[JasonFar]

I was just told that the death count is above 50,000. Insane. But the numbers don't do it justice... I just watched a clip of a tsunami hitting, here is the link:

http://www.ogrish.com/archives/tsun...t_dragged_away_by_tidal_wave_Dec_29_2004.html

Not for the faint of heart... That one's not too graphic, but if you don't dissociate from it (it's hard not to to some extent), it's terrifying.

The night I heard there was a tsunami, I had a dream that I died by one. I've had dreams like that before, with other things (meteors, other mass disaster deaths), but the tsunami was the first of its kind...

Anyway, utterly horrific, and makes you wonder... A sad reality when nature can take so many. Also, if they would have had better technology over there, they could have prohibited almost all the damage (human lives, I mean)....

 

[Guest]

Maybe for once they might stop building these traditional mud and paper huts which implode during any natural disaster. A tsunami chasing me down and killing me sounds like an adventurous/fun way to die...i'm more afraid for their sake of the disease that will plague the region very soon.

Fuk, i've got nothing to lose. I wish I knew that thing was coming. I'd have flown down there and squared up against that tsunami on the beach. Maybe, the 50 foot wave would've been a bit stronger than me, but i'm sure I could have outwitted a bunch of stupid water with some math or something. Tsunamis don't know shi't about math, everyone knows that.

 

[JasonFar]

http://www.waxy.org/archive/2004/12/28/amateur_.shtml

Here is four more. If you watch the one titled phuket (also the video I posted above, only better quality), you'll see the two that get swept off are a son and his father holding onto him. I want to cry. It's unbelievable.

All I have to say (and I know this probably doesn't show much for the strength of my beliefs, or simply my ignorance for disaster before) is that my strength in athiesm is growing.

 

[JasonFar]

Also,

ZiggomatiX, have some fucking respect. I mean seriously, watch those videos, and make a comment like that. You're a fucking little piece of shit (at the moment).

Thank you.

 

[Guest]

Jason, I cant watch your video's due to technical reasons, but I saw footage from the tidal wave washing away 1000's of people from the beach. It was horrifying to watch. I mean suppose you are lying there, having your holiday, not being aware of any danger, just enjoying the sun and having a relaxed time.
Then suddenly out of nowhere this wave comes splashing you away, for good.
It is too horrible to fathom.
I am deeply shocked. Also by the amount of dead people.

Unbelieveable.

 

[Axel19]

It's pretty shocking how such a large part of the world was affected by a natural disaster such as this one.
Without meaning to sound senationalist, I reckon the footage we saw was nothing compared to what happend elsewhere. I heard that whole islands have been completely submerged, and nobody, naturally, has been able to contact them.
It's awesome, terrifying and very, very tragic.

 

[gimpy34]

It is truly unbelievable. Does anybody know the last time this many people have died from one incident? As far as I know there hasn't been a natural disaster so devastating in recorded history. I think the death toll is now estimated at 80,000. My friend told me that some of these waves were moving across the ocean at 450 miles per hour. The earth's plates have shifted dramatically, too, and I wonder if that will have any sort of ripple effect.

You would think with movies like Deep Impact people would know to get on their motor bikes like Frodo did and find the highest point. But not everybody is Frodo.

 

[sebastian]

It is truly unbelievable. Does anybody know the last time this many people have died from one incident?

actually, a couple of hundred thousand died in a few earthquakes in china midway through this century. But you have to dig pretty hard to find anything this horrific. the whole thing just takes my breath away.

The shock was so powerful that it effected the earth's rotation, and the waves went as far as africa. Unbelievable.

The Deep Impact analogy is exactly what i thought of. Apparently in Sri Lanka, kids were picking shells off the ocean floor while the water was receding, before the big waves hit. Just horrible.

I wish I knew that thing was coming. I'd have flown down there and squared up against that tsunami on the beach.

my hero. :roll:

jason's right. have some respect.

s.

 

[Guest]

The shock was so powerful that it effected the earth's rotation, and the waves went as far as africa.

