ENTIRE CITIES SWALLOWED IN THE EARTH - REVISITED

This blog is a hobby - and I do not have a lot of time to throw at it, but many of these posts are just scratching the surface of information I have gained or gleaned on some particular topic.  Many times, I have a spare 5 mins to spend on it, or I have read an article as I am falling asleep (thus the shoddy nature of the writing), and I just tap out something simple.  So, if readers click on the "Post More Info" button on the bottom of the article, I am happy to revisit something.  I posted the soils data for northern Utah that shows where liquefaction is most likely to occur in the Salt Lake Valley.  CLICK LINK

Why do I car about this stuff?  Because my wife and I bought our first home in the valley - a fixer-upper that was built mostly from unreinforced structural brick - which kept me up alot thinking about how it would ride a shaker out.  Also, I care because, since I have moved from the valley, I have read enough stuff to know that there will be a massive (read M8.5-10.0+) earthquake in that valley within the next 0-20 years which will cause massive bad results.  Of course, my concern is "What will become of the Temple, Church HQ, etc?" in the event of such a massive shaker.  The SL temple is not re-inforced in any way and I believe its strictly a mass building - one that relies on sheer mass and gravity to ride out the massive stresses and g-forces that are experienced in a M7+ event.  I have been studying up on how the Greeks and others used mortise and tenon joints (with the locking feature being a cast-in-place metal plug) on their stone buildings which helped them ride the tremors out.  The Incans used similar technology plus interlocking stones - veritable 3D puzzles - to keep things together in their seismically active areas.  I do not believe that the SL temple has that luxury in its construction.  But it is in a similarly active seismic Zone 5 - so how will it survive what surely must be coming?

I am fairly confident that Brigham Young nailed things on two levels when he uttered prophetically as he struck his cane into the ground and designated the spot the temple is built on as the place where, 40 years later, a temple would stand erected - and, at a later time, that that temple would see its way into the Millennium - past all the prophesied destruction.

Years ago, I read a report that indicated that when American Stores (I think they are now defunct) went to build their store in the downtown core (just south of temple square), they did the geological survey of what is below them so they could gauge how deep to go with their pilings in order to support their building's mass on what is typically known to be alluvial material (small to larger gravel washed out of the mountains - stuff you would find on the bed of a former lake...).  I would love to get my hands on that report, BTW - if anyone knows where the link is.  I have scoured the internet for hours trying to locate it again so I could do a decent piece on the topic and cannot find it....  Anyway, the results were stunning.  The entire area directly under them and north to the capitol building sits directly on top of a granite plug that rises up from hundreds to thousands of feet out of the alluvial soil and provides a base on which to build a large temple.  In a massive shaker, a building that relies solely on mass as its seismic counter-measure will probably survive if the forces are normal to the foundation (up and down) and not too heavily in shear (side to side).  Any similar building of that mass on alluvial soil would simply disappear up to its spire or worse, as alluvial soil acts like a bunch of ball bearings.  Try it - get a bunch of BBs, put them in a deep tray and get blocks of similar dimensions but varying densities (increased mass per unit volume).  Put them on a shaker table (local h-ware store if you don't have one sitting around in the basement) - and see how the heavier the mass, the deeper it sinks.  The foam block will pretty much just float on top of the ball bearings while the lead block will disappear as the BBs are displaced around it.  I am confident that the areas directly around Temple Square and very "gay" alphabet streets and UofU area will take a massive hit as the energy manifested in an earthquake is directly proportional to the distance from the fault (right on top of it) and the depth of portion of the fault that erupts (this one will probably erupt at the surface of the earth, judging by the escarpments we see a little further south in the Cottonwood Canyon areas. Also, the benches are just big gravel beds where the faster moving water from the canyon creeks hit the placid lake waters of the Lake Bonneville shoreline - and dropped the sediments, etc.

While working with the Youth in one of the wards in the valley, we did a service project to clean up the City Creek Park just above (north) and east of Temple Square.  At the time we were baffled at the bags full of discarded clothing that we collected from the bushes.  Mostly shorts, underwear and the occasional t-shirt...  There was a lot more clothing than actual conventional trash.  I had never heard of gay cruising (at that point) until I read about the old I-15 rest stop between Lehi and Provo that was shut down for such activity - people acting like wild dogs, roaming around looking for a "casual encounter" much like the infamous senator from Idaho that was busted in an undercover sting in a mid-west airport.  Yup - there are tons of gays in the valley - and they are acting no better than the wild animals - except the wild animals at least mostly have enough sense/instinct to do the mating rituals with the opposite gender....  And thus, the statement that SLC would become one of the most wicked cities on the face of the earth is pretty much coming to fruition....and wicked cities tend to get wiped out - as the Sodomites found out.....

So, that report along with a confident prophetic statement or two from Brigham Young put my worries to bed.  The geological data shown in the link above confirms it - you can see that the liquefaction data in the Temple Square area matches the data in the canyon areas where the granite for the SL Temple was taken from.  Rock solid - while the surrounding area is pretty much ball bearing city.

On a side note - the liquefaction data also bears out what we know from other prophetic statements that there will be large tent cities on the foothills of the Oquirrhs (west side of the valley) when the destruction in the valley occurs.  There may be liquefaction in the west side - but nothing like the middle of the valley and the east benches.  While many in those tent cities will be refugees from the massive devastation that occurs on the West Coast (where I am now writing this at....),  who will flee from really bad, to "not as bad", (its all relative, isn't it?), many of the refugees will be displaced from the destroyed east side (where the main Wasatch Fault is) and down south from the Lehi and Point of the Mountain areas where the east/west fault lines intersect the north/south fault lines in the valley.  This is pure guesswork on my part - but, I believe, without divine intervention to intercede, I do not believe the new temple down in Draper will make it due to its extremely bad location.

When it was being built, I marvelled at how close the Oquirrh Mtn temple is to the older Jordan River temple - there is alot of new development out in that area - but really; enough to support a whole new temple when the WJ temple was largely under-utilized when I was there 15 years ago?  My personal feeling is it has been built (and heckastout, at that, just like the new Nauvoo Temple) to withstand the fury of what is coming, and so that the people that come to the refugee camps of the Oquirrh foothills can be converted and receive their endowments in their hour of need as they are humbled and become acquainted with their Maker in their extremity.  There will be a massive influx into the Church at that time - and at points afterward.  It will be amazing - the last gathering before the burning.

So, I guess the message of this post is, there is alot of destruction coming to those areas and that if you have questions or would like more info - please check the button at the bottom of the post and I will pass on more info as I have time.  Also, as we approach the next couple of years, please pray for me - that I will know when the right time to "pre-evacuate" is.  Being on the coast, and watching all of the prophesied wickedness come about, I know we are setting ourselves up for deserved destruction, but I am still here earning a living so I can afford to be prepared to ride this thing out.  The key (as Noah, Lehi and many others found out) is knowing when enough is enough..... and when its time to pull the handle between the knees and punch out and save yourself....