Speaker 1: Salt Lake City, Utah, and Phoenix, Arizona. We're coming to
Speaker 1: see you. Yes, we are, so come see Yes, why don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we put out the call to Salt Lake City and
Speaker 1: said should we come there? And tickets are going gangbusters.
Speaker 1: You guys really responded. Yeah, we thought you were just like,
Speaker 1: this is all just a joke, but no, it's turning
Speaker 1: out quite well. We're gonna be there October twenty three
Speaker 1: at the Grand Theater in Salt Lake City, and then
Speaker 1: the next night we'll be in Phoenix at the Van Buren.
Speaker 1: And we can't wait to see you, guys, So please
Speaker 1: come out and see us. And if you want tickets,
Speaker 1: you can go to s y s K live dot
Speaker 1: com for those. And Chuck and yes to our friends
Speaker 1: down and Melbourne. Boy, we are super psyched because you
Speaker 1: love us and you sold us out very quickly. So
Speaker 1: we have added a second show that I believe is
Speaker 1: actually an earlier show, isn't that right? Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: five thirties show. I believe that Melbourne is the one
Speaker 1: that we added, and it's gonna be cool. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be like a sweet little Mattinee. Yeah, we call that
Speaker 1: happy Hour in our kind tree. Yeah that's right. So
Speaker 1: make sure you guys bring a slab each. That's right
Speaker 1: in Perth and Brisbane. Step it up. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So if you want to come see us, go to
Speaker 1: s Y s K Live. Whether you're in the US,
Speaker 1: whether you're in Australia, whether you're in New Zealand, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. You can go to the same site and
Speaker 1: hang out with us and there you go. See you
Speaker 1: guys soon. Welcome to Stuff you should know from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there. Tristan's reign of terror is over.
Speaker 1: Jerry had him killed. Yeah, he shouldn't have tried to
Speaker 1: take her place. I mean, he got what he deserved.
Speaker 1: Now there's just a grease spot on the carpet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was gross. You didn't have to leave him there
Speaker 1: for a week, Jerry. I thought that was a little weird.
Speaker 1: Also to bring in a acid bath into this, you right, well,
Speaker 1: it made sense when she dissolved him in acid. Can
Speaker 1: I say something Yes, the two that we're recording today, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like are such kind of classic core stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know e things. I know what you're gonna
Speaker 1: say that. I'm surprised we haven't done them yet. I
Speaker 1: searched probably three times, maybe five Chuck, Yes, they doesn't
Speaker 1: like we've gone over this stuff before. It. I can't,
Speaker 1: for the life of me figure out what it is.
Speaker 1: The closest I could come possibly was rogue waves, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, or how yeah, or how nuclear meltdowns work
Speaker 1: when we when we talked specifically about the Fukushima incident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that had to be what it is. Because
Speaker 1: I'm still a little paranoid that we've covered this before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am too, So we're paranoid together. Yeah, but we'll
Speaker 1: we'll fail together there if we re record an episode
Speaker 1: that we have done before. But it's okay, we'll be
Speaker 1: all right right, everybody right, all right? So both of
Speaker 1: our listeners, uh, Chuck and Buck. Wow, I know, isn't
Speaker 1: that random that one of our two listeners is also
Speaker 1: named Chuck? Did you see that movie? No? You know
Speaker 1: that was a movie, right, Yeah, there was a movie
Speaker 1: called Chuck and Buck. Was it a porno? Not exactly? Well?
Speaker 1: What was what was it about? It was? You know,
Speaker 1: Mike White, right, No, you'd recognize him. He's an actor
Speaker 1: and a writer, one of my favorite writers in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and he it was his first little indie film, starring
Speaker 1: him and one of the brothers, one of the filmmaking brothers,
Speaker 1: the Wise Brothers. Man. You were not talking my language
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, anyway, it was. It was him and
Speaker 1: he played sort of a creepy guy that had unhealthy
Speaker 1: crush on this other guy, and it got made for
Speaker 1: some very uncomfortable circumstances. You're talking about, I now pronounce
Speaker 1: you chucking, Larry. I know the movie you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I never saw that one either. Oh hey, speaking of dude,
Speaker 1: I saw Norm McDonald stand up Dog. Is it great? Yes?
Speaker 1: Probably probably the best stand up on Netflix right now.
Speaker 1: I've been meaning to watch it and he's just a
Speaker 1: it's it's he's at his peak. It's great. I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk it up too much. Just go in
Speaker 1: there fresh. It's just good Norm McDonald's stand up. You
Speaker 1: don't want to talk it up too much other than
Speaker 1: saying that it's the best thing, right. Yeah, I'm actually
Speaker 1: downplaying it right now. That's how good it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta check that out. Alright, so back to it.
Speaker 1: We actually started off talking about tsunamis and we veered
Speaker 1: off right back in it. Now are back in it,
Speaker 1: so or we'll talk about some of the more famous tsunamis,
Speaker 1: like they've definitely been in the public consciousness over the
Speaker 1: last in this millennium so far, just because there's been
Speaker 1: two colossally huge ones that cause so much destruction. Um.
Speaker 1: Which is ironic because we're finally now getting to the
Speaker 1: point where we can warn people early about a tsunami,
Speaker 1: and yet two of the worst tsunamis in history, whether
Speaker 1: it's through the human toll or the financial toll, occurred
Speaker 1: within eight years of each other, within the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of surprising. What you know a little
Speaker 1: more about tsunamis. Yeah, so uh, and I found our
Speaker 1: own article to be pretty good. Actually, well it was
Speaker 1: written by three people, for goodness, how can that go wrong?