Could any of the math/ science geniuses here explain this one in laymen's terms? I heard it on the news and thought, holy $%&#.

 

[Axel19]

I don't know, it's just so surreal. I mean waves, water, they're such benign forces in ones experience. Only in the occasional drowning or capsizing does the sea display such malice. But the land is the land and the sea is the sea, why did it trespass on our territory with such enormity? What the hell am I talking about anyway? It's just waves man, waves. Those things you play in when on holiday, how did they kill over 100,000 people in the space of a few hours?

 

[sebastian]

It's true...and when you look at those videos, it doesn't even seem all that horrible. I mean, certainly, it looks deadly...but not on the scale of 100,000 people!

And yes, the whole "Earth getting knocked off it's axis" thing was a little scary. It's like: "Tonight in the news: Giant Tsunami hits Asian nations! In other news, the Earth is now spiralling out into the nether regions of space, so it's suggested everyone dress warm tomorrow."

But i think, since there have been a few earth quakes of this magnitude before and the planet is still spinning, we should be all right.

s.

 

[JasonFar]

I don't know, it's just so surreal. I mean waves, water, they're such benign forces in ones experience. Only in the occasional drowning or capsizing does the sea display such malice. But the land is the land and the sea is the sea, why did it trespass on our territory with such enormity?

Great point Sebastian... That's what's so surreal about it, a seemingly benign force such as the ocean totally ripped us apart without care. Nature is supposed to be good, not a viscious killing machine. And it's even like, in those videos, people are confused, because I think of the unexpectancy and surreal nature of such an event.... I mean, looking up and seeing an asteroid in the sky coming for you, that's one thing... But the entire ocean coming to eat you up on a peaceful, sunny beach? Totally unbelievable.

In other news, the Earth is now spiralling out into the nether regions of space, so it's suggested everyone dress warm tomorrow."

LOL :lol:

You would think with movies like Deep Impact people would know to get on their motor bikes like Frodo did and find the highest point. But not everybody is Frodo.

LOL :lol:

Jason, I cant watch your video's due to technical reasons, but I saw footage from the tidal wave washing away 1000's of people from the beach. It was horrifying to watch.

Wendy, I too watched some of those videos where hundreds were simply gone in a mere instant... The crazy thing about those is that the waves don't look THAT big, and it's surprising (like in one of the videos above) that it kills everything it hits so immediately... You'd think it would blast them, but not kill. I don't know. Even so, those shots didn't affect me as much as the one where (seemingly) you get a closeup of (what I thought was) a father and a younger male holding onto him, as the father struggles and holds onto something, and then it breaks, and they both go down. After watching that one I balled for about 10 minutes last night, it's just too heartbreaking. Absurd.

 

[Axel19]

Sorry Jason, that first quote was mine, .

I was in Thailand last July. Although I was on the west coast, seeing those images certainly brought back memories. That shot of the beach with all those mangled bodies on it, that looked so much like some of the beaches I'd visited. To imagine such a paradisal beach transformed so suddenly and horrifically, it just beggers belief.
It really is hell in paradise, that's what makes it so surreal somehow.
I know it's a terrible tragedy, but I'm still in awe somehow at the might of the thing.
Wars are so pointless and depressing that I can't even be bothered to think about them at all. But this is something else, I know it sounds sick and morbid but it fascinates me somehow. In the light of our current war torn world, I'd come to believe that the most horrific humitarian distasters were always caused by humans themselves. But this kind of puts us in our place. It animates this planet somehow, which has been cast off as an immaterial backgorund to our human squablings, in the face of WOMD and evil dictators. But when you try and picture these two billion tonne pieces of rock rubbing against eachother hundreds of miles below the earths surface, totally oblivious to the human devastation they'd cause, you just..... :roll: ???

