Nikola Tesla claimed he created a device so powerful it could bring down buildings with vibration alone. Then he destroyed it. Was it real—or too dangerous to survive?

From the Antikythera Mechanism to Tesla’s so-called earthquake machine, history is full of inventions that vanished too soon.

Earthquakes don’t occur everywhere. They occur along the boundaries of the earth’s tectonic plates, along either known active faults or dormant faults. The East Coast is crisscrossed with ancient ...