Bullshit. Earthquake in San Francisco

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Russians in San Francisco About 75,000 Russian-speaking people live in San Francisco. The first Russian speakers appeared in California in the 18th century, when Russian ships began to enter this territory. In the early 1800s, ships often landed at the place where

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA California, San Francisco, April 18, 1906 Nearly 700 people died and most of San Francisco was reduced to rubble during the great earthquake and fire it caused on April 18, 1906.* * *No earthquake in world history did not have

What causes an earthquake? Everyone knows well that earthquakes are natural disasters that quite often occur in one place or another on our planet. The earth begins to tremble underfoot, wide cracks open in it, like bottomless gorges,

Earthquake Signs of an upcoming earthquake: Your pets begin to show extreme anxiety: they bark for no reason, try to go outside, and pull their offspring out of the house. Mice run outside in flocks. The dishes rattle and sway

One of the largest earthquakes in US history occurred in the early morning of April 18, 1906. Its epicenter was located at a shallow depth just three kilometers from the city of San Francisco. The strength of the tremors reached 7.9 on the Richter scale. Oscillations in the earth's crust were clearly felt at a distance from Oregon to Los Angeles, and in the other direction - almost to Nevada.

As a result of the earthquake and fires that broke out at the site of destroyed houses, about 3,000 people died. As more than 80% of the buildings collapsed almost to the ground, 300,000 citizens were left on the streets. A special tent camp was organized for these people on the city beach of Ocean Beach.

Start

At 5 a.m. in San Francisco and surrounding areas populated areas a powerful seismic shock occurred. Since many residents were fast asleep in their houses and apartments at that moment, they did not have time to realize anything and died instantly. Those who managed to get out from under the rubble faced a new test. The streets of the metropolis were flooded with water. When the high waters left San Francisco, the city was engulfed in severe fires.

All fire extinguishing systems were disabled, and rescuers had to fight the fire with improvised means, which did not lead to the desired results. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that some residents, whose houses were insured against fire, but not against earthquakes, deliberately set their homes on fire.

Radical solutions

In order to save at least a small part of the houses, it was decided to blow up some of the buildings that were not completely destroyed, after digging out trenches that were supposed to prevent the spontaneous spread of fire.

The city declared a state of emergency due to the appearance of looters. They entered dilapidated premises and took out everything that could be of any value. Wanting to stop lawlessness, the leadership allowed the soldiers to shoot at the looters. During the liquidation of the consequences of the earthquake, more than 500 people were shot.

Two earthquakes, in 1906 and 1989, that occurred in San Francisco are just a rehearsal for the coming spectacle of disasters. They are the harbingers of the Great Earthquake that could wipe out this American city from the face of the Earth...

They managed to build San Francisco next to the San Andreas Fault. This fault is already 150 million years old. And occasionally, sections of the fault begin to move.

…The early morning of April 18, 1906 did not foretell trouble. The sun began to rise. The birds began to sing. And suddenly, all at once, everything fell silent. There was an oppressive silence for a few seconds. A rumble was heard coming from underground, and after it, at 5 hours 12 minutes, the city was shaken by the first blow of the earthquake, awakening the peacefully sleeping inhabitants. After 25 seconds, a second shock followed, many times stronger than the first. Crude seismographs at the time recorded the magnitude of the earthquake as 7.9 on the Richter scale, but scientists now believe it could have been 8.2.

Instantly, the wide avenues turned into winding alleys littered with the rubble of houses. Most of the bridges collapsed, and those remaining standing were bent and twisted. As a secondary factor of the disaster, many fires broke out in the city. And, due to ruptures in gas lines, they spread at high speed. 80% of the buildings were wooden buildings. Extinguishing was complicated by the fact that the water supply was also damaged. Some residents, whose houses were insured against fire, but were not insured against earthquakes, set fire to them themselves. Panic gripped the city. The telephone and telegraph did not work. It was impossible to contact other cities.

Here is what an eyewitness to the events, Mary Monti, writes:

"I was thrown out of bed. The walls of the house in which we lived began to tremble and become covered with cracks. Then the plaster fell off with a noise. It broke the web woven big spider. We ran out into the street - the road was covered with mounds, they moved, swelling, as if in a boiling cauldron. My mother gathered all the children and we rode from the city by cart to the mountains. Fires were burning everywhere. Suddenly a new fire broke out - a gas line burst and flaming gasoline began to pour out into the street."

