The Asian SuperQuake

[Code Rot]

Ever since I started living in Tokyo I have been worried about the "Big One" which is supposedly due to hit Tokyo any day now. Living in Japan you periodically suffer small tremors, 4-5 on the Richter scale, big enough to scare but not enough to kill. But ever since the December 26 2004 earthquake in Sumatra, I have felt like a real pussy for getting concerned about the little tremors which often take place in Japan. That earthquake in Sumatra was more than just a "Big One" -- it was a super-earthquake, of Biblical proportions. I don't think there will be another earthquake as powerful or as destructive as that in our lifetimes. It was an historic event.

Some facts about the superquake:

According to scientists, the Earth wobbled on its axis as the superquake took place, and the speed of the Earth's rotation may have been altered, perhaps permanently;

The map of South-Asia has been altered. For example, according to satellite mapping, the huge island of Sumatra has moved 20 metres to the north.

Some of the islands of the Maldives chain have disappeared. Nobody knows where they are. They have been totally wiped from the face of the Earth. And there were people living on these islands.

I think the great lesson of this disaster is that we are all connected -- and if there is a problem in one country it affects all the other countries of the world. If Global Warning becomes a reality, there could be a lot more island nations disappearing underneath the waves. Perhaps Nature is trying to send us a message. It is time we started listening to that message.

[spacetiger]

Global warming is a reality, the question is to what exent it's affected by human action. While this quake was pretty big, the damage (in terms of life lost) was mostly due to overpopulation of coastal areas. There was an enormous earthquake in the Southern Ocean a week or so ago, it was barely noticed except by seismologists. Unfortuanately we're going to see a lot more historic events of this nature in our lifetimes - mostly in Asia.

[hachiroku]

The earthquake really hit me hard too. So many of us are so fortunate. I was watching Lex Murphy doing a CBC editorial last night and he was saying how in the world it seems to be that the "worst off people always get hit with the worst disasters".

But I think that the quake and tsunamis have united a lot of us together to try and do what we can to help out the people who live in the affected regions.

I agree with Spacetiger, that we will see more and more catostrophic events in our lifetime. It is not a question of IF, it is a question of WHEN and HOW BAD!

[kurogane]

And one of our own (Kuro-kitty) may well have been in or around it. This is starting to hit home.
Now I go for medicinal beer.

[spacetiger]

Well there's "only" 1,000 Australains unaccounted for now (down from 5,000) a couple of days ago. She's not one of the10 confirmed dead, & unless her real name is Katherine-Ann Glinsky or Caroline Rosso she's not one of the 12 feared dead either. I think she indicated that she's an Anglo so it seems unlikely she'd have either of those surnames.

I expect she's too busy trying to let her folks know she's OK to have even thought about GP. One of my brothers was in Malaysia at the time & he's fine, as are millions of others in the region...