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Several scientists firmly believe that covert underground nuclear explosions or other artificial means causes many of the earthquakes. The largest earthquake in the 20^th century took place in Tanshan, North East China on July 27, 1976 reaching 8.2 points on the Richter scale causing tragic death of 800,000 people.

According to Gray T. Whiteford, Geography Professor, University of Brunswick, Canada this Chinese quake occurred five days after the French nuclear bomb test in Mururao atoll in the Pacific. Four days before the Chinese quake, the US has also tested a nuclear bomb. In October 1993, China exploded a nuclear devise at Lop Nor range in the western Xingjiang province –an explosion caused by 80 kilotons explosives was detected by monitoring stations all over the world. A few days later a powerful earthquake of 6.6 hit the test area. Similar quakes were experienced in Iran’s Gilan province.

On June 19, 1992, the US conducted an underground nuclear test in Naveda test ground, which was a followed by a serious of major and minor earthquakes in the Mojave dessert, 176 miles to the South--one of the earthquakes measured 7.6 on the Richter scale. After three days (June 22, 1992) another test was conducted in the same place, which also caused an earthquake of 5.6 in a place less than 20 miles from the Nevada test site causing severe damages worth millions of dollars to the buildings in an area designated for permanent disposal of highly radioactive nuclear wastes, 15 miles away from the epicenter.

Various studies by British, American, German, Japanese and Canadian scientists have warned that nuclear tests are weakening the Earth’s crust, triggering earthquakes and causing the poles to shift. Within a microsecond of an underground nuclear test, billions of atoms involved in the explosion release enormous amount of energy –pressure inside the exploding device reach several thousand kilometers and temperatures as high as 100 million degrees.

The underground nuclear explosion also generates a strong shock wave moving fast from the point of detonation. According to two Japanese scientists-- Shigeyoshi Matsumae and Yoshio Kato—abnormal mateorlogical phenomenon, earthquakes and fluctuations of the Earth’s axis are related in a direct cause and effect to testing of all nuclear devices. Within tens of milliseconds of a nuclear explosion the metal casting and surrounding rock vaporizes, creating a bubble of high-pressure steam and gas. A cavity is formed due to the pressure of the gas bubble and the explosive momentum imparted to the surrounding rocks. The resultant shock wave travels very fast outward from the cavity, crushing and fracturing the rock and eventually weakening to a stage when the rock is merely compressed and then returns elastically to its original state. This compression and subsequent relaxation of the rock becomes a seismic wave that travels through the Earth, like an earthquake. Monitoring stations in different parts of the world, after studying such seismic waves, normally measure compliance with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

According to New Scientist British and German geophysics believed that the 1978 earthquake in Tabas, Iran, which killed more than 25,000 people, was likely to be triggered by an underground nuclear explosion. British seismologists believed that the quake in Iran was in fact a nuclear test gone awry. A Sweedish seismic laborotary at Uppasala recorded a Soviet Nuclear test of ten megatons at Semipalitsk just 36 hours before the earthquake. Garry T. Whiteford, Geography Professior, University of Brunswick, Canada studied the occurrence of nuclear tests and earthquakes in a detailed manner. He studied all the major earthquakes measuring over 5.8 on the Richter scale and compared earthquake rate in the first half of the century before nuclear testing with that for 1950-1988. While 68 large earthquakes of 5.8 occurred before nuclear tests began, the rate went up to 127 per year due to nuclear explosions.

“The geographic clustering patterns in the data, with a clustering of specific test dates and sites revealed that it was a very dangerous coincidence. A study of killer earthquakes that killed more than 1,000 people died since 1953 by Whiteford also revealed that about 62.5 per cent of those earthquakes occurred a few days after a nuclear test. Many struck only a day after a detonation. Estimates show that more than a million people must have been died in earthquakes related to nuclear tests. Cumulative effect of nuclear tests can move the earth’s tectonic plates in a manner similar to how a swarm of insects might start an elephant running.

In order to detect the actual nuclear tests, which are sometimes conducted simultaneously with other fake explosions, American scientists in the Lawrence Livermore Laborotary are developing a new programme, which can distinguish from a distance between chemical explosions, mining explosions, earthquakes and real nuclear explosions.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, which had obtained satellite images about nuclear preparations in India and Pakistan six months back, the agency did not receive any recent reports. " We have not acquired any new imagery from South Asia recently," says Steven Aftergood, Non proliferation and Intelligence ,expert, FSA.

"I think we can be very confident that there is no link between the Indian nuclear testing program and the recent earthquake. People have worried (based on little evidence) that nuclear tests could trigger earthquakes. The mechanism behind this is that the significant shock wave generate by a nuclear explosion could 'shake-up' the earth making an earthquake more imminent," says Richard Allen,

"A missile test is very different to a nuclear test. Testing a missile releases almost no energy into the ground, it is only if there is a nuclear explosion that significant energy is released. Therefore a missile test could not cause an earthquake," Seismo Lab, Caltech University,

"Often individuals wonder whether construction of a reservoir, hydrocarbon production, or the injection of fluids into the ground caused an earthquake at a specific location. Several well-documented cases exist where such large engineering projects and damaging earthquakes are genetically related. In most of these cases, the engineering projects themselves most likely did not create the stresses that caused the earthquake, but rather changed local conditions in such a way as to allow an earthquake to occur." says the abstract of a Ph.D thesis submitted to a Western University More

"A circular crater 200 feet deep and more than a mile across was torn in the ocean floor, big enough to fit several buildings of the size of the Pentagon and deeper than the height of the Empire State Building. The explosion lifted into the air some 80 million tons of solid material that would be dispersed around the world. Millions of gallons of water turned into steam."

