June 12, 2018 • 46 mins
Tsunamis are amazingly devastating natural disasters. They're miles tall and wide, travel as fast as a commercial airliner and can wipe out entire coastal towns. And if the last couple decades are any indication, they seem to be getting worse.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Salt Lake City, Utah, and Phoenix, Arizona. We're coming to
see you. Yes, we are, so come see Yes, why don't. Yeah,
we put out the call to Salt Lake City and
said should we come there? And tickets are going gangbusters.
You guys really responded. Yeah, we thought you were just like,
this is all just a joke, but no, it's turning
out quite well. We're gonna be there October twenty three
(00:22):
at the Grand Theater in Salt Lake City, and then
the next night we'll be in Phoenix at the Van Buren.
And we can't wait to see you, guys, So please
come out and see us. And if you want tickets,
you can go to s y s K live dot
com for those. And Chuck and yes to our friends
down and Melbourne. Boy, we are super psyched because you
(00:43):
love us and you sold us out very quickly. So
we have added a second show that I believe is
actually an earlier show, isn't that right? Yeah, it's a
five thirties show. I believe that Melbourne is the one
that we added, and it's gonna be cool. It's gonna
be like a sweet little Mattinee. Yeah, we call that
happy Hour in our kind tree. Yeah that's right. So
make sure you guys bring a slab each. That's right
(01:04):
in Perth and Brisbane. Step it up. Yeah, that's right.
So if you want to come see us, go to
s Y s K Live. Whether you're in the US,
whether you're in Australia, whether you're in New Zealand, it
doesn't matter. You can go to the same site and
hang out with us and there you go. See you
guys soon. Welcome to Stuff you should know from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:33):
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry over there. Tristan's reign of terror is over.
Jerry had him killed. Yeah, he shouldn't have tried to
take her place. I mean, he got what he deserved.
Now there's just a grease spot on the carpet. Yeah,
it was gross. You didn't have to leave him there
(01:53):
for a week, Jerry. I thought that was a little weird.
Also to bring in a acid bath into this, you right, well,
it made sense when she dissolved him in acid. Can
I say something Yes, the two that we're recording today, Yeah,
I feel like are such kind of classic core stuff.
(02:18):
You should know e things. I know what you're gonna
say that. I'm surprised we haven't done them yet. I
searched probably three times, maybe five Chuck, Yes, they doesn't
like we've gone over this stuff before. It. I can't,
for the life of me figure out what it is.
The closest I could come possibly was rogue waves, yeah,
(02:39):
for sure, or how yeah, or how nuclear meltdowns work
when we when we talked specifically about the Fukushima incident. Yeah,
I think that had to be what it is. Because
I'm still a little paranoid that we've covered this before. Yeah,
I am too, So we're paranoid together. Yeah, but we'll
we'll fail together there if we re record an episode
(03:02):
that we have done before. But it's okay, we'll be
all right right, everybody right, all right? So both of
our listeners, uh, Chuck and Buck. Wow, I know, isn't
that random that one of our two listeners is also
(03:22):
named Chuck? Did you see that movie? No? You know
that was a movie, right, Yeah, there was a movie
called Chuck and Buck. Was it a porno? Not exactly? Well?
What was what was it about? It was? You know,
Mike White, right, No, you'd recognize him. He's an actor
and a writer, one of my favorite writers in Hollywood,
(03:45):
and he it was his first little indie film, starring
him and one of the brothers, one of the filmmaking brothers,
the Wise Brothers. Man. You were not talking my language
right now. Yeah, anyway, it was. It was him and
he played sort of a creepy guy that had unhealthy
crush on this other guy, and it got made for
(04:08):
some very uncomfortable circumstances. You're talking about, I now pronounce
you chucking, Larry. I know the movie you're talking about.
I never saw that one either. Oh hey, speaking of dude,
I saw Norm McDonald stand up Dog. Is it great? Yes?
Probably probably the best stand up on Netflix right now.
(04:31):
I've been meaning to watch it and he's just a
it's it's he's at his peak. It's great. I don't
want to talk it up too much. Just go in
there fresh. It's just good Norm McDonald's stand up. You
don't want to talk it up too much other than
saying that it's the best thing, right. Yeah, I'm actually
downplaying it right now. That's how good it is. Yeah,
I gotta check that out. Alright, so back to it.