Almost immediately after the destruction of the city, gangs of robbers and marauders began to dominate the streets. These evil spirits emptied destroyed shops and cleaned out the pockets of the dead lying along the drainage ditches.

Having captured the criminals at the scene of the crime, enraged residents hanged them without trial on surviving lamp posts.
Jack London, who was reporting on the earthquake for a weekly magazine at the time, reported: “San Francisco is dead!..”

Of the 400,000 citizens, about 3,000 died. 225,000 lost their homes. 28,000 buildings were destroyed.

Unfortunately, scientists do not know enough about the processes that move the layers inside the earth. It is clear that the disaster was directly related to the St. Andreas Fault running near the city, and that the land on the west side of the fault line has moved north. But how the process itself occurs and what sets it in motion still has no clear explanation.

Here's what earthquake expert William Baken says:

"Our main and immediate goal is to study the process of earthquake initiation. Then we want to find out how it can be predicted in potentially dangerous areas."

The city was restored. But in October 1989, another underground strike occurred. Housewife Annetta Henry, who was on one of the busiest streets in the city at the time of the shock, recalls:

"It was as if God clapped his hands and a wave went through the ground. Cars on the highway were jumping up and down like in a Disney cartoon. Every time there is an earthquake in California, we giggle, we are calm and confident. But now everything it was different. We were haunted by the thought that the jokes were over. It seemed to me that a real Big Earthquake had begun."

But it was not a Great Earthquake. This blow was much weaker than in 1906. It resulted in fewer than 100 deaths.

According to the predictions of seismologists, a new earthquake in San Francisco should occur within the next 30 years. And in terms of destructive consequences it can surpass the previous two. This probability is estimated at 62%. No one can predict when this might happen.

A modeled picture of the potential event suggests that at least 3,400 people would die if it occurred in the middle of the day. From 160 to 250 thousand people will have to be evacuated. Three hundred thousand will have to move to new homes. Possible property damage could be approximately $150 billion.

Nature has demonstrated its might twice in the eastern United States in the past century, proving that it is much stronger than the strongest concrete and steel. This happened in 1906 and 1989.

But these two earthquakes that plunged San Francisco into chaos are just harbingers of a future catastrophe that could literally level this city in the near future. This is not a prediction from Nostradamus. The fact is that the very location of San Francisco suggests that one fine day it will be destroyed and disappear into huge cracks in the earth’s crust, preserved only in human memory, in photographs and postcards.

The city is threatened with destruction by a giant ancient tectonic fault. Named after St. Andreas, it is a 650-mile crack in the Earth's crust where the Pacific plate gradually moves under land in the California region.

On April 18, 1906, the first major earthquake occurred and devastated San Francisco. Feeling the first blows of the elements, the residents of the gold rush city, which by that time had become one of the most prosperous cities on the West Coast, became alarmed. The shocks followed one after another, and it was very strange to feel the earth trembling under your feet and see the furniture jumping.

On this tragic day, when the servants woke up the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, resting in his luxurious New York apartment, and told him that his native San Francisco was destroyed by tremors and fires, he opened his eyes and replied: “Don’t overact - in California experiences frequent earthquakes."

But the San Francisco earthquake far exceeded all reasonable assumptions. It was one of the biggest cataclysms of the century. The strength of the tremors was 8.3 on the Richter scale. The earthquake's power exceeded the power of thirty nuclear bombs exploded simultaneously. Eight hundred people died under destroyed buildings and in fires in the first minutes after the tremors.

Mary Monti, who was 4 years old in 1906, recalled that tragic day: “I was thrown out of bed. The walls of the house in which we lived began to tremble and become covered with cracks. We ran out into the street - the road was covered with mounds, they moved, swelling, as if in a boiling cauldron. My mother gathered all the children and we rode in a cart to the mountains. Fires were burning everywhere. Suddenly a new fire broke out - a gas line burst and gasoline began to pour out into the street.”

The earthquake destroyed the water supply, and firefighters were unable to get to work properly. Therefore, in the Telegraph Hill area, where the richest families of Italian immigrants lived in the city, they tried to extinguish the fire with tens of thousands of liters of wine.

