What's NOT Causing Cleburne's Quakes?

While we're shopping around our new book on the matter ("Shook Me All Night Long: The Story of the Cleburne Quakes") we wanted to pull together everyone's wonderful research into what's actually causing the tiny tremors in North Texas into one easy to digest chock full of vast left/right wing conspiracies, conflicts with other nations, and gas well drilling. Let's take a look at your findings:

Cause 1 -- Gas Well Drilling:
After four tremors in a week, Cleburne unaminously voted to hire a "geological professional" to look into whether gas well drilling in the town might be the cause. Most geologists rule out this cause since a gas well drill doesn't go three miles underground -- the depth of the last earthquake reported by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Cause 2 -- It's Fort Worth's Fault:
In our comments section, user CC mentioned a fault line that runs through the southeastern part of Tarrant County and cuts into a tiny corner of Dallas County. The theory is that these Cleburne quakes could be the result of this fault becoming active, possibly because of damage to the bedrock (though gas well drilling and other digging). While that's not an impossible scenario, it seems a little odd that the Cleburne quakes aren't even on that fault line, nor are they in the more "hazardous" part of the map.

Cause 3 -- Well, There's Your Problem:
Back in the '60s, the Army created a deep injection well at their Rocky Mountain Arsenal facility in Denver. Due to injecting the well with fluids, the area around the facility started to experience earthquakes. The Army discontinued using the well in Denver, but some think these tremors could be related to an Army project in our area -- even though Fort Hood is the closest Army arsenal to DFW. Conceivably, if someone else is drilling injection wells 12,405 feet deep, and then injecting around 568,000 gallons of water into it, then we might have a Denver duplicate scenario...

Cause 4 -- Kim Jong Il, Earthquake Bringer:
User Nancy sent in a international theory: on a latitude/longitude map the DFW area is almost directly on the other side of the Earth from North Korea. She theorizes the underground nuclear tests set off recently may be the cause of damage on the other side of the world. The U.S.G.S. has heard this idea before and has explained why they think there is no causal evidence to support the theory that nuclear blasts would make quakes.

Cause 5 -- Shake Up in Washington:
Since November of last year, we've heard President Obama be blamed for everything...including earthquakes. Hey Rush, correlation doesn't imply causation.

Did we miss more conspiracy theories? Let us know in the comments below...

This article is intended in jest, not to claim definite proof of any or all of the possible causes aren't true. Take it with a grain of salt, m'kay?

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