From the perspective of our short life spans, we often assume that the assembly and formation of our continents and oceans were events of the past, preparing the world for human habitation.
But we need only look at the events of the past 200 years to realize that the landscape of this planet is still a work in progress and that we humans are not immune to those forces.
In 1811-1812, the New Madrid earthquakes shook the heart of North America and altered the course of the Mississippi River. Three years later, the eruption of Tambora, in Indonesia, killed over 100,000 people and triggered a volcanic winter. Krakatoa erupted in the Java Straits in 1883; its massive explosion and secondary tsunami killed 40,000. The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, famous in the U.S., killed 3000 while a 1923 earthquake in Tokyo took 140,000 lives. The greatest death toll in recent history was caused by the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, in China/Tibet, which killed 500,000 people. More fresh in our minds, the tragic tsunami of 2004, triggered by an earthquake off Sumatra, took more than 200,000 lives.
Of course, there have been many other deadly natural disasters in the past 200 years, far too numerous to list here. Beyond the earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes, we watched fragments of a comet strike Jupiter in 1994 and are still dealing with the devastation wrought by Katrina in 2005. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
