For those who don’t know, somebody back then “predicted” that a massive earthquake would strike Southern California at a specified date and time in, I think, the year 1970. It got enough media attention to generate at least one popular song, Day After Day*, and I remember when the day had passed, someone on the TV news saying we’d made it past the date.
If you remember this episode, did anyone around you take it seriously? I was a little scared by it myself, but I was just a kid.
Anyway, does anyone know how that “prediction” happened? I remember there was a vogue for things like ESP and the idea being able to foresee the future, so was there any connection? Who came out with the earthquake prediction to begin with?
*Excerpt from Day After Day:
Day after day,
More people come to L.A.
shhhh!
Don’t you tell anybody
The whole place is slipping away.
Where can you go,
When there’s no San Diego
Better get ready to tie up the boats in Idaho.
The dates are off, but could it be you’re referring to the Jupiter Effect?
I don’t remember the OP event (I was only 4), but I do remember the low level scare caused by the Nostradumbass prediction of a huge earthquake hitting in May 1988. This was featured in the film “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow”. The Griffith Observatory devoted an entire month of the Sky Report hotline to debunking the prediction. A few people did actually admit to going out of town for the entire month.
I do remember the 1971 Sylmar quake. That’s the first major eathquake I can remember. It cracked our concrete patio and rattled loose the mirror on my parent’s bedroom door.
My late husband was a fan of Edgar Cayce, the “sleeping prophet”, and Cayce’s books were all over the place in the late 60’s.
Cayce, who died in 1945, predicted catastrophic earth changes resulting from a shift in the magnetic poles (or something like that). The Great Lakes would empty into the Gulf of Mexico, Florida would sink (as would Japan), and the US west coast would be devastated. That was supposed to start in 1968 or thereabouts.
Hubby watched for earthquake news and every time we went to Mt. Rainier he’d make a beeline for the seismograph. He would have been tickled pink if we’d had the internet then, so he could track seismic activity all the time. 