Dear colleagues! The further geophysicists delve into the study of natural phenomena, the more they feel an acute shortage of data for long periods of observation. This is especially true of the most extreme events in the life of the Earth. If, for example, within an active seismic zone in each individual point, a seven - point earthquake can repeat once every fifty to two hundred years, then the average repetition time of eight - point earthquakes is three times, and nine - point earthquakes are ten times longer. A unique event that occurs completely unexpectedly and lasts for a few seconds - this is how a strong earthquake appears before us. It is no coincidence that our success in predicting earthquakes has been so modest so far.
But, like any natural disaster, a strong earthquake is not just a natural phenomenon. When an underground shock strikes, the forces of the Earth meet not only with houses and dams: they also interact directly with human society. And this interaction is governed not only by the laws of geophysics, but also by the laws of psychology, sociology, history, and economics. There are cases when an earthquake undermined even the very foundations of local civilization. After the disaster, people left, leaving their homes and arable land. However, did this always happen after a major disaster? No, people's feelings are not so simple. It is possible to think that a person (and especially society) is relatively stable and quite easily tolerates a single impact of nature, no matter how severe it may be, but more often gives up before a series of repeated, even if not very serious events.
In the layman's view, there is a large, if not huge, difference in the response to the forces of nature in different civilizations. The high spiritual organization of the society of ancient Greece, its close attention to the forces of nature, the most detailed deification of the most subtle features of the surrounding world-all this is in striking contrast to the almo ...
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