Prediction Affliction

Don’t you love it when news sources immediately jump on dire predictions for specific earthquake-vulnerable areas in the U.S. when another country, following their disruptive eruption, has/have yet to assess their own earthquake-ridden statistical hells?

We (here in the U.S.) won’t allow the focus to remain on the current crisis; instead, our channeling-the-future talking-heads must remind those who live in fault-laden mazes to be told what the estimated impending earthquake in the viewer’s environment might be in the next 30 years in magnitude, consequences/ramifications, to “inform” all what may befall their blissful daily routines and smack ‘em into psychological smithereens. 

Earthquake preparedness is important. If you live in an area prone to quakes, it would be foolish not to have an emergency plan: first aid and food kits, evacuation bags, and so on. However, is it necessary for the media coverage of each quake to spill into frightening prediction territory?

What’s your point, news producers and weather forecasters? If I listened to you I’d be packing my bags right now and sending my worldly items to the safest location where I may flee whilst wrapped in shuddering paranoia lest I end up floating in the Pacific Ocean or crumpled at the bottom of the hill on which I live should the soil steadying my abode be cracked into copious pieces of odious debris during another enraged Mother Nature killing spree.

Reminders are helpful, no doubt. Specific predictions, embedded mental images of potential mass carnage, is an “information” route I don’t believe is necessary to take in assessing a future quake. Let’s focus, instead, on the current crisis in Japan; learn what we can, aid where it’s possible, and then move forward with continuing to retrofit buildings to save lives. That appears to be all one can do if leaving the area is not an option.

Hey media people - thanks for the tremor-ies.