 What's the most unexpected result of the disaster?
It has happened a hundred times in the long history of Earth—and, sooner or later, will happen again! There was never so much as a landslide to bring the Fault to the attention of the general public. Nor was there much in the papers a few years later when it was suggested that the Niobrara Fault (just inside and roughly parallel to the eastern border of Wyoming) was a northerly extension of the Kiowa. Only Joseph Schwartzberg, head geographer of the Department of the Interior, wondered if the disturbance might not be a settling of the Kiowa Fault. The idea was not nearly so exciting as a volcano, even a lava-less one, and you couldn't draw a very dramatic picture of it. To excuse the other geologists, it must be said that the Kiowa Fault had never acted up before. The dust volcano was on the face of it a more plausible theory. As the tremors grew bigger, along with the affected area, as several towns including Edison were shaken to pieces by incredible earthquakes, whole bus- and plane-loads of geologists set out for Colorado, without even waiting for their university and government department to approve budgets. They found themselves on the scene of what was fast becoming the most violent and widespread earthquake North America—probably the world—has ever seen in historic times. To describe it in the simplest terms, land east of the Fault was settling, and at a precipitous rate. East, where sharp reports and muffled wheezes told of continued buckling and dropping, the earth trembled downward. Land west of the Fault was holding firm, though Denver had recorded several small tremors; everywhere east of the Fault, to almost twenty miles away, the now-familiar lurch and steady fall had already sent several thousand Coloradans scurrying for safety. As the Fault moved north and south, new areas quivered into unwelcome life. Virtually all east-west land communication was suspended and the President declared a national emergency. Trinchera and Branson were totally evacuated, but even so the over-all death toll had risen above 1,000. Tremendous fissures opened up perpendicular to the Fault, and a general subsidence of the land was noticeable well into Kansas and Nebraska. The western borders of these states, and soon of the Dakotas and Oklahoma as well, were slowly sinking. On the actual scene of the disaster (or the scenes ; it is impossible to speak of anything this size in the singular) there was a horrifying confusion. Prairie and hill cracked open under intolerable strains as the land shuddered downward in gasps and leaps.
 Even though millions of lives were lost, the economy is now booming due to the sea.
 Because of the new sea, there are no more rivers to trade by.  Even though millions of lives were lost, the economy is now booming due to the sea.  Coast-to-coast travel via buses and trucks is now a thing of the past.  Many of the previous states have dissolved.