(04:53):
We actually started off talking about tsunamis and we veered
off right back in it. Now are back in it,
so or we'll talk about some of the more famous tsunamis,
like they've definitely been in the public consciousness over the
last in this millennium so far, just because there's been
(05:13):
two colossally huge ones that cause so much destruction. Um.
Which is ironic because we're finally now getting to the
point where we can warn people early about a tsunami,
and yet two of the worst tsunamis in history, whether
it's through the human toll or the financial toll, occurred
(05:34):
within eight years of each other, within the last twenty years.
It's it's kind of surprising. What you know a little
more about tsunamis. Yeah, so uh, and I found our
own article to be pretty good. Actually, well it was
written by three people, for goodness, how can that go wrong?
Including Robert Lamb. Well, always stand up for that guy's writing. Uh. So,
(05:57):
tsunami is uh. We have just discovered the word. First
of all, it is the Japanese word obviously uh. And
the T s u of tsunami means harbor and the
n a m I means waves, and that is what
a tsunami is. It is a series of waves generally,
or a or a wave. Although we will clear up
(06:19):
it's not exactly what you might think from Hollywood movies. No,
it's really really really not. Yeah, but it's in the ocean, obviously,
and these things can be as high as a hundred
feet and get this, they can travel up to and
in fact, the two thousand four tsunami traveled about three
hundred miles per hour, and that is not at land,
(06:43):
but through the ocean. Three miles. Yeah, and I've actually
seen them that they're clocked at six hundred miles per hour. Man,
can you imagine? No? I really can't. And I also
have trouble with the math itself, Like there's some weird
formula are calculating how fast the tsunami is traveling. But
it's a square root of the G force times I know,
(07:09):
times the depth of the ocean where the tsunami originated.
That's I don't understand how that equals how fast the
tsunamis traveling. So I'm just gonna take it for their
word that they can get up to six hundred Yeah,
that's crazy. So all right, let's talk about tsunami. So
tsunami is a what most people think of as a
(07:31):
giant wave. It's not necessarily what you're thinking of, like
you said, Chuck, but it is a wave in some way,
shape or form, and it follows a lot of the
um It has a lot of the same same um
traits or characteristics of a wave that you see like
on the surface of the ocean when you're sitting there
(07:52):
on the beach and the waves are rolling in. Technically
that's it's the same family. That's the little brother of
a tsunami. And so any kind of wave has a
couple of components to It has the trough, which is
the lowest point, has the crest, which is the highest
point and and happiest point generally. Yeah, typically that's where
(08:13):
the surfers like to hang out. Um, you measure them
from the height of the crest to the trough. That's
the wave height, right, and then the distance between the
crest of one wave and the crest of another is
one wave length. So it's weird to think of because
you think of the wave is just like you know,
(08:35):
the part that's kind of curving up out of the
ocean that you see in like graphic design or something
like that. Right, the wave is actually much bigger than that.
It goes from the front the top of the crest
all the way forward and includes the back of the
wave in front of it. Technically that's one wave, and
and it includes the trough and the crest. So bam,
(08:57):
that's a wave, whether it's a tidal wave or an
ocean so or his wife. Right. And then the frequency,
which is uh, what you would call the wave period.
Is it the time for two waves in a row
to hit the same point. Yeah, So if you like
had a booie and a wave went past and then
another wave went past the time between, that's the wave period, right, yeah,
(09:21):
or if you were a booy Sure, we should maybe
do one on I don't know if it's big enough
for a full episode, but undertow would be kind of
interesting to cover at some point. I'm surprised we haven't
done that one either. Yeah, that's uh. Last time I
was at in Charleston, Day two and three were fine,
but that first day was an incredible undertow and they
(09:44):
even talked about it on the news. It was pretty dangerous. Yeah,
so were you in the water, Oh, Yeah, I was
having fun. But it's one of those things where you're
playing in the water and you look up it's like, wow,
Emily is a mile away. Now, yeah, that's very dangerous.
It was really carrying me down the beach and the
skin has been peeled off your ankles and calves. Well, yeah,
you're just fighting through it, right until you eventually say,
(10:05):
I'm forty seven years old, What the heck am I doing.
I'm gonna go lay down right with a with a
gin and tonic, right, So you've got to figure it out, Chuck.
