Green Options

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When you were younger, did you ever own an ant farm? I’m still begging my wife to get me a glow-in-the-dark one that we saw several years ago in a science center gift shop. Ok, begging might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but I’d still like the novelty gift.

In any case, when we saw the ant farm it made me think fondly back on the several ant farm colonies I had as a child, and how interesting and cool the ants were to watch as they built their tunnels. I never had any idea though that ants might be able to predict earthquakes.

Now a man in Turkey, Kadir Sutcu, is using several ant colonies in his home to predict when earthquakes will occur. As the article I read claims, in early July Sutcu was successful in predicting an earthquake before its occurrence by watching the behavior of his ants. Supposedly, he even sent out thousands of emails warning people before the earthquake hit (I wonder how many people took him seriously at that time, and also how many do now).

Many dams in Southwest China sustained significant damage after the recent massive earthquake.

The Min River and its tributaries have 30 dams upstream from Dujiangyan and 16 incurred significant damage from the recent earthquake. The Zipingpu dam is an example where a dam failure could have disastrous consequences.

Zipingpu dam threatens millions

The Zipingpu reservoir can hold a staggering 1.1 billion cubic meters of water, but the dam wall was cracked after the earthquake. Dujiangyan, with a population of 600,000 would be devastated by a dam failure first. Within a couple hours, water would then hit the provincial capital, Chengdu.