Product: Weapon: Sonic
Earthquake Weapon   (+1, -5)  [vote for, against]
Trash your enemy with earthquakes

Issue three foot tall ladders throughout the land. Instruct everyone to climb up to the top of the ladder. When a designated signal is issued, have individuals jump off the ladder - simultaneously throughout the land. Based on a geological study (density and depth of crust material and matter in the core of the earth), thousands of individuals hitting the earth would send 'focused' shock waves... minor in and of themselves, but summed and focused, they could generate wild and massive earthquakes. Imagine, trashing your enemy and they think they've just been hit by an earthquake!? No smoking gun... no weapon. They'll probably then ask you for help... which you offer (giving you even more opportunity to enter ther country where you can trash it in other ways).
-- gorn_the_great, Aug 05 2001

If everybody jumped off a bridge, would you too? http://www.urbanleg...umping_chinese.html
Based off from urband legend. Made popular by National Enquirer back in 1993. [Lucky_Setzer, Aug 05 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]

It didn't work. http://news.bbc.co....1529000/1529754.stm
today across the UK [lewisgirl, Aug 05 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]

EM and Earthquakes http://www.newscien...s.jsp?id=ns99992395
About Earthquakes causing EM siginals rather than the other way round. [Zircon, Aug 22 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]

I'd like to see that geological study. You know the one that ignores physics completly? Yeah, that one. This one is OLD. See the link.
-- Lucky_Setzer, Aug 05 2001


Are you sure it was the Enquirer? I saw the article in the Weekly World News, a much more entertaining tabloid. They printed the date and time when we were all supposed to jump up and down to counteract the effect and save our country.
-- egnor, Aug 05 2001


see second link - the reason it didn't work was that there is almost no epicentre. All the schoolkids in the UK couldn't create an earthquake because they just weren't focussed enough, literally. (And besides, they're not as fat as American kids... yet.)
-- lewisgirl, Sep 07 2001


You can trigger earthquakes, not by this method though. Thnaks to a feature of the pizo-electric effect rock crystals can be made to vibrate (and this in turn can release earthquake energy) by firing EM beams into the ground. (I'm going to go and see if I can find a link to this shortly) This has been thought of as a means of relieving earthquake stress before a catastrophic event occurs but I'm sure someone in the pentagon is working on military applications even now.
-- Zircon, Jan 28 2002


I suspect a certain someone here owns a ladder company specializing in models that are a yard/metre tall.
-- thumbwax, Jan 28 2002


Yes...I'd like to see how thousands of individuals could send 'focused' shock waves.
Also, as they'll all be hitting the top soil and not solid rock, very little of the energy would be transferred to the crust anyway.
And several other things wrong which I just can't be bothered to write down... why did I start annotating this lame idea.. I give up...
-- goff, Jan 28 2002


Hm... I'm sure with a little improvement the idea could be made to work...

'tis pretty ridonkulous though, yes...
-- Crazy Bastard, Apr 25 2002


Times up, [Zircon]. Cough up that link.
-- bristolz, Apr 25 2002


Can't find the link to a causing earthquakes via EM signals. I have the information in a hardcopy New Scientist artical at home *somewhere*. I should add the rejoinder that the earthquakes caused are very small microquakes, or so the proponents of the theory were claiming. I read this about a year ago but now its all gone very quiet. Silly science, or government cover up?....you decide. Hey wait a minute, wasn't there a big old earthquake in Afghanistan just recently? Hmm, sure makes you think!
-- Zircon, Aug 22 2002



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