You know that I have my moments. So when we're
talking about waves on an ocean. Back to waves, by
the way, when when you're talking about waves on an ocean,
(10:25):
like the waves people normally think of, um, those are
actually generated by wind. And we definitely talked about this
somewhere before. Yeah, it's pretty interesting because I think most
people think of gravitational pull and things like that atmospheric
pressure and they contribute, but wind is kind of the
most common way that a wave will form, right, And
(10:48):
it does so by basically on a molecular level. And
this this article really goes into granular detail, but basically
air molecules push water molecules along and create these circular patterns.
Not circular on top of the surface, but if you're
looking at like a cross section of the water, circular
from the top into the water, usually down about a
(11:11):
meter underwater, and they can get higher and higher as
the wind gets stronger and stronger, right, yeah, And these
little guys are known as capillary waves, which is the
cutest wave, I guess. Uh. And then they just keep
circling around vertically like you said, until eventually it you know,
it's sort of dissipates the deeper it goes, obviously it does.
(11:33):
But so depending on how strong the wind is, when
that wave starts to whip up and froth up and
and and get like the back to it, right, yeah,
it's it has more surface for the wind to press on.
So the wind now can push it along even further,
so it can pick up height, speed, velocity, all that
jam and it can get kind of big and they
(11:55):
can get kind of fast. But the point is this,
what you're seeing is now water being pushed along. What
you're seeing is the transfer of kinetic energy from the
wind into water, and what a wave is the movement
of that energy. Through water. Yeah, it's an important distinction.
I think there really is, because if you if you
(12:17):
are at one point and you see a wave and
you touch it, and you somehow scramble forward and catch it,
when it's like fifty yards down or towards shore, you
touch it again, you're actually touching two different bits of water.
That's not the same water moving from point A to
point B. It's the energy moving through it, and it is.
(12:39):
It's it's it's a bit of a brain buster if
you start to overthink it, but it's also extraordinarily simple
if you don't. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so that's that's
a wave. Okay, that's a surface wave. Tsunamis are not
like that. No, And if you if you want to
understand how a tsunami is for armed and I think
(13:01):
we talked about this in earthquakes as well, which is
why it all rings so familiar. But that is not always,
but that is generally what kicks off in in in
the case of the most too recent devastating ones, what
kicks off the tsunami will be an underwater earthquake, and
those happen. If you took out all the ocean's water,
(13:24):
you would really just need to think of the sea
floor just like you would the rest of ah, the
hard stuff on the earth. Yeah, well put you know
what I'm saying, Yeah, no I do. It's like if
you're on a on a mountain and you come to
a valley, it's the same thing that's just underwater. Yeah. So,
like this is where we talk about plate tectonics, that
(13:44):
we have these huge plates, a series of them that
make up what's called the lithosphere. Uh, and that is
the top layer of the Earth, and they make up
everything that you see, including what's underwater, and they float
on top of the Stennis year. Do you think I
said that correctly? I think so. And I remember talking
about this is sort of a is that the lube? Yeah,
(14:09):
the hot magma lube. So because it's it's not exactly lub,
but it's almost like hot asphalt more, you know what
I'm saying. Like it's a solid, but it's a very
viscous solid. Right, And so those plates float on top
of the athenisphere, and there are boundaries between the plates,
(14:29):
and where those boundaries connect, all sorts of things can happen. Right.
You can have one plate going upward while the other
plates going downwards, so they're sliding alongside each other. You
can have one um, you can have them pushing up
into one another, and you have mountain ranges. Then you
can have ones where one slips under another one and
(14:50):
that creates ocean trenches when it's underwater. But you have
to think about this. This isn't happening quickly. This happens
at the rate of about um an inch, about two
and a half centimeters per year. That's how slowly these
things are moving when they're interacting with one another. Yeah,
but they're they're huge, and it's a lot of force
even though it's going slow. So what you were talking
(15:12):
about is subduction. UM. And sometimes in cases of subduction,
you can have a lighter plate that just sort of
snaps upward. Uh, when they meet each other and they
say hi, lighter plate snaps up, and that's what causes
the earthquake and a tremendous amount of of rock and
(15:32):
force shoot directly upward from the floor of the ocean. Right,
So now a tsunami has just been born, because that's
what it is. Right with a normal wave, you've got
wind blowing the water or wind blowing through the water.
