Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It has happened a hundred times in the long history of Earth—and, sooner or later, will happen again! all even the professionals were interested in knowing. There was never so much as a landslide to bring the Fault to the attention of the general public. impossible that it could ever be used except for sheep-farming. It strikes us today as ironic that from the late '50s there was grave concern about the level of the water table throughout the entire area. The even more ironic solution to the problem began in the summer of 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. Rock scraped rock with a whining roar. Shuddery as a squeaky piece of East, where sharp reports and muffled wheezes told of continued buckling and dropping, the earth trembled downward. Atop the new There the devastation was even more thorough, if less spectacular. Dry earth churned like mud, and rock shards weighing tons bumped and scene of disaster. "No one here has ever seen anything like it." And the landslip was growing, north and south along the Fault. "Get out while you can," Schwartzberg urged the population of the everywhere east of the Fault, to almost twenty miles away, the now-familiar lurch and steady fall had already sent as the land beneath them groaned downward in mile-square gulps. As the Fault moved north and south, new areas quivered into unwelcome down. They danced "like sand in a sieve" dry, they boiled into rubble. Telephone lines, railroad tracks, roads snapped and simply disappeared. Virtually all east-west land communication was suspended and the President declared a national emergency. confusion. Prairie and hill cracked open under intolerable strains as the land shuddered downward in gasps and leaps. Springs burst to the surface in hot geysers and explosions of steam. The downtown section of North Platte, Nebraska, dropped eight feet, churning land. Abandoning its bed, the river spread uncertainly across farmland and prairie, becoming a sea of mud beneath the sharp new floods, in the usual sense. The water moved too slowly, spread itself with no real direction or force. But the vast sheets of sluggish water and jelly-like mud formed death-traps for the countless refugees now streaming east. Perhaps the North Platte disaster had been more than anyone could take. 193 people had died in that one cave-in. Certainly by 7 October it had to be officially admitted that there was an exodus of epic proportion. Nearly two million people were on the move, and the U. S. was faced with a gigantic wave of refugees. Rails, roads and air-lanes were jammed with terrified hordes who had left everything behind to crowd eastward. as a hollow roar, a shriek and a deep musical vibration like a church bell. It was simply the tortured rock of the substrata giving way. The second phase of the national disaster was beginning. wake the earth to the north "just seemed to collapse on itself like a punctured balloon," read one newspaper report. "Like a cake that's draft, and sank. So did the entire Mississippi and Alabama coast, at about the same moment. The tidal wave which was to gouge the center from the U. S. marched on the land. had swept over every town from Dothan, Alabama, to Bogalusa on the forming, overtopping the wave's leading edge as towns, hills and the thirst of the soil temporarily broke the furious charge. deluging Hobart and almost all of Greer County. Despite hopeful announcements that the wave was slowing, had virtually stopped after inundating Oklahoma City, was being swallowed up in the The entire tier of states settled, from south to north, down to its eventual place of stability one thousand feet below the level of the But such lightheartedness and such happy endings were by no means typical. The world could only watch aghast as the water raced north under the shadow of the cliffs which occasionally crumbled, roaring, along what is roughly the present shoreline of our inland sea, it was estimated that over fourteen million people had lost their lives. No one could even estimate the damage to property almost the entirety of eight states, and portions of twelve others, had simply vanished from the heart of the North American continent forever. It was in such a cataclysmic birth that the now-peaceful Nebraska Sea came to America. Today, nearly one hundred years after the unprecedented—and happily unrepeated—disaster, it is hard to remember the terror and despair of those weeks in October and November, 1973. It is inconceivable to think of the United States without its beautiful and economically essential it graduates from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico through the Dakota. What would the United States have become without the 5600-mile coastline of our inland sea? It is only within the last twenty years that any but the topmost layer of water has cleared sufficiently to permit a really extensive fishing industry. Mud still held in contribute no small part to the nation's economy. Who can imagine what the middle west must have been like before the amelioration of climate brought about by the proximity of a warm sea? The now-temperate state of Minnesota (to say nothing of the submerged during the summer months. Our climate today, from Ohio and North Carolina to the rich fields of New Mexico and the orchards of Montana, is directly ameliorated by the marine heart of the continent. Who today could imagine the United States without the majestic the Appalachian Mountains, it is only a slight remnant of what it was. shipping in its ceaseless traffic, we have lost the old romance of river shipping. We may only guess what it was like when we look upon Nebraska Sea. We shall never know what the United States was like with of Manitoba and crossroad of a nation. The political situation has long been a thorny problem. Only tattered remnants of the eight submerged states remained after the flood, but none of them wanted to surrender its autonomy. The tiny fringe of but following the lead of the Arkansas Forever faction, the remaining population decided to retain political integrity. This has resulted in the continuing anomaly of the seven "fringe States" represented in Congress by the usual two Senators each, though the largest of indistinguishable from their neighboring states. Fortunately it was decided some years ago that Oklahoma, only one of the eight to have completely disappeared, could not in any sense be considered to have a continuing political existence. So, though there are still families who proudly call themselves Oklahomans, and the Oklahoma Oil Company continues to pump oil from its submerged real estate, the state has in fact disappeared from the American political scene. But this is by now no more than a petty annoyance, to raise a smile when the talk gets around to the question of State's Rights. Not even the tremendous price the country paid for its new sea—fourteen million dead, untold property destroyed—really offsets the asset we enjoy today. The heart of the continent, now open to the shipping of the world, was once dry and land-locked, cut off from the bustle of trade and the ferment of world culture. Unimaginable too would have been the general growth of population in the states surrounding the new sea. As the water tables rose and manufacturing and trade moved in to take advantage of the just-created axis of world communication, a population explosion was touched off of which we are only now seeing the diminution. This new westering is to be ranked with the first surge of pioneers which created the American her water road is America's main artery of trade, and

<question>:
How has America transformed as a country after the events?

<options>:
A With millions of their people gone, America is still finding a foothold in this new world.
B It's now a booming maritime location, with high population and economic growth.
C Most of the states have separated and began to live independently again.
D The political climate has been completely upended.

<answer>:

B