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Not to double down on the doom and gloom or suggest the Americas are slated to descend into Mad Max-style chaos and anarchy, but the latest in a recent flurry of North American earthquakes just rumbled across one of the most dangerous earthquake zones in the United States.

That's right, even as Hurricane Sandy, one of the largest storms in history, threatens to morph into a hybrid superstorm once it strikes the East Coast, the planet has let the middle of the country know it hasn't forgotten them with a 3.9  magnitude earthquake.

The quake struck about six miles southwest of Parkin, Arkansas and was immediately felt across Twitter--where it naturally prompted dark humor:

sm quake in Arkansas RT @vrbowski: @pathammer are there F5 tornadoes gonna hit the midwest soon? And what bout earthquake near Chicago?

— Patrick Hammer (@pathammer) October 29, 2012

Residents of western North Carolina felt a smaller 2.9 magnitude quake about 40 minutes before the Arkansas temblor.

Residents of more quake-prone regions may laugh at alarmed responses to relatively small events in the South and Midwest. However, the Arkansas quake took place in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, which isn't as noisy as other seismic zones, but some geologists consider it the most dangerous earthquake producer in the U.S. since it produced two of the largest quakes in recorded history 200 years ago.

Ryan.

Fellow New Yorkers, we’ve been through a lot. Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Joe Biden explaining to Car and Driver that he has never actually washed a 1981 Trans Am shirtless in the White House driveway.  And that’s just in the last two weeks.

The last ten years? We barely know where to start.

Tuesday of course marks a momentous occasion—namely, the Jets are playing the Cowboys. “I feel more pressure on this game for whatever reason than any game I’ve ever coached, seems like,” Jets coach Rex Ryan told the New York Post. “I don’t know, it just feels different to me. . . . The significance of it. . . . I think it’s stronger than any game I’ve ever felt.” We naturally assume he’s referring to the anniversary of 9/11. That, or he’s still trying to process the return of Plaxico Burress. The significance of it.

And Mr. Ryan isn’t the only person feeling the pressure this week.  After a few days of silence, Mayor Bloomberg was unapologetic about failing to disclose the reasons behind now former Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s resignation. The official line was that Mr. Goldsmith was leaving his position “to pursue private-sector opportunities in infrastructure finance.” (In this case, perhaps dispensing with the usual “to spend more time with his family” euphemism was actually a good idea—particularly since the Mayor’s so worried about causing them further suffering. )

And President Obama hasn’t fared much better in the court of public opinion. On Tuesday, a Wall Street Journal NBC News poll found that President’s approval ratings are the lowest they’ve been since his inauguration.  It’s a little scary to think that unemployment percentages are increasingly converging with the percentage of people who actually think the President is doing a good job.  Like, 5.8 on the Richter scale and technically-speaking-tropical-storm scary, at least.

But not as scary as the U.S. Postal Service shutting down, which it may well do if Congress doesn’t intervene to remedy a $9 billion deficit.  (No postal service? How will we get our Joe Biden-filled issue Car and Driver delivered?) At the very least, the service may end Saturday delivery, which means we won’t get our mail until… Monday.

It’ll be difficult, but we’ll survive it. We’ve certainly been through worse.

Crap. I can see my house from here. (Gotham Gazette)

It's started raining, and it's not about to stop until Monday—Brooklyn is Portland!—thanks to the arrival of Hurricane Irene off the East Coast. Hopefully, like Tuesday's Earthquake, New York won't be getting it too bad, but just in case, the Bloomberg administration has been preparing the city for possible problems, the greatest of which would be flooding. The mayor's office just released a map of hurricane zones, to keep New Yorkers aware of where things could be bad.

Not surprisingly, Battery Park City, the Lower East Side, Redhook and Coney Island are all flashpoints, but so too are large swathes of Staten Island and the Upper East Side. The mayor took time out to put the city's mind at ease with a few jokes in today's announcement of the preparations:

The City has already seen the power of Mother Nature once this week, and Mother Nature may not be done with us yet. I’m sure that many of you are following the story of Hurricane Irene. I’d like to give you an update on how we’re preparing our city for all possible scenarios. Unfortunately, there is an element of unpredictability when it comes to the weather, and so we hope for the best but we prepare for the worst. That’s why this City is, I think, ready for this weekend.

By the time Irene gets to us, which is forecasted to do sometime on Sunday, it certainly will still be a powerful storm – possibly as strong as a Category 2 hurricane on Long Island, but anything can happen in terms of its direction and its severity.

