USGS Evidence Shows Power of the Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12)

New Evidence Shows Power of East Coast Earthquakes
Virginia Earthquake Triggered Landslides at Great Distances

Did You Feel the Virginia 2011 Earthquake?

Released: 11/6/2012 8:30:00 AM
USGS.gov
Earthquake shaking in the eastern United States can travel much farther and cause damage over larger areas than previously thought.
U.S. Geological Survey scientists found that last year’s magnitude 5.8 earthquake in Virginia triggered landslides at distances four times farther—and over an area 20 times larger—than previous research has shown.
“We used landslides as an example and direct physical evidence to see how far-reaching shaking from east coast earthquakes could be,” said Randall Jibson, USGS scientist and lead author of this study. “Not every earthquake will trigger landslides, but we can use landslide distributions to estimate characteristics of earthquake energy and how far regional ground shaking could occur.”
“Scientists are confirming with empirical data what more than 50 million people in the eastern U.S. experienced firsthand: this was one powerful earthquake,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “Calibrating the distance over which landslides occur may also help us reach back into the geologic record to look for evidence of past history of major earthquakes from the Virginia seismic zone.”
This study will help inform earthquake hazard and risk assessments as well as emergency preparedness, whether for landslides or other earthquake effects.
This study also supports existing research showing that although earthquakes are less frequent in the East, their damaging effects can extend over a much larger area as compared to the western United States.
The research is being presented today at the Geological Society of America conference, and will be published in the December 2012 issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
The USGS found that the farthest landslide from the 2011 Virginia earthquake was 245 km (150 miles) from the epicenter. This is by far the greatest landslide distance recorded from any other earthquake of similar magnitude. Previous studies of worldwide earthquakes indicated that landslides occurred no farther than 60 km (36 miles) from the epicenter of a magnitude 5.8 earthquake.
“What makes this new study so unique is that it provides direct observational evidence from the largest earthquake to occur in more than 100 years in the eastern U.S,” said Jibson. “Now that we know more about the power of East Coast earthquakes, equations that predict ground shaking might need to be revised.”
It is estimated that approximately one-third of the U.S. population could have felt last year’s earthquake in Virginia, more than any earthquake in U.S. history. About 148,000 people reported their ground-shaking experiences caused by the earthquake on the USGS “Did You Feel It?” website. Shaking reports came from southeastern Canada to Florida and as far west as Texas.
In addition to the great landslide distances recorded, the landslides from the 2011 Virginia earthquake occurred in an area 20 times larger than expected from studies of worldwide earthquakes. Scientists plotted the landslide locations that were farthest out and then calculated the area enclosed by those landslides. The observed landslides from last year’s Virginia earthquake enclose an area of about 33,400 km², while previous studies indicated an expected area of about 1,500 km² from an earthquake of similar magnitude.
“The landslide distances from last year’s Virginia earthquake are remarkable compared to historical landslides across the world and represent the largest distance limit ever recorded,” said Edwin Harp, USGS scientist and co-author of this study. “There are limitations to our research, but the bottom line is that we now have a better understanding of the power of East Coast earthquakes and potential damage scenarios.”
The difference between seismic shaking in the East versus the West is due in part to the geologic structure and rock properties that allow seismic waves to travel farther without weakening.
Learn more about the 2011 central Virginia earthquake.

The South Korean Nuclear Horn (Daniel 8:8)

As tensions soar, South Korea mulls nuclear arms — World — The Guardian Nigeria Newspaper – Nigeria and World News

South Korean soldiers stand guard at a guard post near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing two Koreas in the border city of Paju on August 11, 2017. As nuclear-armed North Korea’s missile stand-off with the US escalates, calls are mounting in the South for Seoul to build nuclear weapons of its own to defend itself — which would complicate the situation even further. / AFP PHOTO / JUNG Yeon-Je

