NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/6002

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Subject: Bomb Tests and Earthquakes
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/** gen.newsletter: 122.3 **/
** Written 12:48 pm  Aug 12, 1992 by sbrackman in cdp:gen.newsletter **
War and Peace Digest - Vol 2, No. 3 Aug.1992

The War and Peace Digest is a bimonthly international newsletter on issues of
disarmament, government secrecy, media accountability, the nuclear threat (from
both civilian power plants and the military weapons complex), ecological
destruction, and peaceful conflict resolution through the structures of the
United Nations.  If you would like to be placed on our mailing list or
receive a copy of our new information packet on nuclear power, contact
Matthew Freedman at 32 Union Square East, New York, NY 10003-3295
(Tel: [phone]).

Contributions are always welcome.
All materials may be reproduced without permission.
--------------------
Bomb Tests and Earthquakes

"Nuclear bomb testing has doubled the earthquake rate."
                        Gary Whiteford, Professor of Geography,
                        University of New Brunswick

"Abnormal meteorological phenomena, earthquakes and fluctuations of the earthUs
axis are related in a direct cause-and-effect to testing of nuclear devices."
        Shigeyoshi Matsumae, President Tokai University                         Yoshio
Kato,Department of Aerospace Science


       On  June 19, 1992, the United States conducted an underground nuclear
bomb test in Nevada. Another test was conducted only four days afterwards. Three
days later, a series of heavy earthquakes as high as 7.6 on the Richter scale
rocked the Mojave desert 176 miles to the south.They were the biggest
earthquakes to hit California  this century. Only 22 hours later,  an
"unrelated" earthquake of 5.6 struck less than 20 miles from the Nevada test
site itself. It was the biggest earthquake ever recorded near the test site and
caused one-million dollars of damage to buildings in an area designated for
permanent dispoasal of highly radiocative nuclear wastes only fifteen miles from
the epicenter of the earthquake.  Although the quake provoked renewed calls for
a halt to plans for storing radioactive materials in such an unstable area, the
larger questions have still not been raised in the United States:  Do bomb tests
actually cause earthquakes? Do nuclear tests make the planet more prone to
geologic disruption?

Understandable Unease

       The latest (and apparently continuing) earthquakes in California and
Nevada suggest an inquiry by U.S. scientists may be long overdue, and could lead
to  an examination of studies over the past twenty years from scientists in
Britain, Germany, Japan and Canada, warning that nuclear tests are weakening the
earthUs crust, triggering  earthquakes and causing the earthUs pole to shift.
       In a statement on July 14, 1992,  responding to "understandable unease",
the Department of Energy in Washington asserted the relationship between nuclear
testing and earthquakes is "nonexistent." Yet common sense would suggest the
cumulative effect of so may nuclear tests around the world would leave the
planet at least somewhat shaken. Indeed in 1956, Estes Kefauver, then Democratic
Vice-Presidential candidate, warned, "H. bomb tests could knock the earth 16
degrees off its axis!" He was simply ignored.
       However, in a study twenty years later by two Japanese scientists,
entitled Recent Abnormal Phenomena on Earth and Atomic Power Tests, Shigeyoshi
Matsumae, President of Tokai University, and Yoshio Kato, Head of the
UniversityUs Department of Aerospace Science concluded:

Abnormal meteorological phenomena, earthquakes and fluctuations of the earthUs
axis are related in a direct cause-and-effect to testing of nuclear
devices....Nuclear testing is the cause of abnormal polar motion of the earth.
By applying the dates of nuclear tests with a force of more than 150 kilotons,
we found it obvious that the position of the pole slid radically at the time of
the nuclear explosion.... Some of the sudden changes measured up to one meter in
distance.

Not quite KefauverUs 16 degrees off the axis; but not entirely reassuring
either.  Two years later, on 12 October 1978,  the British  New Scientist
reported:

Geophysicists in Germany and England believe the 1978 earthquake in Tabas, Iran,
in which at least twenty-five thousand people were killed, may have been
triggered by an underground nuclear explosion.... British seismologists believe
the Tabas earthquake implies a nuclear test that has gone awry.... Moreover, a
seismic laboratory in Uppsala, Sweden, recorded a Soviet nuclear test of unusual
size  - ten megatons - at Semipalitinsk only thirty-six hours before.... One
German scientist  specifically implicated this test in the origin of Tabas
disaster.

