Hunnicutt, You're to Blame for This . . .

 For an earthquake in or near Bloomington, Illinois, to register on the seismographs at Fordham University in The Bronx, New York, the temblor would have to be at least a 6.3 on the Richter scale, according to #scienk

And this is the kind of thing you do when:

1. You’re a MASH fanatic

2. A friend comments on Facebook about the sadness that is Sam’s Club take ‘n’ bake pizza

3. You recall your own farty experiences with said pizza

4. You have Internet.

First, some of the basics.

In the MASH episode “Crisis,” one of my personal favorites, personnel at the 4077th are forced to share tents after the Chinese cut their supply lines and they run out of everything, including fuel oil, firewood, and shuttlecocks. Col. Blake, Radar, Klinger, and Father Mulchahy are forced to sleep in the Swamp, where Henry announces he snores, with the following exchange:

Henry Blake lives in Bloomington, Illinois. The Fordham he refers to is Fordham University in The Bronx, New York, home of the William Spain Seismic Observatory, one of the oldest such observatories in the United States.

Google Maps tells me that Bloomington, Illinois, and The Bronx are roughly 850 miles apart, as the crow flies. That’s a rough estimate, but good enough for the #scienk part of this idiocy.

The United States Geological Survey appears to be anti-#scienk, saying that it’s virtually impossible for earthquakes to travel long distances through the earth’s crust, given the crust isn’t as rigid as we might think (keep this in mind when we get to the Sam’s Club take ‘n’ bake pizza).

However, the folks at livescience.com tell me in what I’m sure is an exhaustively scientific article that this same USGS says earthquake tremors are known to travel much further east of the Rocky Mountains than they are in the mountains themselves or to the west. They cite as an example a 5.0-magnitude earthquake that struck near the Ontario-Quebec border in June of 2010, which was felt as far away as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Masssachusetts. A USGS expert quoted for the article says a 5.5-magnitude quake could likely be felt as far away as 300 miles east of the Rockies.

So using the USGS’s own “How Much Bigger” earthquake calculator, I figured that a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which is 3.162 times bigger than a 5.5-magnitude earthquake, theoretically has the power to travel the 850-or-so miles between Bloomington, Illinois, and The Bronx.

So Henry Blake, by his own admission, snores as powerfully as a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, or stronger as the earthquakes felt in Utah and Idaho earlier this year. Utah’s was a 5.7, while Idaho’s was a 6.5.

That’s some snoring.

Now, moving on from snoring to farting and the aforementioned Sam’s Club take ‘n’ bake pizza.

We got a few such pizzas a few months ago. And as I recall, they gave me some pretty good gas. Or bad gas. Significant gas, at any rate.

Then a friend today posted on Facebook about his lamentable experience, taste-wise, with said pizza. Which helped me recall my own experiences. And the MASH quote.

So to conclude: A person in Bloomington, Illinois, would have to experience a magnitude 6.3 earthquake for it to be strong enough to be felt by seismographs in The Bronx.

I’ll leave the fart #scienk to someone else. Until then, this is going to peer review.