As nuclear-armed North Korea’s missile stand-off with the US escalates, calls are mounting in the South for Seoul to build nuclear weapons of its own to defend itself — which would complicate the situation even further.
The South, which hosts 28,500 US troops to defend it from the North, is banned from building its own nuclear weapons under a 1974 atomic energy deal it signed with the US, which instead offers a “nuclear umbrella” against potential attacks.
But with Pyongyang regularly threatening to turn Seoul into a “sea of flames” — and nagging questions over Washington’s willingness to defend it if doing so put its own cities in danger of retaliatory attacks — the South’s media are leading calls for a change of tack.
South Korea, which fought a war with the North that ended in a stalemate in 1953, is highly technologically advanced and analysts estimate it could develop an atomic device within months of deciding to do so.
“Now is time to start reviewing nuclear armament,” the Korea Herald said in an editorial Friday.
After Pyongyang conducted two successful tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile last month, putting much of the mainland United States within reach, the paper warned: “Trust in the nuclear umbrella the US provides to the South can be shaken.”
It urged Washington to deploy some of its atomic weapons to South Korea if it did not want to see a nuclear-armed Seoul.
The US stationed some of its atomic weapons in the South following the 1950-53 Korean War, but withdrew them in 1991 when two Koreas jointly declared they would make the peninsula nuclear-free.
But Pyongyang carried out its first nuclear test in 2006, and formally abandoned the deal in 2009.
Tensions have soared in recent months with US President Donald Trump this week warning of “fire and fury” against Pyongyang, which threatened missile strikes near the US territory of Guam.
The North’s military chief Ri Myong Su responded saying that if the US continued in its “reckless” behaviour, Pyongyang would “inflict the most miserable and merciless punishment upon all the provokers”.
The latest war of words between Trump and the North — ruled by young leader Kim Jong-Un — unnerved many in the South, even though it has become largely used to hostile rhetoric from its neighbour.
A conflict between the North and the US could have devastating consequences for Asia’s fourth-largest economy, with Seoul within range of Pyongyang’s vast conventional artillery forces.
“A catastrophe is looming,” the South’s top-selling Chosun daily said in an editorial this week.
“All options, even those considered unthinkable so far, must be on the table.”
‘Balance of terror’
In all the North has staged five atomic tests — including three under Kim — as it seeks to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the continental US.
A survey last year — even before tensions reached a crescendo — showed about 57 percent of South Koreans supported the idea of nuclear armament, with 31 percent opposing it.
“We need to have our own military options to overwhelm the North,” the Korea Economic Daily said in an editorial this week, calling for a nuclear weapon to ensure a “balance of terror” and prevent Pyongyang from attacking the South.
But a South Korean bomb would infuriate Pyongyang, which says it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself against the threat of invasion, and make bringing it to the negotiating table even harder.
“The so-called ‘balance of terror’ would only turn the Korean peninsula into the hotbed of a nuclear arms race, not a peaceful peninsula,” said Yang Moo-Jin, professor at the University of North Korea Studies in Seoul.
It could also trigger a “nuclear domino” in Asia, pushing others such as Tokyo and Taipei to seek their own arsenals, he added.
“Japan in particular would welcome it with open arms, because it provides a perfect excuse to revise its pacifist constitution and build its own nuclear weapons for ‘self-defence’,” he said.
Seoul’s defence chief Song Young-Moo said recently the South was “fully capable” of building its own nuclear weapon but was not considering the option for now.
Atomic arms are not the only way Seoul can step up its defences.
Song is pushing for the development of nuclear-powered submarines, although doing so also requires consent from the US.
South Korean President Moon Jae-In has also urged limits on Seoul’s missiles to be loosened in a conversation with Trump.
At present, Seoul is allowed to possess ballistic missiles with a range of 800 kilometres and payload of 500 kilogrammes. It wants the weight limit raised to 1,000 kilogrammes, and the Pentagon said Monday it was “actively” considering the revision.

The End Draws Near (Revelation 15)

