Do you still have stuff in your Browning bunker -- or a shelf, closet or garbage can filled with survival goodies?
Such measures were prompted by the late Iben Browning, a climatologist and consultant, who predicted 30 years ago that our earthquake alley -- the hatchet-shaped, midcontinent New Madrid seismic fault zone -- had a 50-50 chance for a big one, a megaquake maybe on the order of the horrific seismic jolts that dismantled the area in 1811-12.
The earthquakes were so bad that they caused the Mississippi River to flow backward, created Reelfoot Lake, and for a short time, a waterfall on the river, and a number of large, volcano-shaped sand blows. They rang church bells in Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia and could be felt as far away as Canada.
Browning's prediction -- he set the time around Dec. 3, 1990 -- set off emotional and psychological quaking throughout the Mississippi Valley and beyond. All over the St. Louis area, people began supplying their Browning bunkers with bottled water, medicine, canned foods, soup packets, first-aid kits, phone books, financial records and so on.
People are also reading…
A map and graphic published in 1989 estimating the extent of damage that would be caused by a strong earthquake along the New Madrid fault. Scientists estimate that the 1811-12 earthquakes may have been the nation's worst, and were stronger than the deadly San Francisco earthquake of 1906. (Post-Dispatch)
Many out-of-state relatives urged family members in the St. Louis area to leave town, or move away for good.
Browning based his forecast on weather patterns and conditions, and a good many people believed him -- even though this was the same fellow who studied the feasibility of arming whales with hydrogen bombs and turning them into weapons. Browning died in July 1991, in Albuquerque, N.M.
Earlier that same year, he won the first Chicken Little Award of the National Anxiety Center, for scaring "the daylights out of people in seven Midwestern states," providing "one of the most dubious news stories of the year and demonstrating the way anyone with a Ph.D. is given free reign to create a high level of public anxiety.
The 1811 earthquake
Television trucks parked near Main Street, New Madrid, Missouri on Sunday, Dec. 2, 1990. Members of the media are in New Madrid, Mo., for the Iben Browning projected earthquake on December 3. (AP Photo/James A. Finley)
Wayne Viitanen, a doctoral candidate at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, holds a map in 1972 showing the primary areas of damage during the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12. He was studying them for his dissertation. (Post-Dispatch)
Residents flee their collapsing cabin in New Madrid, Mo., early on Dec. 16, 1811, during the first of what became known as the New Madrid earthquakes. The last major shake was on Feb. 7, 1812. The first wrecked many of the cabins in the village, namesake of the fault line. In St. Louis, it shook residents awake and caused minor damage. The drawing was an illustration in an 1854 book, Historical Collections of the Great West. (Missouri History Museum)
The New Madrid fault has had lesser shakes since 1811 and makes minor ones every few months. Scientists assume it will be the site of another major one someday. In 1990, Iben Browning, a scientist in New Mexico, predicted a 50-50 chance of one on Dec. 2-3. Widely scoffed, the prediction drew many reporters to New Madrid, Mo. The waiting was reduced to this — reporters interviewed Joe Brasher, a folk musician from nearby Malden, Mo., who had joined the fun. Nothing else happened but brisk sales at local businesses. (Wendi Brown/Post-Dispatch)
A detailed map of the area of the New Madrid fault in Missouri and Arkansas, prepared in 1905 with information on the landscape by the Mississippi River Commission. (Missouri History Museum)
