Earthquakes

From The Encyclopedia of Pointless

Since I live in Illinois, I don't have much practical knowledge about Earthquakes. However, unlike people who, say, live in California, I do have lots of totally impractical knowledge about Earthquakes. It is this knowledge I now share with you all.

Earthquakes only occur on the Earth

No other planet, be it Charon, Io, or Ganymede, has Earthquakes. I know this because a guy on TV said it. I guess all those other planets just sit around like lumps. How boring. Anyway, Earthquakes are the Earth's way of stretching. You see, rock is pretty inflexible. Try stretching a rock or squeezing water out of it and you'll figure out pretty quick just how inflexible rocks are. So in those all-too-common situations where rocks in the earth's mantle need to stretch, they quake. You should be glad for this, because if they never quaked they wouldn't even relieve any of that stress and eventually the world would get so stressed out it'd put a gun to its head or something equally bad. We don't want that. So that's basically how earthquakes work.

Earthquakes are measured on the Rector scale

This scale was invented by a Roman Catholic priest appointed to be a managerial as well as spiritual head of a university. In England or something. He figured that we needed something more accurate than "That was a BIGGUN" in describing the force of a earthquake. So he figured that a one on the scale will be about the seismic activity caused by someone dropping a spoon on the foor of an airplane five thousand miles away, and then decided that two should be something like the seismic activity of about a billion spoons dropped on the same floor. Then a three is a billion twos, a four is a billion threes, and so on. Eventually you get to seven or eight, where the Earthquake can actually do something beyond make a REALLY big mess on some poor airplane's floor, like blow up bridges and swallow people whole.

There are some things you as a human being can do about Earthquakes

For one thing, store your spoons as close to the floor as possible. This reduces their potential energy due to gravity and makes the world a whole lot safer. Next, if you're ever in an earthquake, don't run down the nearest poorly braced mineshaft. Instead you should stand in a doorway. This keeps other people from getting out while you all calmly wait for death. If you don't have a doorway, consider making one. Or at least pretend you're in one. Scientific studies have shown that wishful thinking at least seems like it helps in some situations.

That's about all I know about earthquakes. I think there's also something to do with faults or something, but I think it's kind of petty to assign blame over what is probably a natural disaster. Unless there is some mad scientist with an earthquake machine that wants to destroy the world. Then it's his fault.

-- Mr. Encyclopedia

Click here for more by this author