Conference 7.286::digital

    I wouldn't worry about the big California earthquake wiping out
    our suppliers.  It will likely wipe out our customers too, thus
    achieving a balance.
        John Sauter, formerly of CA

       
       
       	John, you have an excellent, albiet disturbing, point...
       
       						mike

There was a book out on this a number of years ago, called, I think,
"The Late, Great State of California" and it talked about the consequences
of "the big one."   The one that got me is the fact that Almonds would
most likely cease to exist as a world commodity... apparently, 99% are 
California grown...

    
    ...not to mention the fact that people like me wouldn't be able
    to enter clever replies like this one.
    
    Ashley in L.A.
    

    ...and the sales force in California wouldn't be selling therefore
    demand would be down which would match the reduced supply that is
    no longer available from Silicon Valley...
    

.0>    I've been thinking about DEC after the Big 'Quake hits Silicon Valley.
.0>    I wonder how much of our supplies will bit the dust and to what
.0>    degree we have alternates.  This is all probably confidential corporate

    Who in hell cares about that? I sure don't...I live there! Do you
    think that anyone here would be concerned about you people back
    East getting chips? Not hardly...we'd all be trying to dig ourselves
    out or we'd be dead in which case,nothing's going to matter...

    On the other hand, you might be shipping us chips from the lovely
    island paradise of the California Isles...
    
    Gary

    The largest companies have moved most of their production out of
    Silicon Valley because of high costs.  ASIC manufacturers would
    have significant exposure, though.
    
    On the other hand, Silicon Valley is not at as much risk as other
    parts of the Bay Area: it is roughly halfway between the 2 major
    faults (San Andreas & Hayward), and most of it is not on landfill
    (I'd beware of the North 1st area, though).  Probably the
    hardest hit computer vendor would be Sun, as their main plant is
    in Milpitas.
    
    As .-2 noted, resuming manufacturing would not be the top priority
    in the days immediately following the 'quake.
    

    Nostradamus predicted that the big one will occur in May of 1988.
    Where? he didn't say.
    
    Rich
    

    I believe the accuracy of Nostradamus' predictions is plus or minus
    7 years.
    
    Mark.

  I read somewhere that a big quake in Calif. would shut down a sizable per-
centage of U.S. banks' computers and this, in turn, would cause a worldwide
banking crisis. This could impact DEC more than a shortage of IC's would.

    EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer system) transfers something like
    8 or 9 Billion dollars a day!  Disrupting that Would cause SOME
    glitch!  However, all banks and insurance companies have a modicium
    of backup computers AND they rotate their ENTIRE database redundantly
    around the whole country so that if one city is blown away "only"
    one day/week's worth of data would be lost.
    
    rmm
    

    519.10 > I believe the accuracy of Nostradamus' predictions is plus
    519.10 > or minus 7 years
    
    Plus 7 years, maybe, but minus 7 years from 1988 ???
    
    Eugene

>>    519.10 > I believe the accuracy of Nostradamus' predictions is plus
>>    519.10 > or minus 7 years
    
>>    Plus 7 years, maybe, but minus 7 years from 1988 ???

Sure, why not... Ask the people of Mexico City if they've had a "Big One"
recently!

1985 I believe.

    I gues I was not quite clear in .13  I thought the prediction was
    made this year.  Then minus 7 years would hardly be a prediction
    at all
    

        Re: .15
        
>    I gues I was not quite clear in .13  I thought the prediction was
>    made this year.  Then minus 7 years would hardly be a prediction
>    at all
        
        FYI:  Nostradamus lived in France from 1503 to 1566.  He
        published 1000 quatrains (four line poems) starting in 1555.  
        I believe they were published in 10 `Book of Centuries'
        containing 100 quatrains each.  Some of these quatrains contain
        amazing prophesies, and various people have made some creative
        interpretations to demonstrate the `true prophetic meaning' of
        other quatrains. 
        
        Some of the events predicted were the fire in London in 1666,
        the assassination of the Kennedy's, WWII (mentioning a name
        spelled similar to `Himler').  He was a Christian, and some
        people believe he predicted that the Anti-Christ will rise from
        the East.  All predictions are vague and require interpretation. 
        
        I haven't found any indication of next week's Megabucks numbers
        in the quatrains, so I don't believe a word of it.  :-) 
        
        					B.J.

