[HN Gopher] Paleotsunami Detectives Hunt for Ancient Disasters
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       Paleotsunami Detectives Hunt for Ancient Disasters
        
       Author : Hooke
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2023-02-21 05:06 UTC (17 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (hakaimagazine.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (hakaimagazine.com)
        
       | irrational wrote:
       | Between sea levels rising and the risks of tsunamis, I certainly
       | would not want to live anywhere near the coast. It's a nice place
       | to visit though.
        
         | INTPenis wrote:
         | Historically people have not wanted to live on the coast, just
         | near it. On the coast was mostly reserved for poor people.
        
         | TomK32 wrote:
         | Just because of rare (depending on the location even rarer)
         | events you mustn't overrate your personal risk. It's just the
         | same for personal risk of terrorism which is so rare compared
         | to any other sort of common accident or even personal eating
         | habits.
        
           | pixl97 wrote:
           | When looking at things like long term personal properly
           | ownership it gets difficult to make a good risk assessment.
           | 
           | For example, you are a nomad generally sleep in the
           | wilderness. What are the risks of a tree branch falling on
           | you at night over your lifetime, or lighting hitting the tree
           | verses the risk of a hailstorm beating you down. Which
           | provides the less risky shelter.
           | 
           | I would not count natural disasters and terrorism on the same
           | scale. For the vast majority of individuals terrorism is so
           | much more low risk that it's nearly a rounding error.
           | Terrorism is generally a pin point. Natural disasters are
           | 'generally' not. A hurricane will not only affect you, it
           | will affect everything around you. All services around you
           | can be shut down for an indefinite period of time leading to
           | a situation where you have no food, water, or shelter.
           | 
           | There are also non-individual risks, such as choosing where
           | to build a nuclear plant or hospital. Do you build your
           | hospital, a complex that could remain there for 100+ years,
           | in the path of a potential tsunami? Do you build it in the
           | foothills farther away where it won't be destroyed, but in
           | the meantime makes people go farther to reach it?
           | 
           | I personally am not one for having society build 'close' to
           | the ocean. The sea has no respect for property rights, and we
           | just love socializing the insurance of buildings put in much
           | higher risk zones than they should be.
        
           | ljf wrote:
           | While tsunamis might well be rare, the impacts of rising sea
           | levels will be felt amongst low lying areas and coastal
           | communities before the end of this century.
           | 
           | We will see a lot of property destroyed across the world and
           | large groups of (rich and poor) climate refugees moving to
           | new and safer areas.
        
             | sacrosancty wrote:
             | [dead]
        
       | martyvis wrote:
       | Jervis Bay, south of Sydney, Australia has records of tsunami
       | going over 80m cliffs (240ft) and carrying 6m boulders up 25m.
       | Large tsunami may have occurred only 300 and 800 years ago.
       | https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredi...
        
       | onychomys wrote:
       | From one of the links [0] in the article, this simply bonkers
       | description of a boat riding a tsunami wave like a surfboard...
       | 
       | "As the wave passed Cenotaph Island it seemed to be about 50 feet
       | high near the center of the bay and to slope up toward the sides.
       | It passed the island about 2 1/2 minutes after it was first
       | sighted, and reached the Badger about 1 1/2 minutes later. No
       | lowering or other disturbance of the water around the boat was
       | noticed before the wave arrived.
       | 
       | The Badger, still at anchor, was lifted up by the wave and
       | carried across La Chaussee Spit, riding stern first just below
       | the crest of the wave, like a surfboard. Swanson looked down on
       | the trees growing on the spit, and believes that he was about 2
       | boat lengths (more than 80 feet) above their tops. The wave crest
       | broke just outside the spit and the boat hit bottom and foundered
       | some distance from the shore. "
       | 
       | [0] https://geology.com/records/biggest-tsunami.shtml
        
         | eesmith wrote:
         | You might like this dramatized portrayal of the Gouverneur
         | Generaal Loudon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouverneur_Gener
         | aal_Loudon_(sh... ) facing the tsunami from Krakatoa -
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sga7dooXn1Y .
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-21 23:01 UTC)