Speaker 1: Including Robert Lamb. Well, always stand up for that guy's writing. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: tsunami is uh. We have just discovered the word. First
Speaker 1: of all, it is the Japanese word obviously uh. And
Speaker 1: the T s u of tsunami means harbor and the
Speaker 1: n a m I means waves, and that is what
Speaker 1: a tsunami is. It is a series of waves generally,
Speaker 1: or a or a wave. Although we will clear up
Speaker 1: it's not exactly what you might think from Hollywood movies. No,
Speaker 1: it's really really really not. Yeah, but it's in the ocean, obviously,
Speaker 1: and these things can be as high as a hundred
Speaker 1: feet and get this, they can travel up to and
Speaker 1: in fact, the two thousand four tsunami traveled about three
Speaker 1: hundred miles per hour, and that is not at land,
Speaker 1: but through the ocean. Three miles. Yeah, and I've actually
Speaker 1: seen them that they're clocked at six hundred miles per hour. Man,
Speaker 1: can you imagine? No? I really can't. And I also
Speaker 1: have trouble with the math itself, Like there's some weird
Speaker 1: formula are calculating how fast the tsunami is traveling. But
Speaker 1: it's a square root of the G force times I know,
Speaker 1: times the depth of the ocean where the tsunami originated.
Speaker 1: That's I don't understand how that equals how fast the
Speaker 1: tsunamis traveling. So I'm just gonna take it for their
Speaker 1: word that they can get up to six hundred Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. So all right, let's talk about tsunami. So
Speaker 1: tsunami is a what most people think of as a
Speaker 1: giant wave. It's not necessarily what you're thinking of, like
Speaker 1: you said, Chuck, but it is a wave in some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form, and it follows a lot of the
Speaker 1: um It has a lot of the same same um
Speaker 1: traits or characteristics of a wave that you see like
Speaker 1: on the surface of the ocean when you're sitting there
Speaker 1: on the beach and the waves are rolling in. Technically
Speaker 1: that's it's the same family. That's the little brother of
Speaker 1: a tsunami. And so any kind of wave has a
Speaker 1: couple of components to It has the trough, which is
Speaker 1: the lowest point, has the crest, which is the highest
Speaker 1: point and and happiest point generally. Yeah, typically that's where
Speaker 1: the surfers like to hang out. Um, you measure them
Speaker 1: from the height of the crest to the trough. That's
Speaker 1: the wave height, right, and then the distance between the
Speaker 1: crest of one wave and the crest of another is
Speaker 1: one wave length. So it's weird to think of because
Speaker 1: you think of the wave is just like you know,
Speaker 1: the part that's kind of curving up out of the
Speaker 1: ocean that you see in like graphic design or something
Speaker 1: like that. Right, the wave is actually much bigger than that.
Speaker 1: It goes from the front the top of the crest
Speaker 1: all the way forward and includes the back of the
Speaker 1: wave in front of it. Technically that's one wave, and
Speaker 1: and it includes the trough and the crest. So bam,
Speaker 1: that's a wave, whether it's a tidal wave or an
Speaker 1: ocean so or his wife. Right. And then the frequency,
Speaker 1: which is uh, what you would call the wave period.
Speaker 1: Is it the time for two waves in a row
Speaker 1: to hit the same point. Yeah, So if you like
Speaker 1: had a booie and a wave went past and then
Speaker 1: another wave went past the time between, that's the wave period, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: or if you were a booy Sure, we should maybe
Speaker 1: do one on I don't know if it's big enough
Speaker 1: for a full episode, but undertow would be kind of
Speaker 1: interesting to cover at some point. I'm surprised we haven't
Speaker 1: done that one either. Yeah, that's uh. Last time I
Speaker 1: was at in Charleston, Day two and three were fine,
Speaker 1: but that first day was an incredible undertow and they
Speaker 1: even talked about it on the news. It was pretty dangerous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so were you in the water, Oh, Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: having fun. But it's one of those things where you're
Speaker 1: playing in the water and you look up it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: Emily is a mile away. Now, yeah, that's very dangerous.
Speaker 1: It was really carrying me down the beach and the
Speaker 1: skin has been peeled off your ankles and calves. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just fighting through it, right until you eventually say,
Speaker 1: I'm forty seven years old, What the heck am I doing.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go lay down right with a with a
Speaker 1: gin and tonic, right, So you've got to figure it out, Chuck.
Speaker 1: You know that I have my moments. So when we're
Speaker 1: talking about waves on an ocean. Back to waves, by
Speaker 1: the way, when when you're talking about waves on an ocean,
Speaker 1: like the waves people normally think of, um, those are
Speaker 1: actually generated by wind. And we definitely talked about this
Speaker 1: somewhere before. Yeah, it's pretty interesting because I think most
Speaker 1: people think of gravitational pull and things like that atmospheric
Speaker 1: pressure and they contribute, but wind is kind of the
Speaker 1: most common way that a wave will form, right, And
Speaker 1: it does so by basically on a molecular level. And
Speaker 1: this this article really goes into granular detail, but basically
Speaker 1: air molecules push water molecules along and create these circular patterns.
Speaker 1: Not circular on top of the surface, but if you're
Speaker 1: looking at like a cross section of the water, circular
Speaker 1: from the top into the water, usually down about a
Speaker 1: meter underwater, and they can get higher and higher as
Speaker 1: the wind gets stronger and stronger, right, yeah, And these
Speaker 1: little guys are known as capillary waves, which is the
Speaker 1: cutest wave, I guess. Uh. And then they just keep
Speaker 1: circling around vertically like you said, until eventually it you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of dissipates the deeper it goes, obviously it does.
