Earthquake Prediction: Time for Preparedness

It's common in people living in earthquake exposed areas to develop this phobia, especially if they witnessed at least one major earthquake during their life. Although phobias are bad, this particular one may lead to useful actions, like the following:

• Earthquake preparedness: people who fear an earthquake will make sure to have a handy earthquake kit with everything needed for at least 2-3 days of survival under debris. If nothing happens, they prepared for nothing, but this didn't take too much of their time. If the big earthquake strikes, they may find salvation in these earthquake kits for survival.
• Earthquake insurance: many people won't be willing to pay a bigger insurance premium to have their home insurance cover earthquake damage. A fearful individual would happily pay that additional sum, therefore if an earthquake strikes, he'll have at least a sum to start over and build or buy a new home.

Although the above mentioned actions may be seen just as causion measures, when done under the pressure of earthquake phobia, they may be only the surface of a deeper storm, an interior battle that makes the respective person live under the terror that the beast may strike any given moment.

When thinking of earthquakes, many of us think that a prediction system would be great, as we could get prepared for the disaster in the best way we can. Actual seismographs can only measure the magnitude and other parameters of the earthquake, but there's no device that can predict an earthquake and give us enough time to take cautionary measures.

There are people who believe, and I think I've heard about some studies that confirmed this, that animals can feel the shockwaves before humans do, therefore they may be able to predict natural disasters such as tsunamis or earthquakes. Even if this were true, how on Earth do you know that your cat is nervous because of the imminent earthquake? My cat gets agitated several times a day, every single day, but in the night we've experienced the last earthquake here, she was sleeping without dreams, and she woke up only when the sofa started to shake because of the earthquake. So I wouldn't rely on my pets to give me the early warning sign.

Back to earthquake prediction, this can also be seen as a curse, rather than a help for people. Imagine what would happen if the earthquake signal is heard: millions of people would jump in their cars, willing to leave cities. Panic would probably make more victims than the earthquake itself. Cars would block all exit roads almost instantly and instead of managing to evacuate, city inhabitants would only change the relative safety of their home with the uncertainty of roads, highways or bridges. If hundreds of cars get stuck on a bridge, for example, it may collapse under the huge weight, because of the earthquake shocks.