At this point, the forecast does not indicate that the storm would hit New York City with that strength, but we certainly will still see its effects here, including tropical storm-like conditions such as heavy rains and winds of 60 miles an hour or more. And as a matter of fact, you’re going to see some of Mother Nature later this afternoon if the forecasters are right. There is a band of heavy thunderstorms that are scheduled to move across the city later today, and so take the normal precautions. When you’re out in thunderstorms, don’t go out into a field, get inside, inside a car, or inside a building. And be careful. And also, it’s a good time to check in on any neighbors who live alone, and could use some help.

In addition to beer and bread, you might want to stock up on some good books for the weekend, because it will not be pretty outside.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYCNYC Hurricane Map Danger Zones

Unshakeable. (WTC Progress)

By all indications, the earthquake on Tuesday did no significant damage to any buildings in New York. That still did not keep the question from coming up at a tour of the soon-to-be-open World Trade Center site yesterday. Larry Silverstein quickly worked to put any concerns to rest.

"I expect these buildings to be impregnable," he told the Daily News when asked if an earthquake or other disaster could damage the World Trade Center. He also mentioned that "today, for the first time since 9/11, every part of the new World Trade Center is under construction."

Meanwhile, one of the victim's wives, Monica Iken Murphy, said that her husband Michael "is home finally." In addition to weighing in on the memorial design, she has been campaigning on behalf of families who still have not received remains for their loved ones. "This is his final resting place," Ms. Iken Murphy said. "When I come here, I feel him."

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

"You feel that earthquake today?," the gentleman asked passers-by. "You feel the earth move? Jesus is coming back! He is warning us!"

We remain grateful that no damage was done in the city and that the earthquake had not occurred on May 22.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Possible End Times aside, there were some other notable shake-ups this week. Libyan rebels stormed Muammar Qaddafi’s Tripoli compound, forcing media outlets around the world to once again take sides on the spelling of the dictator’s name. Charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn were suddenly dropped after prosecutors decided that their star witness, Nafissatou Diallo, wasn’t credible. (In fact, the former I.M.F. chief could be flying first-class to Charles de Gaulle as you read this—assuming the tremors didn’t send him running to King Cole Bar.) Eliot Spitzer got hit with a $60 million libel suit. Standard & Poor’s president Deven Sharma stepped down Monday, just weeks after stripping the United States of its AAA credit rating (we give him a C for attendance). A memorial statue of Martin Luther King, oddly reminiscent of Han Solo frozen in carbonite, debuted on the National Mall in D.C. ABC made the stunning announcement that Katie Couric’s fall talk show will be called … Katie. And, of course, Guns n’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan started a wealth management firm. (If that doesn’t restore your faith in finance, nothing will.)

The only place that didn’t seem to see any action was the 2012 presidential race. President Obama is off playing golf on Martha’s Vineyard, and after heavy speculation that he would stuff himself into the clown car that is the G.O.P. candidate pool, Congressman Paul Ryan finally announced that he won’t join the fray, possibly so as not to compete with Rick Perry’s immaculate hair. Of course, there are still some (very slow) dark horses who could make a run for it, like Sarah Palin, Chris Christie and—oh, hey, former governor George Pataki, who’s planning a big speech in Iowa this weekend! Sure, it seems late in the game, but to put it in perspective, the Second Avenue subway line has been pushed back to 2018, so in New York time, Mr. Pataki is doing just fine.

He may not make the earth move, but we’ve had enough excitement for this week anyway.

At left, a guide to the works through which we experienced, and are reflecting on, the tumult, from Doris Salcedo’s terrifying cracked floor at Tate Modern—a foreboding sign of doom—to scenes of post-apocalyptic disaster by the likes of Urs Fischer and Christoph Büchel.

We conclude with Carsten Holler’s Upside-Down Glasses, designed to do exactly what their title suggests, showing a changed world, a world that we avoided today.

The epicenter, he tells us, is a small Virginia hamlet named Louisa, but tremors were felt as far south as North Carolina and as far north as New York.

"It's an unusually large earthquake for the eastern U.S.," he tells us. "We have smaller ones but this is large. The USGS says 5.9 magnitude. 3.7 miles deep."

In layman's terms: "that’s enough to knock things off the shelf and scare the heck out of people but not do major damage."

What about aftershocks? Should we evacuate? (Can we evacuate? It's really nice outside.)

"Often from one that small you don’t have aftershocks," says Mr. Melson.

Sigh.

"That was probably the primary quake," he said. "It was pretty inconsequential. A four is going to be enough to alarm everybody because we’re not used to it."

Inconsequential? It might be a small earthquake, but it's our earthquake.

"Was that just a...?!"

"WTF?"

etc. etc.

THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF 2011!

Here's the USGS assessment.

UPDATE:

From the Weston Observatory at the Boston College Department of Geology, USGS Outpost

Magnitude: 5.9

Epicenter: 83 miles Southwest of Washington D.C.

Buildings in Midtown reportedly evacuated! Not ours.