whynot | BE OKAY, JAPAN.

Crossposts: http://twoskeletons.livejournal.com/174539.html

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.signal boost

BE OKAY, JAPAN.

Japan earthquake, 8.9 on the Richter, TSUNAMI, approx 300 dead. It has hit North America. Watch it live on BBC.

- The American Red Cross is taking donations.
- If you are in the US, texting 90999 to REDCROSS donates $10.
- Person Finder: Japan Earthquake 2011. If you are looking for or have information about people in Japan affected by the earthquake, try here. It's currently tracking 7200 records.
-

help_japan. ETA:

help_japan, not a DW mirror.

What is the deal with the increased frequency of geological disaster in recent years? What causes that? I'm looking at this list of killer quakes in the past century, and while I am irritated that last October's Indonesia double whammy has been left out, the list still shows a worrying trend. Why is our planet going tectonically insane? What the hell is going on?

Hang in there, Japan.

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What is the deal with the increased frequency of geological disaster in recent years? What causes that?

This last year or so has made me seriously think of this SV fic by

astolat, which worries me because look, we do not have a Lex Luthor with attending super heroes lying around to solve our global climate problems, okay?

We need Superman to spin the planet back in time. Though I'm not sure what point in the past we'd want to spin it too, it's all pretty stressful.

We're also running

help_japan on DW (not a mirror), if you're interested. &hearts

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll edit this post for it and mention it in my next one.

I was thinking about that today. Is it sad that I'm not entirely surprised when another disaster makes the news? It feels like it's normal to wake up going, "Alright, who got hit while I was sleeping/busy/not paying attention?" That sounds like I don't care, I do, but it's such a common occurrence these days that I'm not surprised by it any more.

Does that make sense?

I think I understand where you're coming from. I grew up in a disaster-prone country, and I was young and ignorant enough to be callous about it. I like to think I've become more sensitive and aware since then. I hope so, at least, and if I'm acting like a jerk, I hope someone calls me out on it. It's a matter of not taking things for granted, I think. One owes it to oneself but especially to the world around you.

I'd like to think I'm not being callous about it, but, it's getting to be so common place.

...I don't know. I'll definitely help in any way that I can. :)

I was talking about this just now with a couple friends and we were kind of joking about how it's looking more and more like 2012 will be the end of the world, except that we weren't joking at all, because shit like this keeps happening over and over and I see it just marching up and around the Pacific rim until idk, we're all gone.

/morbid

Thank you for the BBC link! I've been annoyed at my computer's inability to livestream al-J, and this is quite helpful.

ahahaha my dad was not above making 2012 comments either. But I reckon it's like what these ladies said in the comments below us, that it's a combination of increased population density in more places and also that we have access to more information about them. The disasters have always been happening, but now we are actually aware of them.

Part of it is the density effect - there's a lot more of us than there were a century ago, and we're a lot more urban, which means localized disasters do more damage, and thus show up on "deadliest" lists. That said, it HAS been a nasty decade (~400 major events, as opposed to 250-300) (check out http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/form?t=101650&s=1&d=1 )

Good point on population density. Thanks for the link. That'll be interesting to click around with.

I don't think the frequency of the big quakes is increasing, I just think we're keeping better records. They've left off a lot of those big quakes that didn't hit very populated areas- I know that there was a huge earthquake in the 60s in Alaska, because my mother remembers the tsunami warnings that resulted.

If you look at the less recent ones, they basically only report the a) really, really, really big ones and/or b) the ones that happened in the US/Europe. Part of that is due to technology (both in being able to detect quakes and in also hearing news of them). Another part of it, I think, has to do with population. You've got more densely populated cities, and you have the way buildings are constructed. A quake that might kill 10,000 in China might only kill a few people if it had happened in Japan.

Or, for another example, the New Madrid earthquake of 1812 (epicenter was in Missouri) which is estimated to have been around a 7.0 did not really hurt that many people. If it went off today, the death toll would be in the thousands and thousands and the infrastructure would be extremely, extremely damaged, because a lot of people live there in buildings not built to withstand earthquakes. If a similar quake happened in the San Francisco Bay Area....well, it kind of did. Just look at the Loma Prieta quake of '89. It killed about 60 people and caused some damage. Most of those deaths were due to the collapse of a double-deck elevated freeway, which has since been removed.

Tl;dr- So a hundred years ago, the chances of having a big quake might be the same, it's just that now there's a better chance of a lot of people and possibly a lot of people in non-seismically retro-fitted buildings being there.

True. I reckon in addition to this is increased access to the global information network too, to spread the word and learn of it.

Oh yeah, definitely.

Though all that said, a 9.0 earthquake with a 5 minute duration is just so far beyond my comprehension. I grew up in the San Francisco bay area, i'm no stranger to earthquakes but this one....it's like some mythical monster. It doesn't seem actually possible.

I think population density is part of it, definitely. Disasters mean that a *lot* more people get affected, and I think also there's more damage. And also, with global media, we're hearing about things more now than, say, a hundred years ago.

Some of the storms--hurricanes, shit like that--are probably not helped by global warming, but volcanoes and earthquakes are just the earth being shitty. Although I think they can cause each other?

But yeah, I don't know if there actually are more disasters lately, but it feels like it. This is just so horrifying.

AND NOW THE NUCLEAR PLANTS

NOT TO MENTION A VOLCANO. WTF.

It definitely feels like the shit is hitting the fan this year. Everytime I switch on my laptop there are more news of natural disasters, civil war and what not. Sometimes I wonder if there are ever more bad things happening or if we are simply more aware of them because of the widening media coverage - but the horror of it all is mindnumbing either way.

Hang in there Japan, indeed.

I reckon it's the latter, and I'm glad the word about it is getting out. Let's all be horrified, because seriously.

My hope is that with the media coverage, help reaches the affected countries faster too. I mean look how quickly people set up fundraisers on livejournal - and that's just one internet platform.

:( I shared a room at a hostel with a Japanese girl last night and she didn't speak much English but she made a point of telling me that her family and the families of the four or five other Japanese people at the hostel were all okay. Then she told me that her brother was on a train when the earthquake hit and he pried open the emergency doors to help everyone get out because he's a police officer so his job is to protect people :')

That makes me smile in the soul. :D

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BE OKAY, JAPAN.

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