Nobody at fault

It’s more than understandable that Friday’s earthquake would set people buzzing. After all, it’s not every day that folks in Bloomington awake to feel the world shaking around them (that is, without having done tequila shots the night before). But seeing as there was no serious damage or injuries, I think it’s time we put this incident behind us. Earthquakes happen – we don’t need to look into it any further. And we definitely don’t need to go around trying to determine if anyone was to blame (especially since, even if anyone was to blame, it was almost certainly an accident).\nYes, it seems unusual that a 5.2-magnitude earthquake would occur in southwestern Illinois, along the Wabash fault zone, far from where tectonic plates collide (in more quake-prone places, such as California). But stranger things have happened. Who among us, even with strongest of constitutions, hasn’t experienced the occasional hiccup? The Earth is the same way. It’s full of strange and wonderful phenomena that will never be completely understood by humans. And it’s not like there are a lot of quakes happening around here – just one itty, bitty one (and, OK, an aftershock). Thus, there’s no reason to send teams of geologists and investigators and, possibly, federal authorities to West Salem, Ill., to look into this little “Earth hiccup.” They won’t find anything there, anyway. Oh, sure, they might hear a few stories about strange noises, or late-night deliveries of unusual equipment or the disappearance of a couple heads of cattle – but what small community is without such tales? Rural America is rich in folklore, and that’s something to be celebrated rather than scrutinized.\nFurthermore, there’s no real reason to go bothering the hardworking people in the mining industry about who might have purchased unusual pieces of specialized commercial drilling technology – or, for that matter, about whether they happen to have lost any such pieces. Just because someone might have acquired a few things that might, theoretically, be used to construct a sonic drill capable of generating 600 hertz of vibrational energy, it does not mean they were up to no good. They could have collected things such as diamond-tipped augers and titanium reinforcing struts purely for their aesthetic qualities. Indeed, it will be a dark day when paranoia regarding who might burrow 1,500 miles down into the Earth’s mantle and why leads the authorities to violate individuals’ privacy.\nLastly, it must be said that there is no evidence whatsoever to connect Friday’s earthquake to former president Jimmy Carter’s recent trip to Syria to talk with the exiled leader of the terrorist group Hamas. In fact, the very suggestion is absurd. The timing between the two is merely an odd coincidence, and couldn’t possibly be the product of a complex global conspiracy centuries in the making. Next thing, you’ll be suggesting that Bigfoot is involved. Which is laughable, as there is no way that Bigfoot could pilot a state-of-the-art digging machine into the Earth’s core.\nNot without six to eight weeks of training, anyway.