Looters took advantage of the panic that gripped the city. Gangs of robbers raced through the streets, emptying destroyed shops and emptying the pockets of the dead who lay along the gutters. Enraged residents hanged bandits caught at the scene of the crime without trial on surviving lamp posts.

Writer Jack London, reporting for the weekly magazine, reported: “San Francisco is dead! On Wednesday at 5.15 am the earthquake occurred. A minute later, flames shot up into the sky. No one put out the fire, people were not organized, there was no communication... In a word, all the ingenious human defense systems were destroyed by the thirty-second movement of the earth’s crust.”

The tragedy has forced the US government to invest money in studying the faulting of the earth's crust and developing measures that will help predict the next natural disaster.

While scientists understand that the disaster is directly related to the St. Andreas Fault and that land on the western side of the fault line has moved north, they still know very little about the processes that move and shake the land.

Harry Fielding Reid, a geologist from Pennsylvania, observed the vibrations of fence posts and road damage, and discovered that the huge blocks of land on both sides of the fault were under tremendous stress long before the disaster. Having accumulated colossal energy, titanic forces moved the land.

In 1970, scientists were able to determine that sections of soil along the fault were moving at different speeds, causing more stress in some areas than others.

When the colossal energy accumulates again, the next earthquake will occur. Expert David Langston said: "All we can do is continue our efforts to study the processes to give reliable information to the population as the huge mass of land moves on."

Based on basic research, the Federal Emergency Management Agency developed a scenario in 1980 in which San Francisco and Los Angeles would be the first to be affected by an earthquake. These grim forecasts suggest up to 50,000 deaths.

On October 17, 1989, during the evening rush hour, the elements dealt a new blow to the city, turning many buildings into ruins in 15 seconds, plunging the historic Marina district into a conflagration, destroying a section of the Bay Bridge, and tore up an entire mile of highway overpass, under the rubble of which More than a hundred people died. Dozens of people were buried in their cars under the multi-ton weight of collapsed concrete.

"The concrete crushed them," said Auckland's emergency manager. - It looked like a battlefield. The victims trapped under tons of rocks were honking their horns desperately, and we threw in a huge amount of lifting equipment and cranes in hopes of rescuing them. The fading sounds of car sirens gradually died as the batteries died, but we knew that there were people there. It was a terrible picture."

At night, the ruins were illuminated by fires, glass fell from swaying skyscrapers, built without taking into account the effect of the earthquake, and the eerie sounds of sirens were heard.

After some time, the destruction, which affected mainly old buildings, was localized. For example, the collapsed section of the highway that caused the most casualties was over thirty years old.

Experts agreed that the destruction in San Francisco would have been even greater if not for the California building code, introduced after 1906 to minimize damage from future disasters and supplemented by lessons from the 1971 San Fernando and 1985 earthquakes. in Mexico City, which forced builders to pay special attention to the anti-seismic stability of houses and structures.

Despite the fact that quite a lot of time has passed since the last earthquake, San Francisco is still dealing with its consequences. And city residents even flaunt their fatalistic attitude towards the future possible aggression of nature. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Herb Cohen summed up the post-earthquake sentiment: “We are living under the sword of Damocles.”
http://sokrytoe.ru/9492-1906-zemletryas enie-v-san-francisko.html

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake was an earthquake that occurred at 5:12 a.m. (local time) on April 18, 1906. The epicenter was 3 km west of San Francisco, the surface wave magnitude was 7.7; seismic moment - 7.9.

The tremors were felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, and inland to central Nevada. As a result of the earthquake and subsequent fires, up to 3,000 people died, 225,000–300,000 were left homeless, and 80% of the buildings in San Francisco were destroyed.

The earthquake was accompanied by ground displacements along the San Andreas fault at a distance of up to 6.0-8.5 m. Displacements were observed in its northern third over an area 477 km long.

At 5:12 am local time, an earthquake foreshock occurred, 20-25 seconds later it was followed by the main seismic shock, and in the next 45-60 seconds a series of aftershocks took place.