Speaker 1: But so depending on how strong the wind is, when
Speaker 1: that wave starts to whip up and froth up and
Speaker 1: and and get like the back to it, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it has more surface for the wind to press on.
Speaker 1: So the wind now can push it along even further,
Speaker 1: so it can pick up height, speed, velocity, all that
Speaker 1: jam and it can get kind of big and they
Speaker 1: can get kind of fast. But the point is this,
Speaker 1: what you're seeing is now water being pushed along. What
Speaker 1: you're seeing is the transfer of kinetic energy from the
Speaker 1: wind into water, and what a wave is the movement
Speaker 1: of that energy. Through water. Yeah, it's an important distinction.
Speaker 1: I think there really is, because if you if you
Speaker 1: are at one point and you see a wave and
Speaker 1: you touch it, and you somehow scramble forward and catch it,
Speaker 1: when it's like fifty yards down or towards shore, you
Speaker 1: touch it again, you're actually touching two different bits of water.
Speaker 1: That's not the same water moving from point A to
Speaker 1: point B. It's the energy moving through it, and it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a bit of a brain buster if
Speaker 1: you start to overthink it, but it's also extraordinarily simple
Speaker 1: if you don't. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so that's that's
Speaker 1: a wave. Okay, that's a surface wave. Tsunamis are not
Speaker 1: like that. No, And if you if you want to
Speaker 1: understand how a tsunami is for armed and I think
Speaker 1: we talked about this in earthquakes as well, which is
Speaker 1: why it all rings so familiar. But that is not always,
Speaker 1: but that is generally what kicks off in in in
Speaker 1: the case of the most too recent devastating ones, what
Speaker 1: kicks off the tsunami will be an underwater earthquake, and
Speaker 1: those happen. If you took out all the ocean's water,
Speaker 1: you would really just need to think of the sea
Speaker 1: floor just like you would the rest of ah, the
Speaker 1: hard stuff on the earth. Yeah, well put you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Yeah, no I do. It's like if
Speaker 1: you're on a on a mountain and you come to
Speaker 1: a valley, it's the same thing that's just underwater. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: like this is where we talk about plate tectonics, that
Speaker 1: we have these huge plates, a series of them that
Speaker 1: make up what's called the lithosphere. Uh, and that is
Speaker 1: the top layer of the Earth, and they make up
Speaker 1: everything that you see, including what's underwater, and they float
Speaker 1: on top of the Stennis year. Do you think I
Speaker 1: said that correctly? I think so. And I remember talking
Speaker 1: about this is sort of a is that the lube? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hot magma lube. So because it's it's not exactly lub,
Speaker 1: but it's almost like hot asphalt more, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Like it's a solid, but it's a very
Speaker 1: viscous solid. Right, And so those plates float on top
Speaker 1: of the athenisphere, and there are boundaries between the plates,
Speaker 1: and where those boundaries connect, all sorts of things can happen. Right.
Speaker 1: You can have one plate going upward while the other
Speaker 1: plates going downwards, so they're sliding alongside each other. You
Speaker 1: can have one um, you can have them pushing up
Speaker 1: into one another, and you have mountain ranges. Then you
Speaker 1: can have ones where one slips under another one and
Speaker 1: that creates ocean trenches when it's underwater. But you have
Speaker 1: to think about this. This isn't happening quickly. This happens
Speaker 1: at the rate of about um an inch, about two
Speaker 1: and a half centimeters per year. That's how slowly these
Speaker 1: things are moving when they're interacting with one another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're they're huge, and it's a lot of force
Speaker 1: even though it's going slow. So what you were talking
Speaker 1: about is subduction. UM. And sometimes in cases of subduction,
Speaker 1: you can have a lighter plate that just sort of
Speaker 1: snaps upward. Uh, when they meet each other and they
Speaker 1: say hi, lighter plate snaps up, and that's what causes
Speaker 1: the earthquake and a tremendous amount of of rock and
Speaker 1: force shoot directly upward from the floor of the ocean. Right,
Speaker 1: So now a tsunami has just been born, because that's
Speaker 1: what it is. Right with a normal wave, you've got
Speaker 1: wind blowing the water or wind blowing through the water.
Speaker 1: You have with a tsunami, this huge release of energy
Speaker 1: upward through the water column towards the surface. And this
Speaker 1: this energy is like, yeah, we're going up and right
Speaker 1: when it hits the surface, it really comes in contact
Speaker 1: with gravity that says no, you're not. They go, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we're going outward then, and they it spreads outward. And
Speaker 1: this article gives a great analogy because it really drives
Speaker 1: home what we're dealing with here. If you take a
Speaker 1: pebble and you throw it into a pond, it makes
Speaker 1: that ripple. Right, it's the same exact thing, but rather
Speaker 1: than a rock going into the water, this is the
Speaker 1: force of of um an earthquake under the water going
Speaker 1: upward out right. And so that upward out movement that
Speaker 1: is the tsunami waves that are being created, and it
Speaker 1: spreads outward in different ripples, just like if you throw
Speaker 1: a rock in the pond. Should we take a break?
Speaker 1: I think we should. I'm getting kind of worked up now.
