Were there Really Earthquakes? – Part IV

Continued from the previous post regarding the unusual and specific wordage of events that accompanied the destruction outlined in 3 Nephi and Helaman 14, and the earthquakes and volcanoes behind the destruction.

From Samuel the Lamanite we find that existing mountains were leveled and became valleys, and other valleys became mountains, whose height was great (Helaman 14:23). From Zenos and the Disciple Nephi we find a “vaporous darkness,” volcanologists—a geologist who studies the processes and formation and eruptive activity of volcanoes—tells us that such a vaporous darkness is the result of volcanic ash which can be so thick it can extinguish not only all light, but even oxygen, suffocating those over which it falls. 

Top: Vesuvius (NOAA); Bottom: Herculean. Both eruptions spewed ash into the air so thick people could hardly see beyond themselves

 

An example of this is found in the eruption of Mount Visuvius in the summertime of 79 AD when the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by an avalanche of boiling mud and lava about 40 and 75 feet underground respectively. In one of the most unbelievable catastrophes in the history of the world described by Pliny the Younger very similar to Nephi’s record.

The point is, the unbelievable destruction that took place in the Land of Promise at the same time of the crucifixion in Jerusalem, was prophesied by Samuel the Lamanite, observed in a vision by Nephi, and experienced first-hand and dutifully recorded by the disciple Nephi. In addition, we have several scientific reports of past incidents of volcanic eruption shooting ash into the air that blocked out all light, with a 83-day comparison in Exodus.

In the Disciples account of the destruction, we find that the following occurred in a three-hour span:

1. A storm that was worse than any ever known in the land (3 Nephi 8:5)

• In fact, while there is yet no such thing as a category 6 hurricane or tropical storm—the highest level or top of the scale for the most powerful, most devastating hurricane or tropical storm capable of destroying entire cities like New Orleans or New York – is a category 5 storm. With this in mind, and considering the extreme damage described by the Disciple Nephi, may well have been a Category 7 storm—which is a hypothetical rating beyond the maximum rating of Category 5. Today a combination of warmer oceans and more water in the atmosphere could make past storms pale by comparison and expect to see Category 6 storms in the near future.

Conceptual Cross-section of an Elevated MCS: Large multicell storms consist of a large number of individual cells in close proximity to each other so that they interact in some way. New cells usually initiate before older cells dissipate, which means that the mesoconvective system (or mesoscale convective system—MCS, tends to live considerably longer than an individual updraft, usually on the scale of many hours

 

A Category 7 storm would likely have winds between 215 and 245 mph, with a minimum pressure between 820-845 millibars, and a large wind field with a small eye. Such storms on the Mesoscale Convective System is a collection of thunderstorms that act as a system and can spread across an entire state lasting more than 12 hours. According to the NSSL (National Severe Storms Laboratory) these are called derechos, which is a Mesoscale Convective Vortex within a convective system that pulls winds into a circling pattern, or vortex. With a core of 30 to 60 miles wide and 1 to 3 miles deep, the Vortex can persist up to 12 hours after its parent system has dissipated. This orphaned Vortex then becomes the seed of the next thunderstorm outbreak and can serve as the nucleus for a tropical storm or hurricane, keeping the storm alive over an extended period.

These derechos are long-lived wind storms that produce straight line wind damage and widespread ferocious bands of rapidly moving thunderstorms. Although a derecho can produce destruction similar to that of tornadoes, the damage typically is directed in one direction along a relatively straight swath, called a “straight-line wind damage,” which is sometimes used to describe derecho damage. By definition, if the wind damage swath extends more than 240 miles and includes extreme wind gusts along most of its length, then the event may be classified as a derecho, and be “a storm that was worse than any ever known in the land.”

Top: The manner of lightning strikes occurs from four different systems; Bottom: A large branching of lightening strikes

 

2 Lightning that was worse than any ever known in the land (3 Nephi 8:7)

• Cities were burned with fire (since there was no electricity or gas to start these totally destructive fires—it would have taken continual lightning strikes). There are three primary types of lightning, and a fourth (secondary) type which includes: cloud-to-ground (the most commonly known type), cloud-to-air, and cloud-to-cloud (intracloud—sometimes called "sheet lightning" because it lights up the sky with a sheet of light). The fourth is ground to cloud. With cloud-to-ground lightning, the rapid discharge of lightning is a channel of negative charge that is attracted to the positively charged ground. Negative lightning accounts for the majority of strikes in a storm and are dangerous; however, though positive lightning strikes, which originate in the top of the cloud where there are positive charges, account for less than 5% of lightning strikes, they are the deadliest. The staccato lightning is a very loud cloud-to-ground lightning strike that is a short-duration stroke that often, but not always, appears as a single very bright flash and often has considerable branching—a positive strike consists of only one return stroke which is bright and very loud with sounds consisting of sonic booms.

3. Thunder that was worse than any ever known in the land (3 Nephi 8:12)

• Thunder is caused by the rapid expansion of the air surrounding the path of a lightning bolt, both during or without a storm. These lightning bolts were constant for three hours in the Land of Promise, and so striking that the Disiple Nephi mentioned it four times in thirteen verses, leading to it being the worst ever known in the Land of Promise.

Most thunder storms form with three stages—the cumulus stage when the storm clouds form, the mature stage when the storm is fully formed, and the dissipating stage when the storm weakens and breaks apart. In the case of the Nephites this took three hours from formation to dissipation. There are four types of thunderstorms—single-cell, multi-cell cluster, multi-cell lines, and supercells, the latter being the strongest and most severe. In these thunderstorms,  obviously, lightning, which is a discharge of electricity, causes thunder, which is a shock wave that turns into a booming sound wave called thunder. A single stroke of lightning heats the air around it to 50,000ºF., which causes he air to expand explosively fast, which in turn creates a shock wave that turns into a loud and sharp explosion.

From the clouds to a nearby tree or roof, a lightning bolt takes only a few thousands of a second to split through the air. As this lightning connects to the ground from the cloud, a second stroke of lightning will return from the ground to the clouds following the same channel as the first strike. The heat from the electricity of this return stroke raises the temperature of the surrounding air, and since the lightning strike takes so little time to go from cloud to ground, the heated air, which is compressed and has no time to expand, raises the air from 10 to 100 times the normal atmospheric pressure and the compressed air explodes outward from the channel, forming a shock wave of compressed particles in every direction. Like an explosion the rapidly expanding waves of compressed air create a loud, booming burst of noise.

(See the next post for the continuation of this list)