When the earth shakes with the violence it did in Venezuela on June 24th, more than just buildings crack: our tolerance for uncertainty. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that, in the face of two earthquakes of magnitude greater than seven, suspicions resurfaced of a technologically sophisticated and deliberate act by an outside force.
The High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is caught between reality and myth. The installation of 180 transmitting antennas located in Gakona, Alaska, is part of a University of Alaska Fairbanks research center whose objective is to disturb a thin layer of the atmosphere. However, its reported capabilities preclude the possibility of rupturing a crustal fault, which would require overcoming frictional forces accumulated over centuries beneath kilometers of rock. To date, there is no physical mechanism or instrumental evidence linking these two phenomena. In contrast, in the geodynamics of our republic, the Boconó, El Pilar, Oca Ancón, and San Sebastián faults have been accumulating deformation for millennia, generated by the constant friction between the Caribbean and South American plates. This explanation, far less suggestive and fanciful, aligns with seismology, history, and scientific records.
On the other hand, human-induced seismicity is real, but it works differently. Reservoirs, deep mining, fluid extraction, and underground injection can alter pore loads and pressures when there is physical contact with the subsurface, causing events with magnitudes ranging from 5,3, as in Sichuan, China, to 5,8, as in Pawnee, Oklahoma, both caused by hydraulic fracturing. In these cases, there are measurable variables: depth, volume, pressure, well location, temporal evolution of events, and proximity to pre-existing faults. Confusing these mechanisms with remote ionospheric transmission weakens our understanding rather than expanding it.
The real challenge lies in moving beyond the extensive forums, both formal and informal, dedicated to HAARP. The challenge is to prevent the fascination with an extraordinary cause from displacing the tasks that truly save lives, such as expanding seismological, accelerograph, and geodetic networks; studying deformation using satellite systems; implementing a national seismic microzonation plan and incorporating it into municipal ordinances; inspecting buildings; updating earthquake-resistant building codes; and preparing communities for the reality of earthquakes in the places where we have chosen to build our lives.
In this sense, technological sovereignty is built by expanding knowledge about seismic hazards across the territory through stations that provide accurate data and accessible records, identifying the seismic vulnerability of buildings and the population, and relying on specialized professionals, independent research, and public decisions capable of distinguishing falsifiable responses to uncertainty from those born of fiction. Science never promises absolute certainty, but rather something more useful: methods for exploration, methods for correction, comparison of plausible hypotheses, and—probably too soon to be reminded of this—the best way to act comprehensively before the next earthquake.
@betancourt_phd
What a timely explanation! Accurate and very helpful!