Rumbling Earth

A subsurface sound summons your immediate attention as you wonder from where this wild movement is emanating. Once you realize it's beneath your feet at first you freeze, and and then wonder where the heck to go and what to do. Is it a passing truck? Is it a missile launching for the start of WW3? Or is it another one of those earthquakes that cause the world to shake so badly that every technological advantage you thought humankind had is a bust and pretty soon your community will be going back to the drawing board? There are around 500,000 earthquakes each year. About 100,000 of these can actually be felt. Minor earthquakes occur nearly constantly around the world in places like California and Alaska in the U.S., as well as in Guatemala. Chile, Peru, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, the Azores in Portugal. Most of the world's earthquakes (90%, and 81% of the largest) take place in the 40,000-km-long, horseshoe-shaped zone called the circum-Pacific seismic belt, known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, which for the most part bounds the Pacific Plate. Massive earthquakes tend to occur along other plate boundaries, too, such as along the Himalayan Mountains. This sound uses the following file from Freesound: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=103289