Dangerous talk of Mexican ‘influencers’ who believe the mind can attract earthquakes

Mexican actor Jose Ron tweeted to his one and a half million followers on September 19: “I don’t know about you, but for me you shouldn’t do exercises, they attract energy! We are energy! Thinking and doing exercises takes away that energy! 1985 and 2017 19 A 7.9-magnitude earthquake rocked the country 45 minutes after a national drill commemorating the two worst earthquakes to ever hit Mexico.At that moment, everyone was asking the same question: How is it possible for three major earthquakes to occur on the same date? A physicist went out of his way to calculate the probability – he said it was 0.000751% – which went viral on social media. Scientists came out in horror to confirm that it was a simple coincidence. However, we humans are fascinated by what happens, and the materials are already prepared for the rapid spread of discourses without scientific backing that our minds and energies can even shake the earth.

On the other end of the phone, seismologist Carlos Valdes laughs quietly: “It’s interesting to me, I wish the mind worked like that so we could solve a lot of problems.” The researcher from the Institute of Geophysics of UNAM, without losing his nerve before these magical theories, explains with the data: “The energy that produced the earthquake that occurred on Monday has been developing for 40 or 60 years,” he points out. , “The final fracture zone has extraordinary dimensions, they are elliptical below the ground, 70 kilometers long and 50 kilometers wide. We are talking about very impressive things, and I do not think that human power, even if we are all together, is capable of reaching that level.

Actress Barbara de Regil on Monday wanted to know if her 8.4 million followers agreed with her new earthquake theory: “Why so? It will be energy. You see we are all energy. The Influencer Yoss Hoffman, known as Yosstop, denied the coincidence: “And history repeats itself, it’s not a coincidence, the universe reminds us of something, something wants to remind us, on the same day, almost at the same time, at the same time, it’s cannon.” Host Martha Debail brought up the Law of Attraction: “Do we attract what we attract because of who we are?”

Looking for a comparison: The magnitude of the earthquake on September 19 The equivalent of 20,000 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And they aren’t very powerful, says Carlos Valdes, who says the “monster 9.5 magnitude” earthquake in Chile has been circling the Earth for days. “Can mental power do that? Not currently. But you can do something: check structures, do exercises to study where we need to stay and plan evacuation strategies,” says the researcher, not joking.

Following the releases InfluencersTarot readers appeared and the Trainers The same term pointed to: egregor, a pseudoscientific concept according to which collective thinking creates a psychic system capable of influencing reality. “It is too naive to think that thought can ‘attract’ earthquakes, like any other collective will. If there is gravity and thought, drought-prone countries will have rain, flood-prone countries will have rain, severe winters will be less cold, and summers will be less hot,” he says. Seismologist Gina Villalobos.

The danger of these anti-scientific discourses is that they are not benign, but under them lies a rejection of, for example, simulacra. Comedian Sofia Nino de Rivera shamelessly tweeted: “I always feel a shiver from the drill”, which was shared by thousands of people.

Villalobos, a professor at the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas, has no doubts about the dangers of a lack of training: “Failure to train people in proper evacuation procedures can result in a large number of injuries or deaths in an event. The future”. And he adds: “It’s not a matter of thoughts or energies, saving lives during an earthquake is not pseudoscience, it’s strict earthquake-resistant codes, properly designed and built structures and preventive practices.”

Luis Antonio Domínguez, PhD in geophysics at the University of California, speaks in the same way: “Exercises allow us to see what we are doing wrong in the event of an earthquake.” Especially in two places where we can be: the bedroom and the office. “Stopping exercises is to ignore the existence and frequency of earthquakes. If we look at the last 2,000 years since the birth of Christ, the earth will still have a short life. There are many earthquakes every day of the year”, points out a UNAM researcher who worked at the National Seismological Service.

There is a list compiling earthquakes in Mexico since 1900, and since then 315 larger than 6 have been recorded. 1993 (size 6.3). On September 23, there are five of the last century. Hence Nino de Rivera’s proposal, which has become a popular demand: “Avoid September 19 in the calendarLike a lift that skips 13″, it loses its meaning.

Earthquakes are unpredictable, random, and frequent events in Mexico. “We associate September with the month of earthquakes, so they all seem to happen in September”, adds Luis Antonio Domínguez, “but the last one was more than 7 in February 2018, in June 2020 and we did not give them importance”. September 22, early this Thursday morning, Mexico Shakes Again: 6.9 Magnitude EarthquakeHe needs no simulacrum or collective thinking.

Subscribe here to do Newsletter EL PAÍS Mexico and get all the information keys of the news of this country