Summary Of The Big One By Robert Nadeau

In the article “The Big One” Berkeley seismologist Robert Nadeau states “ A lot of randomness is lack of knowledge.” In this statement the word randomness is referring to earthquakes meaning we only have a small knowledge about the science of this activity. Nadeau uses this statement to convince us to realise that earthquakes cannot truly be predicted, in reality the only resource we have is presumptions. Scientists prove that we do not have enough of the necessary tools needed to produce the correct idea of when an earthquake is actually going to occur. The problem is that scientists didn 't know how earthquakes and faults had anything to do with each other until after the San Francisco earthquake on April 17,1906. Since then scientist have move past that. Being able to predict earthquakes would benifits citizens and their cities tremendously! The issue is that they are simply educated guesses, nothing certain.

If scientist were to diagnose how to correctly predict earthquakes it would lessen the amount of deaths greatly. As the article says, “People still die in stunning numbers when the ground beneath their feet begins to shake. Almost always it’s not the earthquake that kills them but their collapsing houses, offices, stores and schools…” This shows that Achenbach, the author, is saying that by not moving forward in finding a way to predict these quakes , they 're only making the problem worse. Kerry Sieh is convinced he can help break the cycle of calamity using science. Sieh states, “ He has heard the refrain that earthquakes are chaotic and unpredictable. That’s not what he see on the map of the plate boundary. He sees a fault breaking incrementally from North to South.” The point od Sieh’s theory is that he knows earthquakes are known to be unpredictable but he wants to show us his proof. For example how he knows the fault is breaking from North to South . Sieh is closer than the majority of scientist on cracking the trick to actually predicting