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Nature has many ways to kill us. But none are as sudden and catastrophic as a major earthquake. They demolish not only buildings, but something very basic within the human psyche.

The Greeks believed earthquakes were the result of a vengeful Poseidon smashing the earth with his trident. The book of Revelations is full of seismic upheaval: "I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became as blood."� In the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, religious Indonesians thought they'd been punished for straying from the path of true Islam. Pat Robertson became an instant figure of Internet ridicule on Wednesday when he suggested that the earthquake in Haiti...