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Emmett Barker, president of the insti-
tute, was present and heard the predictions.
Regarding Dr. Browning’s method, Brian
Mitchell, chairman of the Department of Earth
and Atmospheric Sciences at St. Louis
University, said, “Recent studies with the best
available data show no correlation between
tidal forces and earthquakes.”
And Pat Jorgenson, a spokeswoman for the
United States Geological Survey in Menlo
Park, CA, said scientists there “are not at this
time doing any research into earth tides and
any possible relation to seismic activity,”
although they are aware “that this is a much-
discussed proposition.” She said that the agen-
cy’s scientists had conducted studies on the
claims but that these “proved inconclusive.”
Still, Dr. Stewart, of Southeast Missouri
State, said he thinks Dr. Browning’s method
should not be summarily rejected. “Here’s a
man who has hit several home runs,” he said.
“Will he hit another on Dec. 3? We don’t know,
but that’s no excuse for not being prepared.”
MEMPHIS, TENN.—Friday nights used to be
slow at The Fault Line, a nightclub here on
busy Poplar Avenue. But after word spread
that a major earthquake was forecast for Dec.
3 in the Midwest, The Fault Line began throw-
ing earthquake parties.
On Friday nights now, hundreds of patrons
pour into the club to swig “Earthquake
Shooters” and sign up to win December
Earthquake Escape Packages to the Bahamas
or Hot Springs, AR.
But even as Memphians whoop it up, the
prediction that the Big One may come this
December is triggering tremors up and down
the Mississippi River Valley. Shaken, thou-
sands of people are crowding into earthquake
survival classes. In Arnold, MO, 3,000 people
showed up for one course.
In Missouri and Arkansas, some schools
and businesses have announced plans to close
in early December. Entrepreneurs are hawk-
ing quake survival insurance, survival kits, and
gas-line safety gadgets.
Some people are planning to flee. “You can’t
run from everything,” says Tammy
McCormick, a nurse in Bytheville, AR, who
will take her two youngsters and spend sev-
eral days with the relatives in North Carolina.
“But it seems stupid to stay on a fault line
with a prediction like this one.”
Iben Browning, a 72-year-old scientist,
predicted October's Bay Area quake a week
before it happened, say people who heard him
speak to the Equipment Manufacturers
Institute. And he predicted “geological disas-
ter” on Sept. 19, 1985, along a band of latitude
that included Mexico City—where a massive
quake struck on that day.
Mr. Browning, who has a Ph.D. in physi-
ology, genetics, and bacteriology, writes a cli-
mate newsletter out of New Mexico. He has
clients, such as Paine-Webber, Inc., who have
long paid for his wisdom on how the weather
will affect their agricultural investments.
Since 1971, Mr. Browning says, he has
picked the correct dates of four large earth-
quakes, two volcanoes—and one day with both
a volcano and an earthquake.
He bases his forecasts on tidal forces caused
by the positions of the Sun and the Moon—
an old theory, critics say, that doesn’t wash.
On Dec. 3, those forces are expected to be at
a 27-year high. Mr. Browning says that will
exert pressure that could trigger faults already
ripe to fail.
A Skeptical Majority
Skepticism abounds. “No responsible scientist
can predict an exact day for an earthquake,”
says Brian Mitchell, a quake expert at St. Louis
University, echoing the majority opinion.
But Mr. Browning shouldn’t be written off
so quickly, says Southeast Missouri State’s Mr.
Stewart, who recently spent four days with Mr.
Browning. “He has a methodology that can
determine, plus or minus a window of a day
or two, an enhanced probability of a volcano
or an earthquake in certain latitudes,” says Mr.
Stewart. “No one else is able to replicate it, but
that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
Mr. Browning says it’s not easy being on
record with predictions that few other scien-
tists will support. “I feel like a lonely little petu-
nia in a cabbage patch,” he says. But asked if
he enjoys being right, he says, “It’s the only
damn thing that matters. If one is a business
consultant, they don’t pay you for being
wrong.”
Mr. Browning says he is tentatively booked
to give a talk in Minneapolis on Dec. 3, and
he doesn’t plan to go there via St. Louis. But
he adds: “I highly recommend against panic.
That will kill more people than earthquakes.”
