Will A Planetary Alignment Cause A 9.8 Earthquake Today? (Video)

An earth-shattering 9.8 earthquake is coming today! At least according to your weird uncle’s Facebook page. The Big One is expected to hit today!, May 28th, thanks a lot to a planetary alignment forecasted by Nostradamus and some arbitrary guy in the Netherlands. But it’s all bullshit.

The video below currently has over half a million views, and if I dare try to make a prediction of my own, it will get plenty more between now and midnight. The video was created by Ditrianum Media, which appears to be a lone guy in the Netherlands named Frank who is intrigued with 9/11 conspiracy theories and is convinced that a spirit of some sort is speaking with him.

The narrator of the video clip talks about his thought:

The 12th of August, 2013, I received an important message. Well, for me it felt important. I explained that I felt that it came directly from Spirit. And this message, what it told me, what I was being told, is that there would be a very very large earthquake or some kind of major event with very much energy release. And at the time the message was that it would be on the west coast of North America and that it would be comparable to a 9.8 magnitude earthquake.

The narrator goes on to reveal that a planetary alignment is going to be the trigger of this divinely predicted occurrence. The only problem, apart from the fact that you should never trust random shit you find on YouTube? Planetary alignments can not trigger earthquakes. They just can’t. If you need somebody to do the math for you, Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy blog has gone ahead and worked it out.

But no matter how many times it’s debunked, we’re going to keep enjoying this Frank guy. Actually, Frank launched a new video today. He points to some latest large earthquakes in the Solomon Islands and Tonga as proof that something is indeed taking place. He pulls up a graphic of the solar system and contends that an alignment between Earth, Mars and Mercury is at fault.

The problem with linking to big earthquakes as a sign of things to come is that reasonable sized earthquakes are occurring all the time. If you don’t believe me, there are earthquakebots on Twitter you can follow. Huge earthquakes are astonishingly common. Of course, it will be fascinating to see what kind of video Frank launches this coming weekend when the Big One doesn’t hit.

This certainly is not the first time that people have put forth the notion that a planetary alignment will trigger disastrous earthquakes. The 1974 book The Jupiter Effect, by John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann, cautioned that just such a thing was going to occur in 1982. And you can guess how that prediction panned out.

At this moment, you may be asking yourself if this YouTube video and its sloppy ideas might have anything to do with a key motion picture being launched on Friday. And to be truthful, we don’t know. But if this really is just a viral marketing plan for San Andreas (out this Friday) then I’d have to point out it’s not terribly bright. If I believed a major earthquake was going to hit soon the last place I’d want to be hanging out is a jampacked theater.

The Big One is undoubtedly coming. It’s inescapable. But if anybody tells you they know exactly when it will take place, you’re going to want to take that with a boulder-sized grain of salt.