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By Root 646 0

dead, widespread devastation, and later on in the same year another ‘quake came back to wipe out the few buildings that were still left standing after the first earthquake. May sixteen, Soviet Central Asia. Seven-point-two. Death-rate and damage unknown – the Soviets are reluctant to discuss those things. July twenty-seven, Tangshan. Eight-point-two, in which two-thirds of a million died and three-quarters of a million were injured: as this occurred in a densely-populated area, large cities like Peking and Tientsin were involved. Then in the following month the far south of the Philippines. Eight-point-zero. Widespread devastation, exact deaths unknown but running into tens of thousands – this partly due to the earthquake, partly due to the giant tsunamai – tidal wave – that followed because the earthquake had occurred under the sea. They had a lesser earthquake in the Philippines some way further north on November nine. Six-point-eight. No precise figures released. In fact, November of that year was quite a month, with yet another earthquake in the Philippines, one in Iran, one in Northern Greece, five in China and two in Japan. Worst of all Turkey. Five thousand dead.

‘And all those earthquakes, with the exception of the ones in Greece and Italy, were related to the movement of what they call the Pacific plate, which causes the so-called ring of fire around the Pacific. The section that mainly concerns us, as everyone knows, is the San Andreas Fault where the north-east-moving Pacific plate rubs against the westward-pressing American plate. In fact, gentlemen, where we are now is, geologically speaking, not really part of America at all but part of the Pacific plate, and it hardly requires an educated guess to know that in the not-too-distant future we won’t physically be part of America either. Some day the Pacific plate is going to carry the western seaboard of California into the oceanic equivalent of the wild blue yonder, for where we’re sitting at the moment lies to the west of the San Andreas Fault – only a few miles, mind you, it passes under San Bernadino, just a hop, skip and jump to the east. For good measure, we’re only about the same distance from the Newport-Inglewood Fault to the west – that’s what caused the Long Beach ‘quake of nineteen-thirty-three – and not all that much further from the San Fernando Fault to the north, which caused, as you may recall, that very nasty business back in February ‘seventy-two. Seismologically speaking, only a lunatic would choose to live in the county of Los Angeles. A comforting thought, isn’t it, gentlemen?’

Benson looked around him. No one seemed to find it a comforting thought at all.

‘Little wonder, then, that people’s thoughts started turning inwards. Little wonder that they increasingly wondered, “When’s our time going to come?” We’re sitting fair and square astride the ring of fire and our turn might be any time now. It is not a happy thought to live with. And they’re not thinking in terms of earthquakes in the past. We’ve only had four major earthquakes in our known past, two of them really big ones on the order of eight-point-three on the Richter scale, Owens Valley in eighteen-seventy-two and San Francisco in nineteen-o-six. But, I say, it’s not those they’re thinking of. Not in the terms of major earthquakes but of monster earthquakes, of which there have been only two recorded in history, both of the Richter order of eight-point-nine, or about six times the destructive force of the San Francisco one.’ Benson shook his head. ‘An earthquake up to ten on the Richter scale – or even twelve – is theoretically possible but not even the scientific mind cares to contemplate the awfulness of it.

‘Those two monster ‘quakes occurred also, perhaps not coincidentally, in the first place in nineteen-o-six and nineteen-thirty-three, the first in Ecuador, the second in Japan. I won’t describe the effects to you two gentlemen from Washington or you’d be taking the plane back east – if, that is to say, you managed to get to LA airport before the ground opened up beneath