Word: cataclysmic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...from the Cholame Valley in central California to the Cajon Pass near San Bernardino, Los Angeles has experienced a succession of lesser tremors. Six quakes of at least 4.5 magnitude have been registered in the past two years, and some geologists suspect those rumblings are the prelude to a cataclysm...
Some experts believe that Bay Area residents may be peculiarly vulnerable to the syndrome, precisely because they have been anticipating a cataclysm for years. "Chronic stress is very harmful," notes Dr. James Shore of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, who surveyed victims of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. "Preparedness can make people more susceptible...
Even for those born long after San Francisco's great 1906 earthquake and fire, it had become a habit to recall the warm, breezy conditions during that cataclysm. Looking out a window from her home in suburban Sunnyvale, Neta Lott remarked to her husband Byron that the Indian-summer evening of Oct. 17 seemed like "darned good earthquake weather." Moments later, the shaking and rolling began. Byron, an electrical engineer, fell to the floor. Neta tried to get up but remained pinned to her chair until she rolled onto the floor. "I sat under the desk and thought I would...
When the earth cracks open to dismantle a city, then metaphysical questions come boiling up. What would Muir learn? What does the cataclysm have to teach? That the earth retains its genius for the wild surprise? Or that some profound principle of disorder and annihilating wrath has been set loose in the world...
...earthquakes. For some time mankind has been in the business of manufacturing its own disasters -- wars, acid rain and other pollutions, drugs, a globe aswarm with refugees. Perhaps it is a relief for a moment to be face to face with a disaster that man did not invent, a cataclysm that has at least a sort of innocence of origin in larger powers...