Of Devastation
Dear TomHa,
Another Earthquake, thousands more dead, tens of thousands affected. So, in a space of like a month or 2, Mother Nature had unleashed its wrath on the lowly beings of earth, killing everyone and affecting anyone who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistan got most of the tremor of a 7.6 earthquake yesterday and like what all geography textbooks say, it ain't pretty for a developing country to experience deadly disasters. Lack of expertise, money, amenities, but a whole lot of problems and sufferings left hanging in the air.

It is comical isn't it? Just last week I was discussing about the Himalayas with Wenyang, trying to get some physical geography knowledge which I had accummulated in my 6 years of geographical study about plate tectonics and how Everest gets its height and how, amazingly, the fact is there that Everest is still growing upwards. And yet the same place and boundary is wrecking havoc now this week. The same principles applies anyway for plate tectonics. You have plates moving about and they either collide, pull away from each other or rub against each other. Every kind of motion has a chance to release vast amounts of energy which the plates accummulate as their motion against one another is never smooth. And the longer it takes for them to release this energy, the larger this amount of energy gets and, sadly, the greater the destruction that it can unleash. Plates in South Asia had stored and contained their wrath for too long and it really appears to me that they are starting to release them now. Pray for those people.