You have with a tsunami, this huge release of energy
upward through the water column towards the surface. And this
(15:55):
this energy is like, yeah, we're going up and right
when it hits the surface, it really comes in contact
with gravity that says no, you're not. They go, yeah, okay,
we're going outward then, and they it spreads outward. And
this article gives a great analogy because it really drives
home what we're dealing with here. If you take a
pebble and you throw it into a pond, it makes
(16:16):
that ripple. Right, it's the same exact thing, but rather
than a rock going into the water, this is the
force of of um an earthquake under the water going
upward out right. And so that upward out movement that
is the tsunami waves that are being created, and it
(16:36):
spreads outward in different ripples, just like if you throw
a rock in the pond. Should we take a break?
I think we should. I'm getting kind of worked up now.
I love it. Uh, it's the earth sciencest man, that's
your jam. Yeah they yeah, that's true. All right. So
we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about the
speed of a tsunami and how that happens right after
(16:58):
this off? You know, stop, you know stop? All right,
(17:29):
So when we left off, I promised talk of tsunami speed,
and this is where it gets a little like, uh,
this is where like if you've learned it from movies,
then you've probably learned the wrong thing. Because the tsunami
moves the fastest in deep water. So when a tsunami
is going three hundred miles an hour, and and you're
(17:54):
of course you're monitoring things, which we'll talk about with
all all sorts of advanced equipment. But if you're just
looking with your naked eye, and the tsunami is going
at three miles an hour through the ocean, you might
see like a three ft high if that on the
surface of the of the ocean. Where you where things
really take action is when it gets close to shore,
(18:16):
because it really slows down and it gets a lot
taller because it's shallower water, right like the the shelf,
the coastal shelf that gets shallow and shallower pushes it upward,
so it slows and grows taller. Right, Yeah, depending on
the topography of what's going on. Wherever the tsunami is
(18:37):
reaching shore, it's gonna have a big difference, of course.
But the point is is it's compressing all this energy
upward as it gets closer and it slows down, and
it's like it's very difficult to to grasp how enormous
the tsunami um waves are, especially considering that what like
three ft like a meter maybe of of surface water
(19:01):
will be disturbed to to look like a wave like
a normal wave, right, but that wave goes all the
way down to the ocean floor, often miles. So you
have basically what amounts to a three mile tall wave
that's a tsunami rather than you know, a wave that
you see on the surface it's maybe six ft tall,
(19:24):
and then it's disturbing water three ft under the water.
This is a three mile tall wall of water moving
out in a ripple formation in in what's called the
wave train. So successive waves like those ripples spreading out
from that pebble um that are three miles tall and many, many,
many miles across, just coming at you. Basically, Yeah, and
(19:49):
when I said slow down, you know, thirty to forty
at land is still really fast. Obviously it's not three
but um, you know, right before this tsunami happens on land,
it can be really creepy. On shore, You're gonna notice
this beach water rising and falling in a odd ways,
(20:09):
and sometimes it will suck all that water out. And
I believe that movie, Uh The Impossible, didn't it show that.
I don't know, I've seen that in a movie and
it's really creepy looking, and apparently that's it is actually
very creepy looking in real life too. It's not like
a movie thing. It can suck all that water out,
(20:30):
and it may not look like a movie wave coming in.
It's more likely to look like just a huge flood
coming your way right right, like a very fast moving tide,
which is I think one reason people call them tidal waves,
even though the tides have nothing to do with it.
But it doesn't look like that huge wave that you
see in like um the Day after Tomorrow or something
(20:52):
like that. It's it's it's like a very fast moving,
fast rising flood water. And this on this fast moving
floodwater you have like huge raging rivers on top of
the water too. It's just this huge, chaotic, massive water
that is um that is moving inland very quickly and
(21:16):
with an enormous amount of destructive force. Yeah, and then
once it gets there, depending on where it lands, you
might have like areas that were you think are sheltered
because of high dunes, or you're in an inlet or
a bay. Sometimes they can act as like funnels. Like
if the tsunami goes through there, you just don't know
(21:38):
what kind of destructive power it's going to have until
it interacts with the topography and the land features that
it hits. No, but it does do some interesting stuff.
So um when So, first of all, that one thing
where the the bay or the harbor or whatever gets
the water sucked out of it's called drawback, and they've
studied that and actually concluded what you're seeing is the
(21:58):
trough of the way. That's the trough of the first
tsunami wave. So if that's the part that reaches land first,
the trough, that's gonna have drawback. So it's not always
going to have drawback, just only if the trough drives first.
