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Geophysicist contends Pakistan's blasts may have set off Afghan quake

M S Shanker in Hyderabad

The experiments conducted by Pakistan in the Chagai hills could have triggered off the Afghanistan earthquake, says Janardhan G Negi, a renowned seismologist and former director-level scientist of the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad.

Even Bombay falls in the zone likely to be affected by the Chagai blasts, falling in the same fault zone. And the tremors were felt there too, though to a lesser intensity.

To back his arguments, Negi, winner of the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar award, pointed out the observations made by a Russian seismologist Alexei Nikolaev in this regard. He had reported 365 earthquakes greater than 3.4 on the Richter scale during 1963-86 due to underground nuclear explosions in the Panir Hindukush area. Nikolaev had also reported an increase of seismicity factor of 2.5 after the underground explosion from the first to the tenth day.

The nuclear explosions carried out by Pakistan in the seismically most active Chagai Hills, an extension of the hollow mountain range of the Hindukush and Himalayas, may trigger more earthquakes in Afghanistan, he said.

''India was fortunate to have tested its nuclear device in a seismically non-active zone like Pokhran, but Pakistan did so in an active zone although it was well-known that any nuclear explosion in the Chaman fault system in the Hindukush-Pamir, wherein lies the Chagai hills areas of Baluchistan, could trigger off natural earthquakes. The Pakistani explosions may yet trigger a series of earthquakes,'' he said.

Supporting his contention with the history of nuclear explosion-induced earthquakes, Negi said the December 7, 1988 earthquake at Spitak, Armenia, was a sequel to the Russian nuclear explosion of the hydrogen bomb of 5.9 megaton at Novya Zemlya island three days before. The Armenian quake measured 6.9 on the Richter scale, he said.

Similarly, Negi, the highest award for science and technology in India, said more than 800,000 people had died in the Chinese earthquake, of 8.2 magnitude, at Tang Shan on July 27, 1976, in the wake of the French explosion at Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean and the US test of a nuclear bomb in Nevada on July 22 and 26.

The Chinese had predicted an earthquake on February 4, 1976, at Heiching, but could not do so in this case because ''enough number of precursors'' were not there.

Citing another instance, Negi said Russia had tested a hydrogen bomb on October 2, 1969, at Amchitka. The bomb was of 6.5 megaton capacity. After a calm of as many as 35 days, the earth shook Ozernovak, Kamchatka, USSR, with a magnitude of 7.7 on November 7, 1969.

In yet another case, in which 25,000 Iranians were killed, the 7.4 magnitude Tabas earthquake, near Afghanistan border, in October 1978, was a sequel to what the German and British scientists believed was a ten megaton nuclear explosion carried out by Russia 2500 km away at Semi Palaltinsk, Siberia, just 36 hours before. No aftershocks were felt after this massive quake.

Dr Negi, a former director-general of the MP Council of Science and Technology and science advisor to the Madhya Pradesh government, said there seemed to be a latent interconnection between nuclear explosions and earthquakes, and the latter may trigger yet more quakes in near or distant areas as the tectonic plates adjust themselves against each other.

Quoting Dr Whiteford of the USA, he said studies had already shown that the number of earthquakes felt annually by the globe had doubled after the nuclear explosions began in 1945. Dr Whiteford discovered that between 1900 and 1950, the number of quakes measuring 5.8 and more on the Richter Scale, was only 68 per annum which increased to an average of 127 annually during the next fifty years.

The Chagai Hills explosions and the Afghanistan earthquake of May 30, 1998, which claimed about five thousand lives, had once again shown that artificial means could trigger one or more devastating earthquakes in seismically-sensitive areas. This was known as the ''butterfly affect'' after the butterfly that creates a turbulence in Amazon, Brazil, which, by non-linear amplification, causes tornadoes in Indiana, USA.

Additional reportage: UNI

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