    < Note 519.15 by HPSTEK::XIA >


>    I gues I was not quite clear in .13  I thought the prediction was
 >   made this year.  Then minus 7 years would hardly be a prediction
  >  at all

    If his prediction was targeted for 1988, than the margin of error
    would span 1981-1995.  We still have to wait for the plus 7 year
    tolerance to see if his prediction will bear true.
    
    Mark.

    

    
    
             -< Should we ask Ron and Nancy's astrologer? >-   
    
    
    The North East has a better chance for a mega-earthquake than California.
    The faults in California are active, releasing some of the accumulated
    strain more or less continuously, leaving relatively less energy
    available for one kingsized quake. The NE faults are dormant,
    accumulating strain for 100-150 years, then they release all that
    energy in one mega-quake. 
    Nostradamus knew nothing about plate tectonics.
    
    Bob
                
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
        

    Re: .18
    
    I disagree.  In fact, I even took the time to look at my notes
    from Geology 101/108, 2 years ago, to double-check.  While I agree that
    there are faults (dormant) in the East Coast, these are extremely
    minor when compared with the, say, San Andreas fault system.  That
    is to say that they are considerably smaller and in reality, don't
    even pose a threat.
      
    In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the plates are accreting (pulling
    apart).  This affects areas such as Iceland where volcanic activity
    is practically a daily occurrence.  (If you ever get the chance
    to fly IcelandAir to Europe -- which is ultracheap because they
    aren't part of IATA), you can see this when the plane lands in
    Keflavik airport, in the capital. (That's a Trivial Pursuit question.)
      
    The plate that covers the Western part of the Atlantic (East Coast
    of the USA as well) is moving in a westerly direction.  At the West
    Coast, that same plate is being subducted in the earth's upper mantle.
    The same thing is happened in the other direction by the islands
    of Tonga and Fiji.  Most large earthquakes occur along/around
    convergent plate boundaries.  The plates are not converging in the
    Atlantic, thus, according to the scientific evidence, it would appear
    that there would be no reason to be concerned with an earthquake
    of almost any significant size on the East Coast during our lifetimes,
    at least, if not for the next several hundred years as well.
    
    There was a release of the energy (whether it was total or not,
    I don't know) in the East Coast area (ref: dormant faultlines) back
    in the Fall of 1985, triggering about a 3 on the Richter Scale which
    caused no one any harm (aside from a few rattled plates!) and occurred 
    around 6:00 am in the morning.  The location point was in and around
    the area of Westchester county in New York State (bordering
    Connecticut and the Hudson River).
                     
    
    That's the geology lesson for today.  <grin>
                        
    

    
    	RE:-et al
    
       The book I have list the predicted date as May 10th, 1988.
    At what hour was not included! I don't want to take any business
    trips next week!!!
    
    	John
    

    re .19
    
    There were also 3 small earthquakes (_very_ small) in Central
    Massachusetts in the Summer of 1982.
    
    -Don-

re: .19, .21

   Also a quake in the Blue Mountain area of NY a couple of years back.

Also, re: the Plate Tectonics,  I think you'll find that the San Andreas
is definitly not a subduction zone, as you implied, but a transverse fault,
with the Pacific plate sliding north in relation to the North American plate.

Thus, in a few million years, we won't see California fall into the see, as
some Hollywood producers would have you believe, but actually, the LA area
will move north to become a western suburb of San Francisco!

Geology lesson number two... 

8-)

    Re: .22 
    
    I didn't mean to imply that the San Andreas fault is a subduction
    zone.  This is totally false.  I confirm that it is a transverse
    fault however.
    
    This part of the world (California, etc. out well past Hawaii) is
    part of the Pacific Plate which is moving Westward and it is this
    plate that is being subducted.
    
    For those of you that are wondering, the Hawaiian islands constitute
    what is called a "Hot Spot" because they appear around the center
    of the plate.  "Hot Spots" are the 3rd type of (3 types of) vulcanism.
    Vulcanism has left a "Hot Spot" track as the Pacific plate moves
    westward.
    

	I'd like to suggest that anymore Geology lessons take place
    in the conference for that purpose. The information given here so
    far is more then adequate for the purposes of the conference.

Geology				LDP::GEOLOGY				  805

    
    			Alfred Thompson
    			co-moderator