Could We Survive a Mega-Tsunami?

[dipsydoodle]

Could We Survive a Mega-Tsunami?, BBC Two, review - from last week I assume.

Calm was the last thing that Could We Survive a Mega-Tsunami? (BBC Two) was trying to create. Instead the objective of this imagined staging of a super wave hitting Europe and America appeared to be the creation of enough fear to have paranoid survivalists fleeing up the nearest mountain to barricade themselves in. What else was this Hollywood-style, CGI-heavy bad dream with hysterical voice-over and tribal wailing trying to achieve? Understanding for the real survivors of the real tsunamis that really killed 200,000 people and devastated the Indian Ocean region in 2004? Or the even more recently traumatised victims of this natural horror show in Japan? I hadn’t detected a world sympathy deficit following these events, and use of real footage of the carnage from those disasters mixed up with fantasy sequences seemed gratuitous.

Was it therefore to make us sit up and take notice of the scientists warning us that a small Canary Island could well collapse and trigger a wave big enough to pound across Europe and increase in magnitude as it crossed the Atlantic Ocean to wipe out the Caribbean and East Coast of the USA? If so, I’m sure self-interest resulted in half the audience turning off at the point where we were told London would be fine, Brighton might have a bit of “disruption” and America might not be prepared because New Yorkers famously didn’t take warnings seriously. Worse, was the conclusion to this hysterical piece of science fantasy: as Japan showed us, you couldn’t do anything to prepare for a tsunami anyway. This was a frightening vision I’d sooner forget.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10004693/Could-We-Survive-a-Mega-Tsunami-BBC-Two-review.html

Direct BBC iPlayer link for those able to access it : http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01s0zqv/Could_We_Survive_a_MegaTsunami/

Its on Youtube too but not sure how long before BBC get it deleted :

[SheilaT]

1. I've seen various things like this, although not

this particular one.

What I do wonder is how accurate any of them are. Realistically, just how many coastal cities could be destroyed? As terrible as the two tsunamis you reference, they only devastated a portion of the regions where they occurred.

I will say that the topic, along with earthquakes and volcano eruptions, fascinates me.

[dipsydoodle]

4. Last documentary I saw on this subject

suggested the size of the wave would be sufficient to take out the entire strip Boston to Miami 50 miles inland. I have yet to watch all of this one - only watched half for now.

Long ways back when Oahu split its thought the wave crossed the entire continent into the Atlantic.

[IrishAyes]

6. The Naval Yard

in Virginia, I think, already has severe flooding issues due to global warming and the rise of the ocean.

[kickysnana]

2. Could it make it to MN through the Great Lakes?

"Watch New York, Connecticut and the like. Many portions of the east coast will be disturbed, as well as many portions of the west coast, as well as the central portion of the United States. Los Angeles, San Francisco, most of all these will be among those that will be destroyed before New York, or New York City itself, will in the main disappear. This will be another generation though, here; while the southern portions of Carolina, Georgia, these will disappear. This will be much sooner. The waters of the Great Lakes will empty into the Gulf of Mexico." Edgar Cayce

The damage inland in Japan was astonishing.

Sandy made it ti Eau Claire WI about an hour away from me, it was said, before it turned back.

Or will the water be commandeered to the Gulf ala Arizona and California.

[JayhawkSD]

3. Sets a new world record for speculation.

I only watched the first part of it, and I lost count of the speculative qualifiesrs.

"It's easy to imagine that..."
"This could be the..."
"It could have been caused by..."
"We might be looking at..."

This is junk science at its very worst.

[SheilaT]

8. Bingo. These sorts of shows

are total speculation, with only a small basis in fact. Again, the earth is so huge that I really wonder if a wave that massive (Boston to Miami and 50 miles inland) is really possible. I'm certainly no geologist, but all of the qualifiers that you noted make it clear that it is junk science.

[IrishAyes]

5. If it bleeds, it leads

Must be sweeps season over there. I've usually thought better of the BBC.

Regardless, one of the absolute requirements I had in choosing a retirement area was that it had to be 600-800 feet above sea level. I found a place 800 feet above, and at that it sits atop a really high hill. The 100 year high water mark is at least 300 feet below my place. It's all those poor souls on lower ground that get my sympathy. Even the tornadoes that rip apart most of the MidWest seem to veer off just before barreling through town, which I attribute to the topography.

But if the Big Earthquake strikes, all bets are off.

You simply can't find anywhere free of all danger from natural disasters.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Well, we've got another outcropping in the Azores...

ready to fall, the Yellowstone Caldera, and the New Madrid fault-- all of which could go off any day now. And there's an asteroid aiming for us somewhere out there.

Or, a bus could make a left turn right in front of us.

Me, I'm not worrying about disasters I can't control. I'm doing what little I can to make this a better place and avoid the slow destruction we're causing ourselves. If a volcano beats us to it, well... shit happens.

[jakeXT]

9. Noah did it

I guess being on the sea will work, unless maybe a really big meteorite hits the earth.