...you are awakened by the violent shaking of your bed. Your house sounds like it is groaning; the windows are making a hideous screeching sound and flying objects bang against swaying walls. The 50-pound TV flies across the room amid a shower of books and bookends. Kitchen cabinets fly open and dishes shatter across the tile floor. Drawers are jettisoned and splinter apart on impact; their contents flying projectiles. The refrigerator walks across the floor and water sloshes out of the toilets onto the floors creating slippery streams.
The floor jolts up and down as you run across it trying to hold onto the walls to keep from falling down or slipping. Your only thought is to find your kids and hang on tight. Finally, you make your way to the back yard clinging to each other. By the light of the moon you watch in terror as giant waves form in the swimming pool and heave themselves beyond their bounds. House and car alarms are screaming through the neighborhood...some from being crushed by falling debris and others from the bizarre movement of the earth. You're not sure if the intense rumbling sounds you hear are coming from the earth itself or from everything around you that is shaking so violently. Finally, it stops.
When the calm comes, your legs are so weak and unstable, you sink to the ground. Now what? Within minutes there is a tsunami that devastates several coastal towns. The house alarms that have been blaring away are suddenly silenced. Blackout. No electricity, no phone service; even the police cannot call each other. No running water. No gas for your home or car. Your home is a shambles and your world is covered in gray brown dust. Then the aftershocks begin. The aftershocks are as unsettling as the initial earthquake. You close your eyes and wait to see if it will escalate or calm down. You have never experienced anything like this before! When the light of morning finally comes, your legs will hurt like you ran a marathon.
Looters begin quietly stealing from grocery stores, granaries, gas stations, damaged homes and businesses. Fear escalates into panic in the blackness and no one can call for help. Lawlessness erupts when looters begin openly smashing holes in walls, wrenching gates open and breaking through metal barriers into stores. No one can stop them. They steal what they can then set fires to the grocery stores leaving no food available for anyone. They plunder and burn other stores like Blockbuster; chaos reigns. Police use tear gas and water cannons to try to control the vandalism but the pillaging continues. It's a free-for-all. Fires rage everywhere and black smoke billows into a darkening sky.
Long lines of people holding containers wait for water. Firefighters providing public drinking water have to leave to put out fires with that drinking water. What will you do if you can’t get clean water? The city is blanketed with garbage and debris. Hospitals are damaged, many inoperable, and no one can call for an ambulance. The bridges are down and most of the main roads are impassable. The roads in town are a mass of confusion with motorists driving down the wrong side of the street or on sidewalks. Fallen power lines, rubble in the street, gaping holes and gashes in the roads in town create natural road blocks to vehicular traffic. The offramp from the bridge is gone and unwary motorists crashed below as they tried to make their way off the bridge in the night. There is no gasoline available for hundreds of miles. The airport has been closed.
During the quake, nearby prisons were damaged. Rioting led to the escape of hundreds of prisoners. They burned homes near the prison after burglarizing and looting local citizens. Neighbors unite to defend their homes and arm themselves with any kind of weapon they can grab (guns, knives, clubs, farm and gardening tools). They build barriers and light tire fires at the entrances to their neighborhoods. The stench of burning rubber mixes with the toxic fumes of who knows what being consumed by the raging fires of homes and businesses. Neighbors patrol all night long, firing gunshots into the air and sounding car alarms if they spot looters breaking in. Armed with a flashlight and a broom handle, you help patrol your condo building from 1 to 4 am. There are shifts and everyone is on call.
There are 90 aftershocks the first two days and hundreds more in the days that follow; all in the 5 and 6 point magnitude range. But at the time, you had no way of knowing the scientific magnitude of the earthquake that rocked your world was 8.8 or that the aftershocks were significant earthquakes in and of themselves. All you know is the ground was constantly moving. It was impossible to sleep. No one knew if another big one - or maybe even bigger - would hit.
People are sleeping in tents now, or in parks on high ground for fear of being trapped in their homes or swept away by a tsunami. No one knows when it will end. With no television, no internet, no newspapers, no phones and limited radio reception, there is no way to get accurate information. False rumors abound. Everyone fears a bigger earthquake, more tsunamis, volcanoes erupting and wonder if this is the end of the world. People are terrified.