 

[Guest]

all these people in this video are laughing, not knowing that they are about to die.

http://www.ogrish.com/archives/2004/dec ... coming.wmv

 

[gimpy34]

"The sea is an angry bitch." - anonymous

Sebastian, to answer your geology/physics/math question. What happened was that with the tsunami, so much of the earth's mass was accelerating towards the Earth's center all at once, that it sped up the earth's rotation by a few milliseconds or something. The earth's plates also shifted in a manner where more of the earth's mass is now nearer the center of the earth. Given these two variables and Kepler's laws of universal gravitation, the earth's axis tilted an inch or so and our rotation sped up a fraction. Stuff like this is happening all the time, but not so much in one instant. Apparently, every now and then they have to add leap milliseconds to the earth's rotation to keep the day 24 hours long on a yearly basis.

From what I've read, it shouldn't have any real effect on our orbit or anything.

It's still taking time for some of this to sink in. This is one of the greatest natural disaster's in history. It's basically nature's world war.

 

[sebastian]

Sorry Jason, that first quote was mine, .

I was in Thailand last July. Although I was on the west coast, seeing those images certainly brought back memories. That shot of the beach with all those mangled bodies on it, that looked so much like some of the beaches I'd visited. To imagine such a paradisal beach transformed so suddenly and horrifically, it just beggers belief.
It really is hell in paradise, that's what makes it so surreal somehow.
I know it's a terrible tragedy, but I'm still in awe somehow at the might of the thing.

I was in Patong beach and those other two beaches on Phuket last year. I also was on Koh Lanta (whose video won't play for some reason). While i can see how some of the places on Phuket might have been able to withstand the tides a bit, I can only imagine what happened to Lanta and those other small islands out there. They would've been totally washed away. Even Koh Phi-Phi got hit i think. That cool bar that i love on there is probably gone now.

I remember sitting out on Lanta staring across the sea smoking thai weed (nowhere near as potent as the stuff you'll get in BC...which is good. Just enough to get you dreamy...in a good way). Looking up at the clouds play out their scenes together, and musing on how peaceful it all was there. I wonder what happened to those very cool locals i met on Lanta and on Phi Phi island.

s.

 

[Guest]

Little crocodile - Imagine a bowl of water. If you get the water it holds to slosh around enough, you begin to create movement of the bowl itself.
In the case of the recent tsunamis........a significant pulse of energy radiated out in all directions from the epicenter of the quake. Sort of like dropping a rock into the bowl of water. While the water itself might not appear to move much, and in fact doesn't, the energy associated with the drop of the rock impacts the entire system. As this energy approaches the edge of the bucket, or in this case the shallower water near land, the energy wave has nowhere to go but up.

The same general mechanism holds true with tidal variations. The ocean moves up and down (to a lesser degree, so does the land). The energy source in that case is the moon. However, phases and location of the moon are already built into the earths movement. The big earthquake, and more importantly the energy waves moving through the oceans, were not.

In a bit of (very) good news - finally found out this morning that my cousin Mike was in Djakarta at the time, rather than on a beach somewhere. He only experienced the amazing movements of a relatively closeby 9.0 earthquake.

 

[JasonFar]

Axel,

Sorry, I didn't mean to misquote you on that one... And your second post there, excellent... You are very bright, and your detailed thoughts on it all really resonate with me, and I agree on almost all points... Great posts.

Pure_Narcotic, just watched that one... My heart beats ferociously watching it... It seems like that is the natural stage of things in these experiences:

step 1) Novelty
step 2) Confusion
step 3) Utter terror

It's just so surreal I think because it's something we've only seen in movies... It's not fathomable. Well, that's not a very profound thought there... Axel's definition on the surreal aspects are much better.

 

[JasonFar]

I'm also listening to Coldplay's "Parachutes" right now... and it's on track 5, the infamous "Yellow", which I'm sure you've all heard...

The most memorable and popular lyric in the song, repeated over and over:

"Look at the stars, oh how they shine for you."

How about...

"Look at that waaaave, and hoooow it cooomes foooor yoooou."

I'm making light of the situation obviously but it's that type of worldview, perspective, whatever... that benignity of "nature"; stars, ocean, etc; that we are so used to...

But hey, Mr. Coldplay singer... If that star just so happens to, he'll come crashing down and burn our asses in a heartbeat.

 

[JasonFar]

80,000+

Just keeps growing.