However, the main damage (up to 80%) was caused not by the earthquake, but by the fires that started because of it, which lasted four days. Many houses were set on fire by their own owners, since they were insured against fire, but not against destruction as a result of an earthquake. This is reported, for example, in a memo by US Signal Corps Captain Leonard D. Wildman. Extinguishing the fires was complicated by the fact that the city's water supply system was destroyed by the earthquake.
Immediately after the disaster, 498 deaths were officially announced in San Francisco, 102 in San Jose and 64 in Santa Rosa. Now this figure is considered to be greatly underestimated; it is known, for example, that the victims from Chinatown were completely ignored in the calculations. The total death toll is currently estimated at 3,000. Of San Francisco's population of 410,000, 225,000–300,000 were left homeless.

The total damage from the earthquake and fires was estimated in 1906 at $400 million (taking into account inflation, the equivalent of $6.5 billion in 2006).
Although it is often reported that San Francisco Mayor Eugene Schmitz and General Frederick Funston, commander of the Presidio military base, declared martial law in the city, it was not imposed. 4,000 soldiers who participated in extinguishing fires and eliminating their consequences were subordinate civil services. Schmitz, however, already on April 18 issued an order allowing the police and soldiers to shoot captured looters on the spot: about 500 people were killed.

The military provided dynamite to blow up buildings to prevent the fire from spreading. They also provided the victims with food and shelter: they built 5,610 temporary houses. These houses were rented for $2 per month, the maximum number of people living in them was 16,448, in 1907 almost all of them were abandoned. On July 1, 1906, the city authorities found it possible to refuse further assistance to the army.

A temporary tent city for those without housing was set up at the local Ocean Beach.

Material damage from the earthquake amounted to more than $500,000,000 (today this figure has increased by an order of magnitude).

Most of San Francisco's banks burned down. All the money was also destroyed in the fire. Only in the Italian Bank of Italy, whose head was Amadeo Giannini, about 80,000 American dollars were preserved.

By order of the board of directors and its chairman, bank employees began to give this money to those who wanted to rebuild their home. This is the time that is considered the date of birth of Bank of America.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9 7%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D1%8 F%D1%81 %D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%B2_%D 0%A1%D0%B0%D0%BD-%D0%A4%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B D %D1%86%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE_(1906)

I also found this fact “Mary Monti, who was 4 years old in 1906, recalled that tragic day: “I was thrown out of bed. The walls of the house in which we lived began to tremble and become covered with cracks. We ran out into the street - the road " became covered with mounds, they moved, swelling, as if in a boiling cauldron. My mother gathered all the children, and we rode on a cart to the mountains. Fires were burning everywhere. Suddenly a new fire broke out - a gas line burst, and gasoline began to pour out into the street."

thoughts: 1906, gasoline, oil refinery, source of oil….
For example, there are written testimonies from motorists
traveling through Germany in 1905. Autotourists in one of the country's cities
We couldn't find a place to refuel. We turned to the locals for advice
residents, they suggested looking for gasoline at the city pharmacy. However there
it turned out that the supply of this “drug” had run out, and the pharmacist advised
to the doctor. Oh, happiness! At the doctor's house, he found several barrels of the necessary "medicine".

Somewhat later, fuel for the first cars could be purchased more or less
centrally, but in buckets or bottles. Time passed, they appeared
specialized warehouses and special containers. True, they were used
uncomfortable. The process was extremely labor-intensive and time-consuming. For such a simple
The operation, like refueling, easily took an hour and a half.

The problem was solved with the advent of gas stations. History of gas stations as specialized
stores began in 1907, when the Standard Oil of Seattle
California (now ChevronTexaco) opened its first gas station. http://www.automotivehistory.ru/index.p hp?option=com_ ..

A mighty mixture: stages of development of automotive fuel

In 1876, German engineer Nikolaus August Otto built the world's first internal combustion engine. The key device of the engine was the carburetor, in which fuel was sprayed and mixed with air. Then the mixture was fed into the cylinder, compressed and ignited by an electric spark. Hot gases pushed the piston, which turned the crankshaft, which in turn rotated the wheels through a chain or shaft. This is the operating principle of an internal combustion engine. It is used for Various types fuel. The most traditional are gasoline, diesel fuel and kerosene. All of them arose long before the advent of cars.

In 1825, the English test physicist Michael Faraday was the first to officially produce gasoline.

