I had a pretty long-winded blog all ready to go this morning. The subject was about a dive trip I took back in 2000. It was a happy time in my life.
After watching the devastation all morning in Japan, it didn’t seem appropriate to post that blog today. An 8.9 magnitude earthquake just off shore north of Tokyo is hard to comprehend.
Watching the tsunami create waves of churning cars, boats, ships, houses, buildings and people; the death toll will be heartbreaking. They had about 10 minutes of warning of the impending tsunami, even if they all got the warning, they wouldn’t have had enough time to escape the destruction.
Japan is on some of the most earthquake and tsunami prone places on the planet and this sword is always hanging over their heads. Even here in Middle America we are not safe from natures fury. The New Madrid fault runs from Arkansas thru the Missouri Valley and connects with the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone in southern Indiana and has over the years produced earthquakes in the 8.4 range and higher. In recent years the quakes were only strong enough to get some attention from us all and remind us of our insignificance here on planet Earth. Not since the early 1800’s have we felt the full fury of this fault zone leading many to speculate that we here in fly-over-country are past due for another big one anytime.
Earthquakes are but one of many “acts of God”, that keep us in our place. When you think about the big picture, our existence is dependent on a little speck of dust that is part of a huge solar system. As we spin around the sun, our solar system is just a dim flicker of light out in the boondocks of an outer arm of a mediocre barred spiral galaxy that rotates every 220 million years around a mammoth black hole in the center of the the Milky Way.
This entire galaxy along with the other billions of galaxies are sailing through space, some retreating from the others, some colliding with other galaxies merging into one. While all this is going on, our little planet is just a law of probability away from colliding with an asteroid or comet so large that it could reboot life here on Earth once again.
Thanks CnC for that ray of sunshine !
No problem, just trying to put the day into perspective
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