Speaker 1: I love it. Uh, it's the earth sciencest man, that's
Speaker 1: your jam. Yeah they yeah, that's true. All right. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: speed of a tsunami and how that happens right after
Speaker 1: this off? You know, stop, you know stop? All right,
Speaker 1: So when we left off, I promised talk of tsunami speed,
Speaker 1: and this is where it gets a little like, uh,
Speaker 1: this is where like if you've learned it from movies,
Speaker 1: then you've probably learned the wrong thing. Because the tsunami
Speaker 1: moves the fastest in deep water. So when a tsunami
Speaker 1: is going three hundred miles an hour, and and you're
Speaker 1: of course you're monitoring things, which we'll talk about with
Speaker 1: all all sorts of advanced equipment. But if you're just
Speaker 1: looking with your naked eye, and the tsunami is going
Speaker 1: at three miles an hour through the ocean, you might
Speaker 1: see like a three ft high if that on the
Speaker 1: surface of the of the ocean. Where you where things
Speaker 1: really take action is when it gets close to shore,
Speaker 1: because it really slows down and it gets a lot
Speaker 1: taller because it's shallower water, right like the the shelf,
Speaker 1: the coastal shelf that gets shallow and shallower pushes it upward,
Speaker 1: so it slows and grows taller. Right, Yeah, depending on
Speaker 1: the topography of what's going on. Wherever the tsunami is
Speaker 1: reaching shore, it's gonna have a big difference, of course.
Speaker 1: But the point is is it's compressing all this energy
Speaker 1: upward as it gets closer and it slows down, and
Speaker 1: it's like it's very difficult to to grasp how enormous
Speaker 1: the tsunami um waves are, especially considering that what like
Speaker 1: three ft like a meter maybe of of surface water
Speaker 1: will be disturbed to to look like a wave like
Speaker 1: a normal wave, right, but that wave goes all the
Speaker 1: way down to the ocean floor, often miles. So you
Speaker 1: have basically what amounts to a three mile tall wave
Speaker 1: that's a tsunami rather than you know, a wave that
Speaker 1: you see on the surface it's maybe six ft tall,
Speaker 1: and then it's disturbing water three ft under the water.
Speaker 1: This is a three mile tall wall of water moving
Speaker 1: out in a ripple formation in in what's called the
Speaker 1: wave train. So successive waves like those ripples spreading out
Speaker 1: from that pebble um that are three miles tall and many, many,
Speaker 1: many miles across, just coming at you. Basically, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: when I said slow down, you know, thirty to forty
Speaker 1: at land is still really fast. Obviously it's not three
Speaker 1: but um, you know, right before this tsunami happens on land,
Speaker 1: it can be really creepy. On shore, You're gonna notice
Speaker 1: this beach water rising and falling in a odd ways,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it will suck all that water out. And
Speaker 1: I believe that movie, Uh The Impossible, didn't it show that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I've seen that in a movie and
Speaker 1: it's really creepy looking, and apparently that's it is actually
Speaker 1: very creepy looking in real life too. It's not like
Speaker 1: a movie thing. It can suck all that water out,
Speaker 1: and it may not look like a movie wave coming in.
Speaker 1: It's more likely to look like just a huge flood
Speaker 1: coming your way right right, like a very fast moving tide,
Speaker 1: which is I think one reason people call them tidal waves,
Speaker 1: even though the tides have nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't look like that huge wave that you
Speaker 1: see in like um the Day after Tomorrow or something
Speaker 1: like that. It's it's it's like a very fast moving,
Speaker 1: fast rising flood water. And this on this fast moving
Speaker 1: floodwater you have like huge raging rivers on top of
Speaker 1: the water too. It's just this huge, chaotic, massive water
Speaker 1: that is um that is moving inland very quickly and
Speaker 1: with an enormous amount of destructive force. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: once it gets there, depending on where it lands, you
Speaker 1: might have like areas that were you think are sheltered
Speaker 1: because of high dunes, or you're in an inlet or
Speaker 1: a bay. Sometimes they can act as like funnels. Like
Speaker 1: if the tsunami goes through there, you just don't know
Speaker 1: what kind of destructive power it's going to have until
Speaker 1: it interacts with the topography and the land features that
Speaker 1: it hits. No, but it does do some interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: So um when So, first of all, that one thing
Speaker 1: where the the bay or the harbor or whatever gets
Speaker 1: the water sucked out of it's called drawback, and they've
Speaker 1: studied that and actually concluded what you're seeing is the
Speaker 1: trough of the way. That's the trough of the first
Speaker 1: tsunami wave. So if that's the part that reaches land first,
Speaker 1: the trough, that's gonna have drawback. So it's not always
Speaker 1: going to have drawback, just only if the trough drives first.
Speaker 1: The crest could arrive first, and then all you're seeing
Speaker 1: is this floodwater coming out of nowhere. But um, there's
Speaker 1: also supposedly the sound of a freight train or a
Speaker 1: jet coming at you. So it's like a horrific sound too,
Speaker 1: that's coming with this wall of water. But one of
Speaker 1: the other things, um, I think you're about to talk
Speaker 1: about was wrap around effect. Yeah, and that's along like
Speaker 1: a coastline. When I sort of I sort of thought
Speaker 1: of it as like, uh, or maybe it's harbor resonance.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not sure which is which. But when you
Speaker 1: have like a fish tank and you imagine just shaking
Speaker 1: it with your all your force and it's just banging
Speaker 1: off of interior walls, is that around No, that's harbor resonances.
