Earthquake Proof?

Tectonic plates undergird all we see, wrapped around the entire planet. Their slow movements give the surface shape, adjusting that shape from time to time. They float on unimaginable magma, heat, fire, and liquid rock on a slow, slow boil in decades long movements.

These are the core, the foundations upon which our visible Earth is built. 

When the deep movement pushes up, making the plates twitch, fissures open, cracks rush across solid rock, shaking, occasional bucking rearranging the surface. Here and there a bubble of burning magma achieves air to pop and release red, liquid middle Earth which expands, cooling in the unfamiliar atmosphere. 

And what of those tiny creatures that live upon the surface of this ‘formless and void’ deep? When plates shift and magma boils, what of them?

The fissures and cracks breaking across the surface also break across them. Their structures also crack and sag and tumble, broken, onto the shifting rock that confounded their assumptions of stability, of safety, of their plans for tomorrow.

All changes. Shifts. Cracks and wobbles. 

Much falls.

But not all. 

Some few structures remain steadfast, pointing upward, strongholds of hope and stability in a shifting, changing, unpredictable world. 

Why? What makes the differences between those things that fall, demolished and broken, and those things that stand untouched or with barely visible cracks?

The question haunts.

When the plates have settled and their shifting ends, when the rubble is thoroughly searched and painstakingly carried away, the question haunts. It demands an answer.

Substandard materials?

Weak or shallow foundations?

Penny pinching construction?

Lazy or careless connections, welds, anchors?

The asked question requires an answer. Not blame, but an answer. Not accusation, but reality revisited. These answers can inform the re-construction. For as sure as the magma boils far below, these tiny surface creatures will rebuild, restructure … try again to form worthwhile lives upon the only surface they see and know. 

So that, next time, the structures remain standing.

When things shift our lives, what fissures and cracks become visible? 

What structures stand steadfast or crumble and fail into dust and pain? 

The question haunts.

How can we build to withstand such inconsequentials as shifting tectonic plates and boiling magma?