On December 16, 1811, a violent earthquake struck a frontier town called New Madrid, in what would later become the state of Missouri. Two more quakes followed on January 23 and February 7, 1812. Precisely two hundred years later, on December 16, 2011, a massive 9.8 earthquake once again struck the same area, creating aftershocks that rippled throughout the entire Midwestern United States, including areas of Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Arkansas.
It was eerily different, however, than the quake that devastated the California coast just a few years prior. Because there were no skyscrapers, bridges, highways, shopping malls, parking lots, or all the other paraphernalia from the 'industrial age', damages and injuries were minimal. People simply accepted the sudden jolt as a symptom of nature and went on with their lives. Society had changed dramatically; the culture was new. Surviving members of the human species no longer aspired to accumulating wealth, collecting worthless 'things', building power bases, constructing monuments to commercialism and capitalism, or clawing their way up the 'ladder' to financial 'success'.
It was a different world. A world that appreciated the finer things in life, such as the sweet smell of a meadow filled with fragrant flowers; the majesty of a forest filled with towering trees and shadowed glens; the simplicity of a community made up of a few hundred people who looked out for one another and shared needs and wants equally with every tribal member. And, oddly, no one living in this grand new utopia had any recollection of what their 'contemporary' world had been like in the past. In a millinanosecond of time, every memory of an industrialized, 'modern' world filled with wars, materialism, gluttony and shame had disintegrated, disappeared in less time than in took to blink one's eye.
Swindling mortgage lenders, lazy industrialists, wealthy elitists, unscrupulous bankers, greedy Wall Streeters, corrupt politicians, thieving lobbyists, conniving lawyers and malicious media moguls had been wiped clean from the planet. There was no need, anymore, for shysters to slather the land with their chicanery.
It was, indeed, the 'best of times'; the worst of times had been left behind, never to be thought of, dreamed about or envisioned again. Everything that man had devised, built and created in the name of 'progress' or 'profit' was forever obliterated from the face of the Earth. The planet had been restored to a global garden, reminiscent of the place where ancient Biblical accounts claim God first created Adam and Eve.