Earthquake

There is an enemy beneath our feet. He recognizes no national boundaries, no political parties. Everyone in the world is threatened by him. The enemy is the earth itself. The power of the earthquake is greater than anything man himself can produce. But today, scientists are directing more of their efforts into finding someway of combating earthquakes, and it is possible that at sometime in the near future, mankind will have discovered a means of protecting itself from them. An earthquake strikes without warning. When it does, its power is immense. If it strikes a modern city, the damage it causes is as greater than when it strikes a primitive village. Gas mains burst. Bridges fall. If the quake strikes the sea, huge tidal waves sweep inland. That is tsunami. If it strikes in mountain regions, avalanches and landslides roar down into the valleys.

There are there large regions in the world where earthquakes are most likely to happen. Scientists call them earthquake zones. The first runs along the East Cost of the Asian continent, up through Japan, across Alaska, then down the West Coast of North America, crossing Mexico and ending somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. The second runs down the West Coast of South America. The third runs across the south of Europe and North Africa, through Greece and Turkey, and into the Middle of Asia. If you take a map of the world and mark on it the locations of all the major earthquakes in history, you will see that they have occurred mostly somewhere in these zones. So it is possible to say where they think earthquakes will strike, but they cannot say exactly when.