From: pierce@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce)
Subject: Earthquakes and nuclear testing
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 02:00:43 GMT

"Abnormal meteorological phenomena, earthquakes and fluctuations of the
 earth's 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

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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
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  power, contact Matthew Freedman at 32 Union Square East, New York, NY
  10003-3295 (Tel: 212-777-6626).

  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
 earth's 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 earth's crust, triggering
earthquakes and causing the earth's 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 University's Department of Aerospace Science concluded:

   Abnormal meteorological phenomena, earthquakes and
   fluctuations of the earth's 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 Kefauver's 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
correlation's 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 `pure
coincidence.'  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 quakes 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 planet's crust and spreads around the globe.
   In 1991 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation published Whiteford's
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 earth's 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
Clinton's 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.


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