The first technological manipulations with oil were carried out at the Ukhta (Russia) oil field in 1745. It was there that the first oil refining plant was built. It was very simple: a boiler with a tube was placed in the furnace, which led through a barrel of water into an empty barrel. A barrel of water played the role of a refrigerator. Refined oil was used mainly for domestic purposes. At that time, many rooms were illuminated by lamps into which a mixture of refined petroleum and vegetable oil was poured.
But the English physicist Michael Faraday was the first to officially obtain gasoline. Of all the compounds of carbon and hydrogen in 1825, he isolated one that could quickly ignite. And since he synthesized it from oil extracted somewhere in Asia Minor, he named it with an Arabic word. Gasoline is an fragrant substance. This is how the word is translated from Arabic.

In 1891, the Russian engineer Shukhov invented cracking (from the English cracking - splitting). This is the process of decomposition of petroleum hydrocarbons into more volatile substances. Thanks to cracking, the yield of gasoline from oil significantly increases.
Gasoline was used as fuel only in late XIX century, when Mr. Daimler improved the internal combustion engine and made it driving force on cars. When there were problems with gasoline, it was at the end of the 19th century! For example, there is written evidence from motorists traveling through Germany in 1905. Motorists in one of the country's cities could not find a place to refuel. They turned to local residents for advice, who suggested looking for gasoline at the city pharmacy. However, it turned out that the supply of this “drug” had run out, and the pharmacist advised him to consult a doctor. Oh, happiness! At the doctor's house, he found several barrels of the necessary "medicine".

Somewhat later, fuel for the first cars could be purchased more or less centrally, but in buckets or bottles. As time passed, specialized warehouses and special containers appeared. True, it was inconvenient to use them. The process was extremely labor-intensive and time-consuming. Such a simple operation as refueling easily took an hour and a half.

The problem was solved with the advent of gas stations. The history of gas stations as specialty stores dates back to 1907, when Standard Oil of California (now ChevronTexaco) opened the first gas station in Seattle. In the twenties, the first mechanical dosing columns appeared, and in the thirties, columns with electric dosing units appeared. The history of services at gas stations, primarily stores at gas stations, is interesting. For example, in our country, stores at gas stations are considered as an annex to the gas station business. In the West, the situation developed exactly the opposite - gas stations began at the store.

Since his student years, Rudolf Diesel dreamed of creating an engine whose efficiency would exceed its steam counterpart.

But humanity did not live on gasoline alone at the beginning of the century. An alternative and competitor to gasoline was diesel fuel - in modern parlance "diesel". The concept of “diesel” has become a household word in our time, and most people associate it with fuel, but the concept of “diesel fuel” comes from the name of the engine, and this engine is named after the German engineer Rudolf Diesel. Moreover, diesel essentially had nothing to do with diesel fuel. According to the inventor, the design was supposed to run on cheap coal dust. However, experiments have shown the impossibility of using it as fuel due to problematic supply to the cylinders. Then it was decided to try heavy oil fractions such as kerosene and fuel oil instead.

The principle of operation of a diesel engine was as follows: fuel was sucked into the cylinders and compressed under pressure to such an extent that spontaneous combustion occurred. The idea was truly revolutionary, and was filed as a patent in 1893, but it took another five years to design a working motor. It was very far from a modern diesel engine. The three-meter-high unit with one cylinder developed 172 rpm and “produced” from 17 to 19 liters. With. At the same time, the efficiency was 26% - twice as high as that of steam engine! The first such engine ran on kerosene.
As it has already become clear, “diesel” at one time was not a fuel, but a motor, and it ran on kerosene. He began to consume diesel fuel at the suggestion of the Russian “oil king” Emmanuel Nobel. Nobel paid a lot of money to purchase a license from Diesel and decided to organize the production of engines at his machine-building plant in St. Petersburg. True, he was not happy that the design ran on kerosene. He forced the designers of his plant to rework the engine, and it began to run on crude oil, and later on diesel fuel.

The first working Diesel engine ran on kerosene

That is, it was not Rudolph who came up with the idea of ​​​​filling diesel fuel with diesel fuel. Moreover, during his lifetime, all of Diesel’s attempts to equip a car with an engine of his own production were in vain. Only his followers succeeded ten years later.
Diesel himself suddenly died (or rather disappeared) under mysterious circumstances on the night of September 29-30, 1913.