Speaker 1: But that is so you know when you're doing that, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it just picks up more and more forced with each movement,
Speaker 1: each oscillation from one side to the other. Right Imagine,
Speaker 1: I know they're like, please stop, surely this is illegal, um,
Speaker 1: but they imagine that happening in the harbor, like that's
Speaker 1: what happens in the harbor. So it just gets even
Speaker 1: more destructive. But the wrap around effect, this article just
Speaker 1: totally completely gets it wrong. It's not the wraparound effect
Speaker 1: at all. So the referround effect is if you have
Speaker 1: a tsunami wave, remember these are many many miles across
Speaker 1: and they're coming inland if they encounter, say like a
Speaker 1: barrier island. This is a little island, right, You would
Speaker 1: think that the barrier island would slow it down, maybe
Speaker 1: make it, um take it a little easier on the
Speaker 1: land the shoreline behind the barrier island. It doesn't do
Speaker 1: that at all. The barrier island actually amplifies the tsunami
Speaker 1: wave and they couldn't figure out how, but they knew
Speaker 1: that it could amplify it by like but it doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. So they started studying it. And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure who someone's gonna call them they for now,
Speaker 1: but um, they they figured out what happens is the
Speaker 1: tsunami wave is split into two by this island, and
Speaker 1: for a very brief time, when they come back together,
Speaker 1: they are basically doubled in force. It's like two waves
Speaker 1: together now with this force, and it amplifies it onto
Speaker 1: the land behind it and makes it way worse. That
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense if a picture it in my head. Well,
Speaker 1: they actually do have cool pictures of it too, I
Speaker 1: think on a Noah site. So look up like wrap
Speaker 1: around effects tsunamis and it shows like you know, just
Speaker 1: part one, two, three, four and all these I think
Speaker 1: six pictures and it really drives at home. But I mean,
Speaker 1: it definitely does make sense, but it also intuitively doesn't
Speaker 1: at all, you know. Yeah, And you know, obviously they've
Speaker 1: been in the news in the last like ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen years, like you said, and the devastation that can
Speaker 1: happen from a tsunami is just it's immense because people
Speaker 1: live along coastlines and and we'll get to early warning later,
Speaker 1: but no matter what kind of early warning you have,
Speaker 1: you making get some people out of there, but it's
Speaker 1: gonna wreck everything in its path. And that happened very
Speaker 1: famously recently a couple of times. In December twenty six,
Speaker 1: two thousand four, in the Indian Ocean, there was a
Speaker 1: massive nine point one magnitude earthquake that apparently it shook
Speaker 1: buildings twelve hundred miles away in Thailand. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: big one. And they always you know, the I guess
Speaker 1: the big mac version of earthquakes is Hiroshima bombs, right,
Speaker 1: the magnitude of twenty three thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: small earthquake, no, not at all. I think the next
Speaker 1: most recent one was in nineteen sixty. The next biggest
Speaker 1: one is in nineteen sixty and it was like a
Speaker 1: nine point four to nine point six, and this is
Speaker 1: a nine point one, So it was no sloutch as
Speaker 1: far as earthquakes go. But the thing about this, the
Speaker 1: two thousand four um earthquake that hits Sumatra, it was
Speaker 1: one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. It
Speaker 1: killed like about two hundred and thirty thousand people and
Speaker 1: ruined No. I can't like if you go through the
Speaker 1: list of like deadly tsunamis over history. Um. I mean
Speaker 1: the next the next largest I saw was one in
Speaker 1: Japan in um. I think that yeah, the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: that killed twenty thousand people, so a tenth of the
Speaker 1: two thousand four tsunami. And the reason why it was
Speaker 1: so deadly was it hit eleven different countries that were
Speaker 1: fully engorged with tourists on the holiday season. Um, so
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people there, including a lot
Speaker 1: of people who had never really been introduced to tsunami
Speaker 1: preparedness or knew what was going on. If there was drawback,
Speaker 1: and I think there may have been. Actually I think
Speaker 1: I saw a footage of the drawback for that one,
Speaker 1: So you're right, Um, people were kind of like going
Speaker 1: out into the harbor, like, what's this And when that happens,
Speaker 1: when the drawback happens and you're seeing the trough of
Speaker 1: that first tsunami wave, you have seconds, maybe minutes to
Speaker 1: get away, not go closer to it. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have made a difference in that case. Probably not.
Speaker 1: You know, it hit and it was enormous and huge,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, it just it killed a lot of
Speaker 1: people very quickly, because even if you do have the
Speaker 1: time to do it, you have to get no less
Speaker 1: than a mile inland and or no less than a
Speaker 1: hundred feet above sea level, and you have a very
Speaker 1: short time to do that. So my friend Dave Barnhart,
Speaker 1: who listens to the show, Hey Dave, he is a
Speaker 1: documentary filmmaker UM for nonprofits, and he he went down
Speaker 1: there and did a series of documentary updates over the years.
Speaker 1: He and I can't remember how many people, but he
Speaker 1: followed specifically the lives an aftermath of of several different
Speaker 1: individuals and families. Uh, and you know, went down there
Speaker 1: himself and shot this stuff, I believe in Indonesia, and um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's still following up but he
Speaker 1: did it for many years and I saw a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff and he won some awards for it.
Speaker 1: Is just just unbelievable, the stories of devastation and then
Speaker 1: perseverance for some of these people that like started over
Speaker 1: with nothing in the worst, most unsanitary, devastating conditions. You
Speaker 1: can imagine living in, Yeah, I can. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: I can image me. I can't imagine. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just heartbreaking to see this stuff, like quarter a
Speaker 1: million people. It's just it's hard to even fathom. There. Um,
Speaker 1: there's this one story you mean got obsessed with at
Speaker 1: the time him about a kid named baby eighty one.
Speaker 1: He was like the eighty first baby to be brought
Speaker 1: into I think a hospital in Sri Lanka or something afterward,
Speaker 1: and there was this huge like media publicity circus around
Speaker 1: whose kid it was, and supposedly they're reporting that there
Speaker 1: was like nine different families claiming him and there was
Speaker 1: a huge battle over it, when really it was just
Speaker 1: this one poor family who knew that it was their
Speaker 1: son and who went to go make a claim, but
Speaker 1: they they actually got arrested for trying to take the
Speaker 1: baby out of the hospital and had to wait like
Speaker 1: a month before they got him back through like a
Speaker 1: d n A test. But it's just like like, first
Speaker 1: of all, tsunami. Secondly, their baby gets swept away out
Speaker 1: of the mom's arms in the tsunami. And then when
Speaker 1: they finally find out the babies alive, they go to
Speaker 1: take him back and they can't, and just like the
Speaker 1: idea that that they have to prove that it's their son,
Speaker 1: it just kept getting worse and worse and worse, and
Speaker 1: apparently they had to move because they were known as
Speaker 1: the Tsunami Family. Here's the last little bit for you.
