Will New York Be Destroyed?

The 1924 article in Science and Invention quoted Professor David Todd, an astronomer at Amherst College, who was concerned about the possibility of a major earthquake in New York.

In a recent statement given to the press Professor David Todd, astronomer and mathematician of Amherst College, said that due to a fault running laterally from Trenton, N.J., across under Manhattan Island up through Connecticut and Massachusetts, and on account of possible gas pockets or caverns in the structure of the earth’s crust, it was entirely possible for the extreme weight concentrated on the small area of Manhattan Island to force a shift in the rock formation, thus causing the island to give way in an earthquake. He likened the situation to placing one sheet of ice against another. Each sheet separately might hold a fair amount of weight, but if the weight were concentrated over the joint, the two sheets would immediately buckle.

But readers were told not to worry. There was a solution! It just happened to involve drilling a mine shaft deep within the Earth to let gas escape.

He suggested as a possible means of preventing such a disaster the drilling of a shaft a mile or so deep into the ground under Manhattan Island, in search of gas pockets or caverns, and if such were found, filling them with steel framework and concrete.

The potential consequences of drilling into the Earth weren’t out of nowhere, of course. Fracking has caused a number of earthquakes in the central plains states.