The work carried out by Rudolf Diesel on the creation of automobile engines was continued by engineer Prosper Lerange from the well-known company Benz & Cie. Lerange invented and patented diesel engine with a prechamber. But the main obstacle remained the compressor - it was different large size and could not work at high speeds. In 1922, this problem was solved by the German engineer Robert Bosch, who designed a fuel pump high pressure(fuel injection pump), which made possible the emergence of a high-speed diesel engine. In 1923, the world's first diesel truck, the Benz 5K3, was released. It was a 5-ton machine, on which a 4-cylinder 8.8-liter engine with a pre-chamber was installed, developing power from 45 to 50 hp. With. at 1000 rpm.

The first passenger car with diesel engine"Mercedes-Benz 260D" appeared in 1936

Experiments with diesel engines for passenger cars The concern began in 1933. Only after lengthy research and testing was it possible to create a motor with a smaller displacement and with an acceptable level of vibration during operation.

Mercedes-Benz with a diesel engine received the index 260D. It had a 2545 cc four-cylinder engine. cm (hence the designation 260) developing 45 liters. With. at 3000 rpm. Its main advantage was its efficiency. Average fuel consumption was just over 9 l/100 km, while its petrol counterpart consumed 13 l/100 km.

Such is the confusing story with the advent of diesel fuel. It is not known who and when was the first to use the word “diesel” as a designation of fuel, but one thing can be said for sure: a diesel engine is an internal combustion engine with self-ignition of fuel from compression. Currently, the phrase diesel fuel (solar oil, diesel fuel) refers to a liquid product used as fuel in a diesel engine.

Before 1973, few people in the world thought about the cost of gasoline

It would seem that gasoline and diesel fuel are constant travel companions of automobile engines. But this is far from true. At the beginning of the 20th century, gasoline for a long time competed with alcohol and vegetable oil in the fight for the love of car enthusiasts. Petroleum fuel won only in the late 1930s.

The main argument in favor of biofuels came from Henry Ford, who in 1908 launched his famous Model T, which could run on gasoline, ethanol, or a mixture of both.

What about Ford, if during the First World War, cars in most countries of the world used ethanol as fuel. After the war, ethanol's position was stronger than ever. It seemed that gasoline was about to disappear forever from the everyday life of motorists.
But the second World War mixed up all the cards. There was a sharp decline in oil and gasoline prices, which drove alcohol out of tanks.

Everything returned to normal after the massive fuel crisis that arose in 1973. As you know, then the Arab exporting states imposed an embargo on oil supplies to the USA, Japan and Western Europe, causing gasoline prices to increase fivefold.
There is a new surge of interest in ethanol. IN last years this idea has become more relevant than ever. This is due to steadily rising oil prices.
There is a clear trend in the world to switch to biological fuels. Its most promising types are ethanol and biodiesel. Typically, ethanol is obtained from sugar cane and corn. In general, ethyl alcohol can be obtained from any plant, as long as it contains sugar and starch in sufficient quantities. Potatoes, beets, barley, wheat - everything is suitable. But the best option is sugar cane.

Brazil is a leading country in fuel production plant origin, which is commonly called biofuel. There, since 1975, a whole sugar cane growing industry has been operating there. But Brazil is famous not only for its huge cane plantations. Starting from the 70s, cars there were designed for a certain type of fuel - some for gasoline, and some for alcohol. Over the past 10 years, almost 90% of Brazilian cars produced can run on alcohol or gasoline, and these types can also be mixed in any proportion. The electronics that control the engine independently recognize the composition of the fuel, adapting the engine to it.

It's no secret that burning gasoline and diesel fuel leads to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - the main enemy of humanity, as it causes the greenhouse effect.

Of course, when using ethyl alcohol, car exhaust becomes cleaner. The problem here is different - during the production of ethanol, a lot of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Although supporters of ethanol claim that during the production process exactly the same amount of CO2 enters the atmosphere as was previously absorbed (as a result of photosynthesis) by the same plants that can be processed. It turns out that ethanol neutralizes itself and is absolutely harmless to the environment.
Of every 100 cars produced in the world today, 17 can run on ethanol only, and 70 can run on a mixture of E85 (85% ethanol and 15% gasoline). But absolutely everything can run efficiently on gasoline with the addition of 10-15% ethanol (this proportion is safe for traditional engines).