Speaker 1: They went and appeared on Good Morning America in the
Speaker 1: United States and told their story. When they got back,
Speaker 1: they were denied disaster aid because everyone assumed that they
Speaker 1: had been paid for their appearance and that they didn't
Speaker 1: need the money even though they hadn't been paid for it.
Speaker 1: Isn't that awful? Yeah, I mean, one family that happened
Speaker 1: to all of that. The story of the movie The
Speaker 1: Impossible is a true story and an amazing story and
Speaker 1: uh just a tough movie to watch, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking back, like I saw that within
Speaker 1: the last year or so, I think, and I was
Speaker 1: thinking back to like some of those scenes, and now
Speaker 1: that I'm thinking about, I'm like, how did they even
Speaker 1: shoot that stuff? Like how it doesn't make any sense?
Speaker 1: Like did they did they flood a town somewhere and
Speaker 1: start filming and the actors in there, because that's what
Speaker 1: it looks like. For sure? It was. It was pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable what they did, like cinematically for sure. But you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, it's it's very tough to watch for sure.
Speaker 1: Uh So that was UM two four and then just
Speaker 1: what seven or eight years ago in two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: in March, and we definitely talked about this in nuclear meltdown,
Speaker 1: but the tsunami that hit Japan, this one had a
Speaker 1: had a horrific effect in and of itself just from
Speaker 1: the tsunami. I don't know what the final death toll,
Speaker 1: but it was well over four or five thousand. I
Speaker 1: think I think the official death tolls now at twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dead. Oh wow, because I knew for a while
Speaker 1: they were just people missing. Man. I think they finally
Speaker 1: combined them all and just said twenty thousands the official
Speaker 1: death toll. The the damage is upwards of three hundred
Speaker 1: and nine billion US dollars it's the it's the most
Speaker 1: expensive natural disaster in history. Well, yeah, and this one
Speaker 1: was noted not only for its uh for its devastation
Speaker 1: and for human life and money, but obviously the generation
Speaker 1: er of the how do you pronounce it? Fukushima Nuclear
Speaker 1: facility that was where it made. I don't know about
Speaker 1: the most news, but that's what really set this one apart.
Speaker 1: You had a tsunami disable a nuclear reactor for a
Speaker 1: brief time, which is bad news. Yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 1: shut down like it should because I guess they had
Speaker 1: seismic detectors that are like tripped an automatic like safeguard system,
Speaker 1: but the power got knocked out, so there wasn't any
Speaker 1: cooling system. And it's not like it just goes from
Speaker 1: incredibly hot nuclear reaction to you know, room temperature immediately.
Speaker 1: You need to keep cooling it down, and they didn't.
Speaker 1: And apparently from that meltdown. And I don't remember talking
Speaker 1: about this in the episode. This is insane, but the
Speaker 1: the meltdown created radiation that tore apart the water vapor.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, and so the hydrogen separated and so the
Speaker 1: place filled with hydrogen gas and it started exploding and
Speaker 1: that's what blew a hole in the reactor and created
Speaker 1: the leak. I don't remember that. That's nuts. I wonder
Speaker 1: if that was found out afterward and not available to
Speaker 1: us at the time. I'll bet you're right. That sounds
Speaker 1: like something that they like. I don't. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if at the time we recorded they knew how
Speaker 1: the breach occurred. Yeah, because we did. We recorded within
Speaker 1: like a week or so of it happening. I think so. Um,
Speaker 1: that place is still still like way hot. They're sending
Speaker 1: they sending robots now. They're trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: robot to use, and they haven't hit on it quite
Speaker 1: yet because the place melts robots that go in to
Speaker 1: try to clean up mess. Yeah. Yeah, all right, Well
Speaker 1: we're gonna take another break, talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: how we're getting better at predicting earthquakes, and then also
Speaker 1: what it means for marine life. Right after this stop no,
Speaker 1: you know stuff, you know? Okay, Charles, we're back. I
Speaker 1: also want to say real quick before we do that. Um,
Speaker 1: there are two at least two articles, and I believe
Speaker 1: they're written by the same guy who went and covered
Speaker 1: the two thousand eleven UM tsunami in the aftermath. One
Speaker 1: is called Ghosts of the Tsunami. It's called It's It's
Speaker 1: I think in the London Review books. It is amazing.
Speaker 1: It's about how these these people in Japan like live
Speaker 1: among ghosts as far as they're concerned. They see like
Speaker 1: ghosts everywhere of their the people who died in the tsunami.
