Earthquake!

I have lived 30 years in Maryland and never has the thought of a possible Earthquake entered my mind.  Now this is the second one I've experienced in the space of a year.  (Last year's I had just started dating my now ex and it woke me up at 5:00am.  I wasn't sure what it was and woke him up, he calmed me down and told me it was probably a dream.  I sort of wonder now if I should have taken this as some sort of sign.)

This year's I was sitting at my desk and the lights started flickering.  My boss came out of her office and yelled at us to get under our desks - she lived on the West Coast for several years.  The nearest thing I can compare it to would be a large truck driving by your house.  Or like when you were little and some asshole kid would grab whatever you were standing on and yell "earthquake!" while shaking it.  Except, this isn't some asshole kid and you can't step off the ladder, or chair, and find stable ground.  It's the whole building and all the ground outside. 

FACTS:
5.9 Earthquake
1:51pm est
Center - Virginia

I called my mother to let her know that I was perfectly fine, just a little shaken.  And she started talking about the end of times and how we'll know because of earthquakes and rumors of wars, etc.  a) there are always rumors of wars.  b) I found this handy article that was written after last year's earthquake that confirms east coast quakes are not as infrequent as we would like to believe.  Honestly, this could always be the end of the world as we know it.  Ten years ago, after the 9/11 attacks, the world as we knew it changed but it wasn't the end of the world.

This is like the Texas Sharp Shooter Fallacy I read about the other day.  Where there are completely unrelated events that are being used to support a single idea.