Already, car designers are beginning to introduce models with hybrid engines to the markets. A hybrid engine is actually a system of two engines - electric and gasoline - that work alternately or together. While the gasoline engine is running, the battery is charged.
Separately, it is worth mentioning developments that run on hydrogen, as well as electric motors.

Vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells are powered by the energy of the engine in which the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. The result of this reaction is electricity, which starts the engine.

Electric motors. A power plant of this type involves the use of powerful batteries, the energy of which is used to operate the engine. Charging these batteries is possible in most cases using a regular outlet. There is another side to the coin here. With frequent recharging through an outlet, batteries quickly become unusable. And disposing of large quantities of batteries is associated with enormous environmental damage.

There are other less popular, but no less effective alternatives. For example, the process of converting coal into liquid fuel for vehicles. This technology was invented by the Germans before World War II. The technology is not particularly complex. First, coal is brought into a gaseous state, then the flammable mixture of gases is converted into liquid products equivalent to gasoline, diesel or aviation fuel. In the United States, plants that convert coal into liquid transportation fuels use carbon sequestration technologies. Its main advantage is that harmful impurities such as sulfur and mercury are removed from the gas.
Since we are already talking about gases, let’s make a small digression towards gas as a fuel for cars. Back in the 30s of the 19th century, an engine running on a gas-air mixture was created. However, with the invention of the automobile, preference was given to gasoline. People remembered about gas only in the 30s of the last century. At first there were gas generator engines, the fuel for which was wood lumps.

They were burned in special containers called gas generators, with a lack of oxygen - as a result, a large number of under-oxidized products that could successfully burn in the engine cylinders. Gas generating units were quite bulky and heavy. Their weight ranged from 400 to 600 kg. Ignition of the gas generator took 10-14 minutes, the consumption of wood lumps was about 53 kg/100 km, and the power reserve was 60-70 km. Therefore, work on gas-cylinder cars immediately began. The Soviet Union was the first to act in this matter.

At the end of the 30s, gas-cylinder trucks ZIS-30 and GAZ-44 began to roll off the assembly lines of Soviet automobile factories, the engines of which used gas produced not by gas generators, but supplied from cylinders. And in Western countries they started thinking seriously about using gas after the oil crisis of the mid-70s.
Among the extraordinary methods of obtaining fuel, the efforts of the Japanese can be noted.

The Japanese have invented a car that can be filled with water

How do you fill your car engine with water? Developers from the Japanese Genepax said that in an engine of this model, water is split into hydrogen and oxygen. As a result, the car runs on hydrogen, according to the principle described just above. No one, however, has provided detailed details of this process.
Today there are already hundreds of types of fuel. However, it is worth noting that most of them are used sporadically and are more exclusive, and are unlikely to ever become widespread

Everything moved in dates, even some little things, inventions, apparently, and have still not been corrected since such discrepancies in dates appear.

Nature has demonstrated its might twice in the eastern United States in the past century, proving that it is much stronger than the strongest concrete and steel. This happened in 1906 and 1989.

But these two earthquakes that plunged San Francisco into chaos are just harbingers of a future catastrophe that could literally raze this city to the ground in the near future. This is not a prediction from Nostradamus. The fact is that the very location of San Francisco suggests that one fine day it will be destroyed and disappear into huge cracks in the earth’s crust, preserved only in human memory, in photographs and postcards.

The city is threatened with destruction by a giant ancient tectonic fault. Named after St. Andreas, it is a 650-mile-long crack in the Earth's crust where the Pacific Plate is gradually being pushed under land in the California region.

On April 18, 1906, the first major earthquake occurred and devastated San Francisco. Feeling the first blows of the elements, the residents of the gold rush city, which by that time had become one of the most prosperous cities on the West Coast, became alarmed. The shocks followed one after another, and it was very strange to feel the earth trembling under your feet and see the furniture jumping.

On this tragic day, when the servants woke up the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, resting in his luxurious New York apartment, and told him that his native San Francisco was destroyed by tremors and fires, he opened his eyes and replied: “Don’t overact - in California experiences frequent earthquakes."