Speaker 1: It's one of the better articles I've ever read in
Speaker 1: my life. The other one is The School Beneath the
Speaker 1: Wave and that wasn't the Guardian and um it's it
Speaker 1: tells the tale of this one specific school that um
Speaker 1: this guy who covered the tsunami knew all these different
Speaker 1: stories and all these tales um that came out of it,
Speaker 1: and this one, I believe he says that he um
Speaker 1: put off writing about until last because it's so terrible
Speaker 1: because the whole school of children just got swept away
Speaker 1: by the tsunami, because the grown ups wouldn't listen to
Speaker 1: the kids who they'd trained to re respond correctly to
Speaker 1: a tsunami, and they just wouldn't listen to him, and
Speaker 1: and it just swept away basically his whole villages group
Speaker 1: of children. Would they have gotten out, Yeah, if they
Speaker 1: listened to the kids, probably most of if not all,
Speaker 1: would have survived. Man. Yeah, it's it's a tough one
Speaker 1: to read, for sure, but both of them are definitely
Speaker 1: worth it. Uh So when it comes to predicting these
Speaker 1: um obviously in the same with earthquakes and tornadoes in
Speaker 1: any natural disaster, what they're trying to do is just
Speaker 1: get better and better about getting as much time beforehand
Speaker 1: as possible. Because, uh then this article very simply points out,
Speaker 1: like there's you cannot stop it. There's nothing you can do.
Speaker 1: You can't build anything that can thwart or divert a tsunami.
Speaker 1: So the only chance that people have a survival is
Speaker 1: getting as early warning as possible to get as many
Speaker 1: people out of there as possible. We'll still destroy the
Speaker 1: towns and villages and cities, but at least you could
Speaker 1: save some human lives. And unfortunately a lot of I mean,
Speaker 1: it's getting much better, but most of the studying takes
Speaker 1: place afterward, so you can try and get better about before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one way that you study tsunamis is through things
Speaker 1: like UM eyewitness reports. Yeah, you go, you go look
Speaker 1: to see how high the debris made it up to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how far it went, Yeah, how wide it was. Um,
Speaker 1: some of the debris will end up like on the
Speaker 1: other side of the world. Old sometimes if the tsunami
Speaker 1: is big enough, because remember you hear about the tsunami
Speaker 1: where it hit, you know, the closest place to place
Speaker 1: it devastated the most, whether it was Sumatra in two
Speaker 1: dozen four or um Japan in two dozen eleven. But
Speaker 1: like that, say, like the japan one, it took it
Speaker 1: carried stuff all the way over to California, like it
Speaker 1: goes in both directions. It's just California was way further away,
Speaker 1: so it didn't experience the destruction like Japan did, which
Speaker 1: was right up on the place where it happened. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, equipment wise, they use UM buoys out
Speaker 1: in the ocean, They use tide gauges. They have tide
Speaker 1: stations that measure just the smallest little changes in sea level.
Speaker 1: They do have seismograph stations that record you know, underwater
Speaker 1: earthquake activity UM and anything apparently that's seven point five
Speaker 1: or higher that is under the ocean. Earthquake wise, is
Speaker 1: when an official tsunami watches issued, right, so when the
Speaker 1: tsunami watches issued, then you won't hear about it quite yet.
Speaker 1: They that means that they start checking out their gauge stations.
Speaker 1: And if the gauge station reports a tsunami, right, um,
Speaker 1: I think it's I don't know if it's a I
Speaker 1: guess it's a change in tide is what the gage
Speaker 1: station measures, right, So if there's a sudden change in
Speaker 1: tide that doesn't coincide with the title schedules, will say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a tsunami, send out the alarm and then they
Speaker 1: alert every like the public through text messages or TV
Speaker 1: or you know, the Paul Revere. However they do it,
Speaker 1: how early can they do? You know, how early they
Speaker 1: can get this stuff? Now? I I saw minutes for
Speaker 1: for the two thousand eleven one, which like that's all
Speaker 1: that In some cases, that's all you need. If you're
Speaker 1: in a tall building, you just keep going up, that
Speaker 1: can help. Or if you are close enough, you're getting
Speaker 1: your car and start driving as far inland as you can.
Speaker 1: Minutes can help. And they actually think that the death
Speaker 1: toll would have been way higher in Japan had they
Speaker 1: not learned as much from the two thousand four tsunami
Speaker 1: and set up emergency systems like they had that the
Speaker 1: death toll would have been much worse. It's just the
Speaker 1: reason why it got as high as twenty thousand is
Speaker 1: because it was such a big tsunami, like it topped
Speaker 1: like a hundred and almost a hundred and thirty feet.
Speaker 1: It was just enormous. That's that's what accounted for the
Speaker 1: destructive force. Yeah, And the whole time I was researching
Speaker 1: this stuff, I didn't see anything in our article that
Speaker 1: talked about sea life because I was thinking, what's it
Speaker 1: like to be a fish? When three three hundred mile
Speaker 1: an hour tsunami rolls through and Uh, it can be devastating,
Speaker 1: Like the base of the wave can completely change and
Speaker 1: rewrite the topography of the c floor. Um, really bad
Speaker 1: erosion will happen. And the what they called the benthic ecosystem,
Speaker 1: which is the you know, the very sea bottom ecosystem
Speaker 1: with all the crustaceans and sea snails and worms and stuff,
Speaker 1: it can just wreck it. Uh. Coral reefs can be destroyed.
Speaker 1: Um And in fact, in two thousand four, UH it
Speaker 1: completely wrecked the coral reefs around the Indian Oceans, coastlines,
Speaker 1: seagrass beds, mangrove forests, all these wetlands can be super
Speaker 1: vulnerable and then species invasion, like you were saying, stuff
Speaker 1: can move thousands and thousands of miles. That happens with
Speaker 1: sea life too, so you can get an algae. Uh
Speaker 1: And in fact they have recorded like algae and other
Speaker 1: organisms and like oregon that came from Japan that have
Speaker 1: never been there before. So sometimes that can be bad.
Speaker 1: Some you know, sometimes it works out and they just say,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll set up camp here. But they can
Speaker 1: displace native species, so that's all a consideration. And could
Speaker 1: not find anything specifically about literally in the water, like
Speaker 1: what happens to a whale that's yeah, that's swimming along
Speaker 1: and then three miles an hour comes through, Like does
Speaker 1: it just go kaboom and the whale explodes kind of
Speaker 1: thing because I could kind of see that happening. I
Speaker 1: don't know, or is it just like being in a
Speaker 1: washing machine for a minute and then the whale is
Speaker 1: like what the heck was that all about? What a rush?