According to Matin Zuberi, cormer Member of Advisory Board National.Security Council,the first American thermonuclear device code-named 'Mike' was tested in the Pacific on October 31 (November 1, local time), 1952. It was an experimental device, effectionately nicknamed the "sausage": “It had a refrigeration unit to freeze hydrogen down to liquid form, fuse it into helium using an atomic bomb as trigger. A 22-foot-long cylinder, weighing 21 tons, contained canisters of liquid deuterium and tritium which were surrounded by the plutonium trigger. Counting the refrigeration unit, the "Mike" device weighed 65 tons. It resembled not so much a weapon as a small refinery,” he wrote in an article.

More than 500 scientific stations on 30 islands monitored the "Mike" shot. Its fireball expanded more than three miles across compared to the fireball over Hiroshima that covered a little more than one-tenth of a mile. "It rose over the horizon like a dark sun." A sailor who witnessed it wrote home: "You would swear that the whole world was on fire." Within minutes, the enlarging fireball cloud reached 57,000 and then 100,000 feet. "It formed a huge canopy more than one hundred miles wide that loomed over the atoll." Its fireball alone would have engulfed Manhattan and its blast would have obliterated the New York City. The island of Elugelab in the Eniwetok Atoll was vaporised. A circular crater 200 feet deep and more than a mile across was torn in the ocean floor, big enough to fit several buildings of the size of the Pentagon and deeper than the height of the Empire State Building. The explosion lifted into the air some 80 million tons of solid material that would be dispersed around the world. Millions of gallons of water turned into steam. "Mike" had an incredible yield of 10.4 megatons. Mankind had entered the age of megatons.”, wrote Edward Teller, Energy from Heaven and Earth (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1979), p. 150-151; Robert Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982 ed), pp. 272-73.

The world's most powerful fission device was tested by the United States in the "King" shot of November 16, 1952. It was dropped from an aircraft, exploded at an altitude of 1,480 feet above the target, and is estimated to have a yield of 500 kilotons. Although this powerful fission device was originally suggested as an alternative to the H-bomb, it became an additional component of the American thermonuclear armoury.57 Thomas Murray, frequently described as "the conscience" of the AEC, witnessed the "Mike" explosion and felt that he "might be gazing into eternity, or into the gates of hell." Such violent manifestations of the power "latent in nature's miniature solar systems make a man stand riveted and dumbfounded." He tried for a bilateral moratorium on thermonuclear testing.

"Bravo" Test: The first deliverable American H-bomb, code-named 'Bravo' was the first in a series of six thermonuclear devices--"Romeo", "Koon", "Union", "Yankee", and "Nectar"--tested under "Operation Castle." Their yields varied from about one-tenth of a megaton to 26 megatons. Richard Garwin played a major role in working out the design modifications needed to convert "Mike" into a practical weapon.63 Weighing a relatively portable 23,500 pounds, "Bravo" was detonated in the early hours of March 1, 1954, at the tip of Namu Island. It had a yield of 15 megatons and its fireball lighted the skies for more than a hundred miles. It was the most powerful nuclear explosion ever conducted by the United States and, with the explosive force equal to that of about 750 Hiroshima bombs, it was till then the largest manmade explosion in world history. A freight train carrying its equivalent in TNT would have run from Maine to California. Its fireball was nearly four miles wide and literally vaporised the entire test island and parts of two others. It created a gaping hole in the ocean floor which was one mile wide and 200 feet deep. Its fallout covered 50,000 square-miles which passed over the surrounding islands, showering 28 Americans and about 250 local inhabitants with radioactive dust. Hiroshima paled in comparison to it.

In a book Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press), 1994, pp. 302-304; Rhodes, n. 2, pp. 541-2; A. Constandina Titus, Bombs in the Backyard (Rino & Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1986).

The crew of a small Japanese fishing trawler, Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon), was casting nets 85 miles east of the test site to catch tuna fish for the last time before heading for home. Early in the morning, Shinzo Suyuki was relaxing on the deck. Startled by the thermonuclear flash he shouted, "The sun's rising in the west!" A few minutes later came the shock wave, which was like an earthquake at sea. The 23 crewmen were exposed to radioactive fallout and by the time they reached homeport they were suffering from radiation poisoning.

Their arrival caused a sensation in Japan. One of them shivering in a hospital, said "Our fate menaces mankind. God grant that they may listen." Radio operator Aikichi Kuboyama died on September 23, 1954, thus becoming the first victim of the H-bomb.65 The American Atomic Energy Commission never issued a formal statement of his death. His funeral was attended by more than 400,000 people. A few months later, over 30 million Japanese signed a petition calling for a ban on nuclear testing; this led to the convening of the first World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Hiroshima on August 5, 1995. Professor Mitsu Taketani suggested in a radio broadcast that the contaminated fish should be sent to American Ambassador John Allison for his dinner.