw around her.

But late in her life when the winds around her howled and the dark waters were rising, she was driven to face the truth behind the illusions and the pretense, and told the person she loved best in all the world that “I’ve made my peace with God.”

That is something we all need to do. It involves a recognition of our helplessness and insufficiency before the mysteries and limits of life. Like the First Step in the Twelve Step programs, it begins with an acknowledgment of failure and defeat. We each try to build a self-sufficient world, a sturdy little life that is proof against storms and disasters — but none of us can really get that done.

Strangely, that admission of weakness opens the door to a new kind of strength. To acknowledge and accept weakness is to ground our lives more firmly in truth, and it turns out that to be grounded in reality is to become more able and more alive. Denial is hard work; those who try to stifle their awareness of the limits of human life and ambition in the busy rounds of daily life never reach their full potential.

To open your eyes to the fragility of life and to our dependence on that which is infinitely greater than ourselves is to enter more deeply into life. To come to terms with the radical insecurity in which we all live is to find a different and more reliable kind of security. The joys and occupations of ordinary life aren’t all there is to existence, but neither are the great and all-destroying storms. There is a calm beyond the storm, and the same force that sends these storms into our lives offers a peace and security that no storm can destroy. As another one of the psalms puts it, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Accepting your limits and your dependence on things you can’t control is the first step on the road toward finding that joy.

Via Meadia hopes that all our readers survived Hurricane Sandy with their lives intact and their property whole. And more than that, we hope that our readers will take the opportunity that a storm like this offers, step back from their daily lives, and reach out to the Power who plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Getting the right connection with the highest power of all not only gives you a place of refuge when the big storm finally comes; it transforms daily life and infuses ordinary occupations with greater meaning and wonder than you ever understood.

The world needs people who have that kind of strength and confidence. Storms much greater than Sandy are moving through our lives these days: the storms shaking the Middle East, recasting the economy, transforming the political horizons of Asia. It will take strong and grounded people to ride these mighty storms; paradoxically, it is only by coming to terms with our limits and weakness that we can find the strength and the serenity to face what lies ahead.

 

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