Recent Earthquakes Cause Spike in Related Searches Online

Between the recent earthquakes in eastern Oklahoma and the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, curiosity about earthquakes is spiking right along with the seismograph.

Sunday, March 14th 2010, 10:19 pm

By: News 9


By Jacqueline Sit, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Residents in Canadian County have felt 13 quakes over three days with the last one shaking things up Saturday. Coupled with the devastation in Haiti and Chile, curiosity about earthquakes is spiking right along with the seismograph.

With a cluster of earthquakes rattling Haiti, Chile, Indonesia and even the Sooner state over the last two months, many in the metro are curious about what's behind the tremblers.

Yahoo site searches on earthquakes are up 382 percent. There has also been a spike in searches about Armageddon, Bible prophecies and the Book of Revelations among other theories behind the recent natural disasters.

"I think when there is a massive crisis where there's catastrophe after catastrophe, whether it's a flood, tsunami, ice storm, I think people start automatically thinking about their last days," said psychologist Stewart Beasley.

Experts say it's no surprise searches on the end of the world and conspiracy theories have spiked on the Internet.

"We've had people worried about aliens causing these or government conspiracies. There's a lot of different worries that get expressed to us," said Austin Holland, Oklahoma Geological Survey seismologist.

Holland said the Oklahoma Geological Survey gets at least one call a day about prophetic predictions.

"Here in Oklahoma we don't know the cause of the earthquakes. Generally they seem to be occurring where they have in the past, it's nothing out of ordinary," Holland said.

But online searches for survival kits are also spiking. Psychologist Stewart Beasley said it's simply human nature.

"It really is frightening when you feel helpless and hopeless and think about being trapped and not being able to do something," Beasley said. "We tend to try and prepare as much as we can and that's what's going on."

The Oklahoma Geological Survey is working with USGS on a field study to examine earthquakes in the eastern Oklahoma area.

More on News9.com:

Ten Earthquakes Shake Canadian County in One Day
Haiti Earthquake: Extended Coverage

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