New York City Earthquake

"It's just a city. You'll get used to watching them fall."

- Alexandra Reid to Elektra

The New York City Earthquake was an event disguised as a 4.6 magnitude earthquake that caused Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Danny Rand to come into conflict with the Hand.

Rise of the Hand
"They wanted to use it to heal. But there were five heretics among them. People with darker intentions. They didn't want to heal... They wanted immortality. Power. To never face death. To regenerate themselves again and again... The elders saw this as an aberration. And so, like Lucifer from heaven, the five were banished from K'un-Lun forever."

- Stick

During an unrecorded period of time, the Order of the Crane Mother began studying Chi in an attempt to unlock its secrets and harness it for good. Unbeknownst to the rest of the Order, five members – who would eventually become known as Alexandra Reid, Madame Gao, Bakuto, Murakami, and Sowande – sought to harness chi for their own personal gain. They were eventually caught and banished from K'un-Lun for their crimes.

The five members proceeded to return to their respective homelands, each building a criminal empire that grew and flourished. They eventually reunited in East Asia after discovering that a substance found in the bones of dead K'un-Lun dragons contained the secret to immortality.

It was then that the quintet combined their resources into a single organization and began calling themselves the Hand.

As the years passed, the five "fingers" used their newfound power to search the world for dragon bones, finding them buried underneath cities such as and. In excavating the bones, the Hand inadvertently caused the destruction of the aforementioned cities and possibly more.

By 2016, the fingers had risen in both prominence and notoriety. While Alexandra Reid was known throughout New York as a respected socialite, Madame Gao was considered one of the city's most powerful drug dealers.

On the other side of the world, Sowande had established himself into an African warlord and gunrunner while Murakami elected to work from Japan in secret, using Nobu Yoshioka as his representative for making deals with Wilson Fisk.

As for Bakuto, he set out to manipulate Danny Rand into becoming a member of the Hand only to lose his life during a battle with his former pupil Colleen Wing. Unbeknownst to both Rand and Wing, the Hand retrieved Bakuto's body and used the substance to bring him back to life.

Finding Black Sky
"They won't know what's coming till it's too late."

- Alexandra Reid to Elektra

To be added

A Death Diagnosis
"I'm dying. My red blood cell count has dropped precipitously and almost every one of my major organs is close to collapse. Is that still the case?"

- Alexandra Reid

To be added

A Change in Plans
"How soon can we begin?" "Three months. Then we move to the final phase." "That won't work. Not anymore. We need to move faster."

- Alexandra Reid and Madame Gao

To be added

Earthquake
In Hell's Kitchen, Matt Murdock was preparing to open a beer bottle in his apartment when he began to sense an approaching disturbance. At that exact same moment, an earthquake struck and caused the apartment to shake. This prompted Matt's senses to go into overload making him unable to ignore the people in distress.

Jessica Jones, who had previously been hired by Michelle Raymond to find her missing architect husband John, also felt the tremors while investigating Raymond's Manhattan apartment, which was filled with dozens of crates containing explosives.

Meanwhile, having returned to New York City following a failed mission in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Danny Rand and Colleen Wing were in the process of emerging from a Rand Enterprises helicopter when the tremors started to increase in size and in strength, causing blackouts throughout the city.

In Harlem, Dolores Miller was visiting the spot where her oldest son Sean died when the tremors hit and caused a street light to fall to the ground. At the last minute, Luke Cage, who had been conducting an investigation into Sean's death as well as the deaths of several other Harlem children, ran over to her and caught the street lamp before it could pin her to the ground.

As chaos ensued throughout the five boroughs, Reid, who was observing from a rooftop building, noticed that Elektra was standing behind her and told her New York was nothing more than a city that would eventually fall, as would many more in the near future.

Aftermath
"Those tremors that shook up the place... They're nothing compared to what comes next. The Hand's done it before. Pompeii, Chernobyl... Events the history books like to call catastrophes, just cover-ups. 'Cause New York is next. And the only thing keeping Manhattan from crumbling to a pile of dust is the four of you."

- Stick to the Defenders

To be added