Faith + Reason = Truth

Just for fun, about a week and a half ago I went looking for earthquake statistics to see if quakes were getting stronger and/or more frequent than they have historically been.  While searching for that, I found a site that listed details for every quake around the globe going back a number of years (sorry for the vagueness here), and among the details listed were the number of fatalities, if any.  After downloading and analyzing data for each year going back to 2000 (I didn't spend much time on this at all), what jumped out was that every year, thousands of people die in earthquakes - and usually 10's, sometimes 100's, of thousands.  Every year - until this year.  Through Aug. 2, the most recent date available when I pulled my numbers a week or two ago, the globe officially had 138 deaths caused by earthquakes.  I wanted to post that day about my findings, that almost 2/3 of the way through the year we have a tiny fraction of the normal amount of annual earthquake fatalities, but I didn't want to call attention from the "earthquake gods" to humanity's good fortune this year regarding getting off lightly in the fatality department.

Now that the jig is up and Peru has been hit with at least several hundred deaths from their earthquake, I can freely point out that the normal culprits for high fatalities from earthquakes every year are those that strike Iran, Afghanistan, and generally that South-Central Asian region.  To date, it looks like all of this year's fatalities have come in the Ring of Fire surrounding the Pacific (Japan, Indonesia, Sumatra, Solomon Islands, and Peru).  None so far in Central Asia.  Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope it stays that way - the last thing that region needs is a devastating earthquake to make life even more desperate for the millions that already fight through it every day of their lives.