** 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 mailing list or receive a copy of our new information packet on nuclear power, contact Matthew Freedman at 32 Union Square East, New York, NY 10003-3295 (Tel: 212-777-6626).

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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?