The crest could arrive first, and then all you're seeing
is this floodwater coming out of nowhere. But um, there's
also supposedly the sound of a freight train or a
(22:19):
jet coming at you. So it's like a horrific sound too,
that's coming with this wall of water. But one of
the other things, um, I think you're about to talk
about was wrap around effect. Yeah, and that's along like
a coastline. When I sort of I sort of thought
of it as like, uh, or maybe it's harbor resonance.
(22:40):
Like I'm not sure which is which. But when you
have like a fish tank and you imagine just shaking
it with your all your force and it's just banging
off of interior walls, is that around No, that's harbor resonances.
But that is so you know when you're doing that, right, Like,
it just picks up more and more forced with each movement,
(23:01):
each oscillation from one side to the other. Right Imagine,
I know they're like, please stop, surely this is illegal, um,
but they imagine that happening in the harbor, like that's
what happens in the harbor. So it just gets even
more destructive. But the wrap around effect, this article just
totally completely gets it wrong. It's not the wraparound effect
(23:24):
at all. So the referround effect is if you have
a tsunami wave, remember these are many many miles across
and they're coming inland if they encounter, say like a
barrier island. This is a little island, right, You would
think that the barrier island would slow it down, maybe
make it, um take it a little easier on the
land the shoreline behind the barrier island. It doesn't do
(23:47):
that at all. The barrier island actually amplifies the tsunami
wave and they couldn't figure out how, but they knew
that it could amplify it by like but it doesn't
make any sense. So they started studying it. And I'm
not sure who someone's gonna call them they for now,
but um, they they figured out what happens is the
(24:08):
tsunami wave is split into two by this island, and
for a very brief time, when they come back together,
they are basically doubled in force. It's like two waves
together now with this force, and it amplifies it onto
the land behind it and makes it way worse. That
kind of makes sense if a picture it in my head. Well,
(24:30):
they actually do have cool pictures of it too, I
think on a Noah site. So look up like wrap
around effects tsunamis and it shows like you know, just
part one, two, three, four and all these I think
six pictures and it really drives at home. But I mean,
it definitely does make sense, but it also intuitively doesn't
at all, you know. Yeah, And you know, obviously they've
(24:51):
been in the news in the last like ten or
fifteen years, like you said, and the devastation that can
happen from a tsunami is just it's immense because people
live along coastlines and and we'll get to early warning later,
but no matter what kind of early warning you have,
you making get some people out of there, but it's
gonna wreck everything in its path. And that happened very
(25:16):
famously recently a couple of times. In December twenty six,
two thousand four, in the Indian Ocean, there was a
massive nine point one magnitude earthquake that apparently it shook
buildings twelve hundred miles away in Thailand. Yeah, that's a
big one. And they always you know, the I guess
(25:36):
the big mac version of earthquakes is Hiroshima bombs, right,
the magnitude of twenty three thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs. Yeah. No,
small earthquake, no, not at all. I think the next
most recent one was in nineteen sixty. The next biggest
one is in nineteen sixty and it was like a
nine point four to nine point six, and this is
(25:58):
a nine point one, So it was no sloutch as
far as earthquakes go. But the thing about this, the
two thousand four um earthquake that hits Sumatra, it was
one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. It
killed like about two hundred and thirty thousand people and
(26:20):
ruined No. I can't like if you go through the
list of like deadly tsunamis over history. Um. I mean
the next the next largest I saw was one in
Japan in um. I think that yeah, the nineteenth century
that killed twenty thousand people, so a tenth of the
two thousand four tsunami. And the reason why it was
(26:41):
so deadly was it hit eleven different countries that were
fully engorged with tourists on the holiday season. Um, so
there were a lot of people there, including a lot
of people who had never really been introduced to tsunami
preparedness or knew what was going on. If there was drawback,
(27:03):
and I think there may have been. Actually I think
I saw a footage of the drawback for that one,
So you're right, Um, people were kind of like going
out into the harbor, like, what's this And when that happens,
when the drawback happens and you're seeing the trough of
that first tsunami wave, you have seconds, maybe minutes to
get away, not go closer to it. Yeah, but it
(27:25):
wouldn't have made a difference in that case. Probably not.
