Why an earthquake isn’t just a tremor

Now, earthquakes are scary. Thing is, we only ever really feel the biggies. Otherwise, there’s always something grumbling in the earth’s belly. A quake monitoring site, for instance, puts the number of recorded tremors around the world in the first two days of May at 90. India has had three earthquakes in the past seven days and 44 of them in the past year. They do often cause misery, but also sometimes bizarre behaviour and comedy. Witness the fate of scientists after the 2009 quake in the Italian town of L’Aquila. Authorities, after many people died, blamed seismologists and actually brought in manslaughter charges against six. Alarmed, the remaining ones started issuing evacuation alerts at the slightest hint of a twinge. The residents, thus, found themselves often sleeping out in the cold or in their cars. Acts of God or nature are often blamed on man.

And woman. An Iranian cleric sometime ago said promiscuous women caused earthquakes. This led some Americans to ask their government to send some well-known female celebrities to take out Iran’s nuclear sites. Quakes can be political. After a US east coast quake two years ago, someone tweeted how “we wouldn’t be having earthquakes like this if Hillary were President”. Some can be personal. The same quake made a US lady tweet “I didn’t feel it. Do it again.”