       More recently, on 14 April, 1989, at the Second Annual Conference on the
United Nations and World Peace in Seattle, Washington, Gary T. Whiteford,
Professor of Geography at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, presented
the most exhaustive study yet of the correlationUs between nuclear testing and
earthquakes. In a paper entitled Earthquakes and Nuclear Testing: Dangerous
Patterns and Trends, Whiteford presented alarming conclusions which to this day
have remained almost completely ignored in the United States, although the paper
has been widely translated and published abroad.
       Whiteford studied all earthquakes this century of more than 5.8 on the
Richter scale. "Below that intensity," he explained, "some earthquakes would
have passed unrecorded in the earlier part of the century when measuring devices
were less sensitive and less ubiquitous. But for bigger quakes the records are
detailed and complete for the entire planet." So Whiteford was able to  make a
simple comparison of the earthquake rate in the first half of the century,
before nuclear testing, and the rate for 1950 to 1988. In the fifty years before
testing, large earthquakes of more than 5.8 occurred at an average rate of 68
per year. With the advent of testing the rate rose "suddenly and dramatically"
to an average of 127 a year. The earthquake rate has almost doubled. To this day
the U.S. military attributes the increase to "coincidence." As Whiteford
comments,  "The geographical patterns in the data, with a clustering of
earthquakes in specific regions matched to specific test dates and sites do not
support the easy and comforting explanation of Tpure coincidenceU. It is a
dangerous coincidence."
       Within the data he found other suggestive patterns. The one-two nuclear
test punch that preceded by only a few days the July earthquakes in California
this year may reveal a special danger. The largest earthquake this century took
place in Tangshan in North-East China on July 27 1976. It measured 8.2 and
killed 800,000 people. Only five days earlier the French had tested a bomb in
the Mururoa atoll in the Pacific. Four days later the United States tested a
bomb in Nevada. Twenty-four hours later the earthquake hit China.

 Killer Quakes and Bomb Tests

          In an even more revealing analysis, Whiteford studies so-called
"killer earthquakes" in which more than one thousand people have died. He
compiled a list of all such Tquakes since 1953 and matched them with nuclear
test schedules. Some test dates were not available, but in those that were, a
pattern was evident: 62.5% of the killer earthquakes occurred only a few days
after a nuclear test. Many struck only one day after a detonation. More than a
million people have now died in earthquakes that seem to be related to nuclear
tests. Again, the governments of the nuclear nations claim  the results are mere
coincidence. Officially the U.S. energy department maintains that even their
most powerful nuclear tests have no impact beyond a radius of 15 miles. The
claim is challenged by the instruments of modern seismology that can register
nuclear tests anywhere in the world by measuring local geological disruptions.
Whiteford speculated that although the reverberations may fade within fifteen
miles of a test, they are merely the first ripple of a wave that travels through
the planetUs crust and spreads around the globe.
       In 1991 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation published WhitefordUs findings
in an article called Is Nuclear Testing Triggering Earthquakes and Volcanic
Activity? In an interview with California State seismologist, Dr. Lalliana
Mualchin, the foundation went on to inquire into the long-term effects of
testing.  Mualchin was asked if the cumulative effect of nuclear testing might
be to trigger earthquakes and volcanoes. He replied, "A single nuclear test may
have little effect on the earth, like that of an insect biting an elephant. But
the cumulative effect might move the earthUs tectonic plates in a manner similar
to how a swarm of insects might start an elephant running." Mualchin added, "If
an insect bites an elephant in a sensitive spot, such as an eye or an ear, then
there might be a vast movement out of all proportion to the size of the bite."
The article concluded, "Who will the world hold responsible if suddenly an
unprecedented series of violent earthquakes and volcanoes shake the earth? Will
nuclear testers be able to assure the world they were not responsible?"

Ten More Years of Tests?

      Recent decisions announced by the Bush administration to "limit" tests in
size and number for five years are meaningless. They represent little or no
change from what in fact has been the practice for the last several years. They
avoid dealing with the mounting call by Congress and the world - through the UN.
-  for a halt by all nations to all testing forever. According to UPI President
George Bush will actually veto any effort to halt testing. Bush says he wants
testing  to continue "for at least ten years" to check the safety and
reliability of nuclear bombs. The Russians and the French no longer feel the
need to conduct such "checks,"  and have halted testing altogether. Why cannot
the USA?
        However, as the next presidential election nears the prospect emerges of
finally ending fifty years of bomb tests. Governor Bill ClintonUs office says
he supports a comprehensive nuclear test ban. His running-mate Al Gore is one of
the supporters of the Congressional call for a one-year moratorium on nuclear
testing.
** End of text from cdp:gen.newsletter **