NEWTON'S LAW: A PREDICTION THAT CAME TRUE IS NOT BEST FOR PREPAREDNESS

Here is a story meaningful to our times. Place, Middle America. Time, after the debunking of Iben Browning.

It was related to me at a funeral home, though I attach no cosmic significance to this.

A friend of mine in Memphis, that most quivering metropolis within the icy reach of the New Madrid Fault, was watching a movie at home one evening when struck by a frantic and almost incoherent desire for chocolate.

Having plundered the pantry in her unsuccessful search, and not wanting to stray out into the night and away from the movie, she sent one of her children to the garage with the purpose of raiding the earthquake kit.

You might recall last November and our heightened interest in earthquake kits ... bottled water, canned goods, blankets, flashlights and so forth.

My friend's kit, it turned out, was heavy with Ding-Dongs, that being a personal favorite for survival and not necessarily a staple of Memphis emergency preparedness. The choice was not without reason: ample preservatives ensured an enviable shelf life, and chocolate has been known, along with gold and nylons, to be effective barter in times of war and disaster.

Her solution seemed resourceful enough, since goods in earthquake kits are meant to be restocked. Problem was, the earthquake kit became a second pantry, and the next time there was a chocolate craving and a good movie on the tube, more Ding-Dongs were extracted and not replenished.

This story got some appreciative laughs at the funeral home, laughs being generally appreciated at a funeral home anyway. Beyond that, it provides a reference point on attitudes about earthquakes when we are not threatened with one.

In Memphis, potential bullseye for the geological apocalypse, concern over planet-shaking possibilities has given way to a hankering for plastic-encased sweetcakes.

In the days when Iben Browning, the Nostradamus of Albuquerque, laid claim to credibility, albeit vague, mysterious and self-claimed, the people of this region were genuinely jarred by an earthquake with a Richter reading of 4.6 in September.

We speak of the days of the Prediction (capital "P") in the same awed tones that Roman Catholics once used in discussing the Spanish Inquisition. Dr. Browning had informed us the Big One (capital "B" and capital "O") was coming and, regardless of scientific distrust of New Mexican soothsayers, a good many folks bought in. The 4.6 tremor just contributed special effects to go along with the general concern.

It was seven months after that jolt, the most recent Friday, deep into the post-Browning dormancy, when another 4.6 rocked the region. Another uproar, slightly different, ensued: this time, people were shaken that the final episode of "Dallas" was abridged by local broadcasters to deliver the news of cracked driveways and dislodged wall hangings in the outback.

As winter approached last year, Browning's defenders said, hey, what's the harm in this prediction? If the quake doesn't hit in early December, as forecast, at least people of the region know more about preparedness.

The skeptics, including most in the seismology community, demurred, saying people bamboozled by one scientist are less, not more, inclined to be trusting of others in the future.

Wouldn't it be regrettable if this was the scientific prediction that came true, that we lost our will to make good decisions on preparedness because we were incited once to no tangible result.