Speaker 1: Hopefully hopefully chuck let me let me We have some
Speaker 1: very very sharp listeners who I'll bet some of which
Speaker 1: are marine biologists, So we want to hear from you guys,
Speaker 1: what happens to a whale that gets hit by a tsunami.
Speaker 1: And that's us asking from our eight year old hearts.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go play with our tonka trucks now while
Speaker 1: we wait for the answer. Yeah, and of course anything
Speaker 1: within the you know, I'm not sure how much distance,
Speaker 1: but anything close to the inland part will just be
Speaker 1: washed ashore. So, I mean millions and millions of bits
Speaker 1: of sea life are now deposited on dry land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should say so so for the the unfortunate ones.
Speaker 1: I mean, there, if you're a fish and you're getting
Speaker 1: smacked around with this debris now like you're getting run
Speaker 1: into a house, that'll kill you. Um, there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of obstacles that aren't out in the water that are
Speaker 1: now in your way because you're being pushed inland in
Speaker 1: this huge surge of floodwater. One of the other destructive
Speaker 1: forces of tsunamis is that they recede and when they
Speaker 1: received they take all that stuff back out with them too.
Speaker 1: So maybe your house survived the initial inundation, but it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to survive all that debris being pulled
Speaker 1: on it. As it's all pulled back outward into the
Speaker 1: ocean too. They just go from bed to worse, from
Speaker 1: moment to moment basically. Well, and I don't I think
Speaker 1: it slipped by. I don't think we mentioned too that
Speaker 1: it's no, it's not just that first wave like you
Speaker 1: can get secondary flood pushes up to like an hour
Speaker 1: and a half later. Yes, thank you, So that whole
Speaker 1: wave rain. Right, You get the initial wave, and you
Speaker 1: get another one or the initial flood water, and then
Speaker 1: another one another one. Um. Yeah, I saw actually up
Speaker 1: to like a couple hours later, and people have died
Speaker 1: going back thinking after the right exactly. They go back
Speaker 1: and then it's like nope, here comes around too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't believe we haven't done this one before. We
Speaker 1: definitely have. And I looked a bunch. Yeah, I did too.
Speaker 1: Um And I also tried every word combination I could
Speaker 1: think of, and nothing came up. I even tried spelling
Speaker 1: it s o O in a M. I that sounds
Speaker 1: like us man. Um, I got one more, you're ready.
Speaker 1: The tallest tsunami wave ever recorded. It was in Lituya Bay, Alaska.
Speaker 1: It reached five hundred and twenty meters or se dred
Speaker 1: and ten ft above sea level. Can you imagine. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's like the tallest skyscrapers. It's up there for sure,
Speaker 1: just coming at you. Well, if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about tsunami's you can search that word. Don't spell
Speaker 1: it s O O N A M I. It's spelled T,
Speaker 1: s U and A M. I think uh in the
Speaker 1: search bar at house touff Works dot com. And since
Speaker 1: I spelled some stuff, it's time for listener mail. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this story from a nice lady from a
Speaker 1: strawberry farmer. How about that? Those are great stories? Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: stumbled upon your podcast and have become obsessed. My husband
Speaker 1: and I own a strawberry farm. Doesn't that sound lovely?
Speaker 1: It really does. What a nice way to live, you know, man,
Speaker 1: And I recently started listening while I'm working outside. The
Speaker 1: other day I was walking the fields and listening to
Speaker 1: an older one on cremation and a story. My mom's
Speaker 1: dad passed away in the early nineties when I was
Speaker 1: very young. Two thousand twelve, my grandma lost the family
Speaker 1: home in Long Island, New York to Hurricane Sandy. My
Speaker 1: mom had an additional home in Florida, UH and moved
Speaker 1: there the following summer, my mom and dad drove out
Speaker 1: to New York to pack up what was left to
Speaker 1: the house before it was going to be demolished. My
Speaker 1: parents found this little wooden box with no labels. But
Speaker 1: Dad tried to open it and could not, and unknown
Speaker 1: to my mom at the time, he put it in
Speaker 1: the van drove it back home to Wisconsin. When my
Speaker 1: mom found it, she asked my grandma what it was
Speaker 1: and she replied, Oh, yeah, that's your father. I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to do my best long Island accent. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: they were glad that they were unsuccessful in opening the box.
Speaker 1: My mom rightfully labeled the box and now we all
Speaker 1: get to see Grandpa every time we visit their home.
Speaker 1: Thanks for entertaining me while I walked up and down
Speaker 1: rows of strawberries, checking on plants and weeds eight acres
Speaker 1: at a time by hand, mother lawn or hand prune
Speaker 1: ten acres of strawberry plants. She's just rubbing it in now. Ps.
Speaker 1: We ever do a show in Milwaukee? Well, Danielle Clark,
Speaker 1: we have done a show in Milwaukee and it was great,
Speaker 1: So I'm sure we'll come back at some point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe both, because I think we found out like
Speaker 1: they don't actually drive down the road to one another.
Speaker 1: It's weird. It is weird. Well, if you have a
Speaker 1: great story about something we talked about, like dan Yelle
Speaker 1: thinks by the way, Danielle Um, if you want to
Speaker 1: let us know about it, you can tweet to us.
Speaker 1: We're all over Twitter. You can check us out on
Speaker 1: Facebook or on that too. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: and as always, joined us at our home on the web,
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com.