But the San Francisco earthquake far exceeded all reasonable assumptions. It was one of the biggest cataclysms of the century. The strength of the tremors was 8.3 on the Richter scale. The earthquake's power exceeded the power of thirty nuclear bombs exploded simultaneously. Eight hundred people died under destroyed buildings and in fires in the first minutes after the tremors.

Mary Monti, who was 4 years old in 1906, recalled that tragic day: “I was thrown out of bed. The walls of the house in which we lived began to tremble and become covered with cracks. We ran out into the street - the road was covered with mounds, they moved, swelling, as if in a boiling cauldron. My mother gathered all the children and we rode in a cart to the mountains. Fires were burning everywhere. Suddenly a new fire broke out - a gas line burst and gasoline began to pour out into the street.”

The earthquake destroyed the water supply, and firefighters were unable to get to work properly. Therefore, in the Telegraph Hill area, where the richest families of Italian immigrants lived in the city, they tried to extinguish the fire with tens of thousands of liters of wine.

Looters took advantage of the panic that gripped the city. Gangs of robbers raced through the streets, emptying destroyed shops and emptying the pockets of the dead who lay along the gutters. Enraged residents hanged bandits captured at the scene of a crime without trial or investigation on surviving lamp posts.

Writer Jack London, reporting for the weekly magazine, reported: “San Francisco is dead! On Wednesday at 5:15 am the earthquake occurred. A minute later, flames shot up into the sky. No one put out the fire, people were not organized, there was no communication... In a word, all the ingenious human defense systems were destroyed by the thirty-second movement of the earth’s crust.”

The tragedy has forced the US government to invest money in studying the faulting of the earth's crust and developing measures that will help predict the next natural disaster.

While scientists understand that the disaster is directly related to the St. Andreas Fault and that land on the western side of the fault line has moved north, they still know very little about the processes that move and shake the land.

Harry Fielding Reid, a geologist from Pennsylvania, observed the vibrations of fence posts and road damage, and discovered that the huge blocks of land on both sides of the fault were under tremendous stress long before the disaster. Having accumulated colossal energy, titanic forces moved the land.

In 1970, scientists were able to determine that sections of soil along the fault were moving at different speeds, causing more stress in some areas than others.

When the colossal energy accumulates again, the next earthquake will occur. Expert David Langston said: "All we can do is continue our efforts to study the processes to give reliable information to the public as the huge mass of land moves on."

Based on basic research, the Federal Emergency Management Agency developed a scenario in 1980 in which San Francisco and Los Angeles would be the first to be affected by an earthquake. These grim forecasts suggest up to 50,000 deaths.

On October 17, 1989, during the evening rush hour, the elements dealt a new blow to the city, turning many buildings into ruins in 15 seconds, plunging the historic Marina district into a conflagration, destroying a section of the Bay Bridge, and toppling an entire mile of highway overpass, under the rubble of which people died more than a hundred people. Dozens of people were buried in their cars under the multi-ton weight of collapsed concrete.

"The concrete crushed them," said Auckland's emergency manager. - It looked like a battlefield. The victims trapped under tons of rocks were honking their horns desperately, and we threw in a huge amount of lifting equipment and cranes in hopes of rescuing them. The fading sounds of car sirens gradually died as the batteries died, but we knew that there were people there. It was a terrible picture."

At night, the ruins were illuminated by the fires, glass fell from the swaying skyscrapers, built without taking into account the effect of the earthquake, and the eerie sounds of sirens were heard.

After some time, the destruction, which affected mainly old buildings, was localized. For example, the collapsed section of the highway that caused the most casualties was over thirty years old.

Experts agreed that the destruction in San Francisco would have been even greater if not for the California building code, introduced after 1906 to minimize damage from future disasters and supplemented by lessons from the 1971 San Fernando and 1985 earthquakes. Mexico City, which forced builders to pay special attention to the anti-seismic stability of houses and structures.

Despite the fact that quite a lot of time has passed since the last earthquake, San Francisco is still dealing with its consequences. And city residents even flaunt their fatalistic attitude towards the future possible aggression of nature. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Herb Cohen summed up the post-earthquake sentiment: “We are living under the sword of Damocles.”