Apocalypse now? The Doomsday Clock keeps ticking
Christopher Borrellu
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published bimonthly out of Hyde Park since 1945, tends to scare the living hell out of people. It was co-founded by Eugene Rabinowitch, a biophysicist who worked on the development of the atomic bomb at the University of Chicago. Contributing writers have included Oppenheimer and Einstein; in the 1960s, Stanley Kubrick, inspired by a Bulletin piece about accidental nuclear war, made “Dr. Strangelove.” Still, the journal’s true legacy was cemented 70 years ago this summer, when its editors came up with an ingenious and unsettling metaphor to convey the existential threat that nuclear weapons pose to life on Earth. It created a Doomsday Clock and put it on its June 1947 cover, the hands poised at seven minutes to midnight.
Midnight being the end of the world.
Clocks grab attention, clocks have urgency. So like an apocalyptic version of Oprah’s O magazine, the Bulletin has put a Doomsday Clock on many covers since. In 1991, at the end of the Cold War, the hands fell to 17 minutes before midnight. But recently, as Donald Trump entered the White House, the hands leapt to two-and-a-half minutes before midnight, the closest the Doomsday Clock has been to Armageddon since 1953.
Anyway, how’s your summer going?
Partying like it’s the end of the world?
Understandable. As you make your way to “Turn Back the Clock” at the Museum of Science and Industry, a new exhibit on the cultural and political legacy of the Doomsday Clock, you pass beneath a banner that notes, indeed, mankind may be nearing last call. Still, the exhibit, which runs through early 2018, is a thoughtful boogeyman, lurking between a Mold-A-Rama machine and the third-floor elevators. It is certainly the most compelling museum exhibit in Chicago this summer centered around a bimonthly academic journal. To spend time there, to watch tourists, locals and kids approach, is a portrait in how uneasy, confused and disconnected we have become about Doomsday.
Just after the museum opens on a weekday morning, a young woman and small girl enter. The woman leans down, points to the images of the Doomsday Clock on the display and carefully explains: “This is about how close we are to nuclear annihilation.”
The girl, who has alligators on her shirt and dogs on her skirt and large eyeglasses and wears her hair in a ponytail and an intelligent, inquisitive face, asks: “What is that?”
“It means,” the woman says, halting, “all the bombs drop and everyone dies.”
The girl says nothing.
The woman, seeing where this is headed, leans down as if to collect the inevitable tears in a bucket and quickly adds, “But don’t worry about that, OK? It won’t happen. Relax.”
Some visitors, as they approach the exhibit, notice the amount of reading involved, then make a swift beeline for the vintage World War II Spitfire and Stuka nearby. Others eyeball the images of mushroom clouds and breeze through with their heads down, as if sidestepping a Greenpeace activist on Michigan Avenue. But many stop, shudder, shake their heads, mention North Korea being crazy and starting a fight, or Trump being crazy and starting a fight, or the world being crazy. Some can’t turn away.
Kimberley Hamilton-Ross of South Holland, a school speech-language pathologist, lingers. She’s hooked to every chunk of text, every letter from Gorbachev, every letter from Reagan. She listens to Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech, picks through the interactive timeline. She had not planned to dive so deep. “I’m on a staycation,” she explains. “But this is fascinating. My husband watches a lot of History Channel, so I was curious. I think we’re moving closer to midnight. That’s how I honestly feel. This is important information, you have to keep yourself on top of information now. This stuff? It really, really affects us. I don’t see how you can’t be interested. The leader of North Korea seems to be crazy as a fox. And Trump, he’s crazy like a fox. I don’t know what that guy’s about. I’m going to be 60 in three weeks. I’d like it not to be my last birthday.”
An hour later, she’s still there.
Strollers zoom past her. Summer camp groups ebb and flow.
A man approaches a map of the world that shows which countries have nukes and which agreed to the 2016 Paris climate accord — since 2007, the Clock’s movement has reflected existential threats to mankind beyond nuclear war — and pulls Cheerios from a plastic bag and reads and chews. An elderly couple stare at a small model of Chicago Pile 1, the nuclear reactor where in 1942 the U. of C. conducted the first controlled nuclear chain reaction a short walk from the museum itself. A couple in their 20s flip through a video timeline of relevant cultural and historic moments, the Soviets invade Afghanistan, Atari releases the Cold War classic “Missile Command,” Pakistan gets nuclear weapons, Seth Rogan makes “The Interview,” in which North Korea once again threatens Armageddon.
“That (expletive) was funny,” the man says.
“That (expletive) was stupid,” the woman says.
They walk on.
Nearby, a father and his teenage daughter read about recent movements to the Doomsday Clock. “In 2010, the clock actually moved back a minute,” the father says.
“Why?” the daughter asks.
“Obama,” the father says.
“Thanks, Obama,” the daughter says flatly.
“No,” the father says. “You want it to go backwards.”
“Oh!” the daughter says. “Thanks, Obama!”
They laugh and continue reading.
Regardless of how much time a visitor spends at “Turn Back the Clock,” many stop at two civic-engagement stations where people are encouraged to use small yellow discs to vote on several broadly related questions, such as: Will climate change affect life? Can speaking up affect policy? Patricia Ward, the museum’s director of science exhibitions, said, “We strove to infuse a sense of agency, the idea that people have a voice and it can be expressed a number of ways. We have the ingenuity to create breakthroughs, and that we’ve kept the world from annihilation shows we have the agency to manage them.”
This voting tally, however, should not be confused with actual opinions. Children swarm the stations and, in historic Chicago fashion, shamelessly stuff the ballots. On the other hand, notes Rachel Bronson, executive director of the Bulletin, which proposed the show a few years ago, younger people have been some of its best audiences. (“Adults will do two things: They say, ‘Oh, I remember that.’ Or they ask, ‘Are we still talking about this?’”)
Specifically, teenagers love Lyndon B. Johnson.
The exhibit’s unofficial focal point is a simple video monitor showing “Daisy Girl” on a loop, the former president’s infamously disturbing 1964 election commercial. A child counts as she picks the petals from a daisy, until her voice is replaced with a man’s voice, counting down. When he reaches zero, there is a white flash and a nuclear cloud, then Johnson’s Texan croak:
“These are the stakes.”
Three boys stop and watch, note its creepiness, then walk off doing the finest LBJ: “These are the stakes! These are the stakes!” A young girl stops and watches transfixed, head jutted forward, body curled back, her eyes wide, as if being dragged into the grainy black-and-white “Night of the Living Dead”-esque palette; when the ad restarts, she shoots it with her iPhone and leaves. A group of teenagers come through just as the countdown begins. They stop and watch silently. When the mushroom cloud rises, they move on without a word or a shiver or even a change in their bored expressions, the Cold War reduced to a suspense vehicle.
Two middle-aged women stop.
“I remember this,” one of the women says. They watch until the end, then the woman adds, “Do they really have to put this out here when the kids are on school break — really?”
Hamilton-Ross, a few feet away, is still reading the wall text.
“Ostrich,” she says, referring to the woman. “Some people are ostriches. Some people do not want to know the truth — their head’s always in the sand. But it’s her history, and her future.”
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com