The Scariest Earthquake Is Yet to Come
by Simon Winchester
March 13, 2011
Translation by Autumnson Blog
The tsunami that struck Japan was the third in a series of events that now put California at risk.
襲擊日本的海嘯是一系列事件的第三次宗，而現在把加州處於風險中。
Kyodo / Xinhua Press-CorbisThe tsunami violently surges ashore in Natori, Japan.
海嘯猛烈地湧上日本名取的岸。
All of those broken bones in northern Japan, all of those broken lives and those broken homes prompt us to remember what in calmer times we are invariably minded to forget: the most stern and chilling of mantras, which holds, quite simply, that mankind inhabits this earth subject to geological consent—which can be withdrawn at any time.
所有那些在日本北部的破碎骨頭，所有那些破碎的生命和那些破碎的家，促使我們記住那在較平靜的時候我們總是忘記的：最嚴厲和心寒的咒語，那頗簡單地握有，人類居住在這個地球上受制於地質的同意 - 那可隨時被撤回。
For hundreds, maybe for thousands of people, this consent was withdrawn with shocking suddenness—all geological events are sudden, and all are unexpected if not necessarily entirely unanticipated—at 2:46 on this past clear, cool spring Friday afternoon. One moment all were going about their quotidian business—in offices, on trains, in rice fields, in stores, in schools, in warehouses, in shrines—and then the ground began to shake. At first, the shock was merely a much stronger and longer version of the temblors to which most Japanese are well accustomed. There came a stunned silence, as there always does. But then, the difference: a few minutes later a low rumble from the east, and in a horrifying replay of the Indian Ocean tragedy of just some six years before, the imagery of which is still hauntingly in all the world’s mind, the coastal waters off the northern Honshu vanished, sucked mysteriously out to sea.
對於數百、也許是數千的人來說，這同意以令人震驚的突然被撤回 - 所有的地質活動都是突然的，而且全都是意想不到如果不需一定是完全意料之外 - 在過去這天朗氣清、涼爽的春季星期五下午14:46，一刻全都著手於他們每日的業務 - 在辦公室、火車上、在稻田、商店、學校、倉庫、神社 - 和然後地面開始搖晃。起初，震動僅僅是一次更強和更長版本的地震，對此大多數日本人都習以為常。有一刻不知所措的沉默，正如常是這樣。但然後，分別是：幾分鐘後，一個低沉的隆隆聲來自東方，和在一恐怖衹是約六年前的印度洋悲劇重播，它的意象仍時常浮現在所有世界上的腦中，本州北部的沿海水域消失，神秘地被吸出大海。
Photos: News Gallery - JapanThe rumbling continued, people then began to spy a ragged white line on the horizon, and, with unimaginable ferocity, the line became visible as a wall of waves sweeping back inshore at immense speed and at great height. Just seconds later and these Pacific Ocean waters hit the Japanese seawalls, surmounted them with careless ease, and began to claw across the land beyond in what would become a dispassionate and detached orgy of utter destruction.
We all now know, and have for 50 years, that geography is the ultimate reason behind the disaster. Japan is at the junction of a web of tectonic-plate boundaries that make it more peculiarly vulnerable to ground-shaking episodes than almost anywhere else—and it is a measure of Japanese engineering ingenuity, of social cohesion, of the ready acceptance of authority and the imposition of necessary discipline that allows so many to survive these all-too-frequent displays of tectonic power.
現在我們全都知道，和已經 50年，地理是災難背後的終極原因。日本是在一個構造板塊網絡邊界的交處，使之更獨有地容易受到地面震動事件，多於幾乎任何其它地方 - 而且它是一個日本工程足智多謀、社會凝聚力、準備接受權威和施加必要紀律的估量，那容許如此多倖存於這些所有太頻繁的構造力量展示。
But geography is not the only factor in this particular and acutely dreadful event. Topography played an especially tragic role in the story, too—for it is an axiom known to all those who dwell by high-tsunami-risk coastlines that when the sea sucks back, you run: you run inland and, if at all possible, you run uphill. But in this corner of northeast Japan, with its wide plains of rice meadows and ideal factory sites and conveniently flat airport locations, there may well be a great deal of inland—but there is almost no uphill.
但地理不是唯一的因素在這特殊和尖銳地恐怖的事件，地形亦在故事中扮演一個尤其悲劇的角色 - 因為它是一個眾所周知的公理，對所有那些住在高海嘯風險的海岸線，當海吸回，你跑：你向內陸跑，如果有可能，你跑往高處。但在日本東北部的這個角落，其廣闊的水稻草地平原和理想的廠地，及方便地平面的機場位置，可能會有很多的內陸 - 但幾乎是沒有上坡地方。
Such mountains as exist are far away, blue and distant in the west. All here is coastal plain. And so the reality is this: if a monstrous wave is chasing you inland at the speed of a jetliner, and if the flat topography all around denies you any chance of sprinting to a hilltop to try to escape its wrath, then you can make no mistake—it will catch you, it will drown you, and its forces will pulverize you out of all recognition as a thing of utter insignificance, which of course, to a tsunami, all men and women and their creations necessarily must be.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/13/the-scariest-earthquake-is-yet-to-come.html
外媒：美國或將發生與日本一樣的大規模地震？
2011年03月18日10:53
來源：人民網-國際頻道
人民網3月18日訊 據時代周刊援引美國地質勘探局消息，災難性的地震可能會發生在美國，而且不僅僅局限在西海岸。
美國地質勘探局公布的一張地震地圖顯示，美國50個州中的39個處於中度至高度的地震風險中，這意味著大規模的地震很有可能發生在美國。
盡管地震多發區在美國西部、阿拉斯加和夏威夷，這個地圖表明美國中部的一大片區域也非常危險。如果這裡發生一次地震，將會有8個州1500萬人收到影響。
更讓緊張的是，美國地質勘探局2009年的一份報告顯示，這一區域在地震面前完全不堪一擊，因為這一地區不論是在城市規劃還是在基礎設施方面，都沒有任何准備。而且，該地域還有15座核電站處於斷裂帶上。這一區域每年有超過200次的小震，專家擔心一次大地震的到來只是早晚的問題。（鄭青亭 董菁）
http://world.people.com.cn/BIG5/14178623.html
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