You know, it hit and it was enormous and huge,
and uh yeah, it just it killed a lot of
people very quickly, because even if you do have the
time to do it, you have to get no less
than a mile inland and or no less than a
hundred feet above sea level, and you have a very
(27:48):
short time to do that. So my friend Dave Barnhart,
who listens to the show, Hey Dave, he is a
documentary filmmaker UM for nonprofits, and he he went down
there and did a series of documentary updates over the years.
He and I can't remember how many people, but he
followed specifically the lives an aftermath of of several different
(28:12):
individuals and families. Uh, and you know, went down there
himself and shot this stuff, I believe in Indonesia, and um,
I don't know if he's still following up but he
did it for many years and I saw a lot
of this stuff and he won some awards for it.
Is just just unbelievable, the stories of devastation and then
(28:35):
perseverance for some of these people that like started over
with nothing in the worst, most unsanitary, devastating conditions. You
can imagine living in, Yeah, I can. I was gonna say,
I can image me. I can't imagine. Yeah, I mean,
it's just heartbreaking to see this stuff, like quarter a
million people. It's just it's hard to even fathom. There. Um,
(28:57):
there's this one story you mean got obsessed with at
the time him about a kid named baby eighty one.
He was like the eighty first baby to be brought
into I think a hospital in Sri Lanka or something afterward,
and there was this huge like media publicity circus around
whose kid it was, and supposedly they're reporting that there
(29:18):
was like nine different families claiming him and there was
a huge battle over it, when really it was just
this one poor family who knew that it was their
son and who went to go make a claim, but
they they actually got arrested for trying to take the
baby out of the hospital and had to wait like
a month before they got him back through like a
d n A test. But it's just like like, first
(29:40):
of all, tsunami. Secondly, their baby gets swept away out
of the mom's arms in the tsunami. And then when
they finally find out the babies alive, they go to
take him back and they can't, and just like the
idea that that they have to prove that it's their son,
it just kept getting worse and worse and worse, and
apparently they had to move because they were known as
the Tsunami Family. Here's the last little bit for you.
(30:03):
They went and appeared on Good Morning America in the
United States and told their story. When they got back,
they were denied disaster aid because everyone assumed that they
had been paid for their appearance and that they didn't
need the money even though they hadn't been paid for it.
Isn't that awful? Yeah, I mean, one family that happened
to all of that. The story of the movie The
(30:26):
Impossible is a true story and an amazing story and
uh just a tough movie to watch, you know. Yeah.
So I was thinking back, like I saw that within
the last year or so, I think, and I was
thinking back to like some of those scenes, and now
that I'm thinking about, I'm like, how did they even
shoot that stuff? Like how it doesn't make any sense?
(30:48):
Like did they did they flood a town somewhere and
start filming and the actors in there, because that's what
it looks like. For sure? It was. It was pretty
remarkable what they did, like cinematically for sure. But you're
absolutely right, it's it's very tough to watch for sure.
Uh So that was UM two four and then just
what seven or eight years ago in two thousand eleven
(31:11):
in March, and we definitely talked about this in nuclear meltdown,
but the tsunami that hit Japan, this one had a
had a horrific effect in and of itself just from
the tsunami. I don't know what the final death toll,
but it was well over four or five thousand. I
think I think the official death tolls now at twenty
thousand dead. Oh wow, because I knew for a while
(31:31):
they were just people missing. Man. I think they finally
combined them all and just said twenty thousands the official
death toll. The the damage is upwards of three hundred
and nine billion US dollars it's the it's the most
expensive natural disaster in history. Well, yeah, and this one
was noted not only for its uh for its devastation
(31:54):
and for human life and money, but obviously the generation
er of the how do you pronounce it? Fukushima Nuclear
facility that was where it made. I don't know about
the most news, but that's what really set this one apart.
You had a tsunami disable a nuclear reactor for a
(32:15):
brief time, which is bad news. Yeah, it's like it's
shut down like it should because I guess they had
seismic detectors that are like tripped an automatic like safeguard system,
but the power got knocked out, so there wasn't any
cooling system. And it's not like it just goes from
incredibly hot nuclear reaction to you know, room temperature immediately.
(32:38):
You need to keep cooling it down, and they didn't.
And apparently from that meltdown. And I don't remember talking
about this in the episode. This is insane, but the
the meltdown created radiation that tore apart the water vapor.
That's amazing, and so the hydrogen separated and so the
place filled with hydrogen gas and it started exploding and
(33:01):
that's what blew a hole in the reactor and created
the leak. I don't remember that. That's nuts. I wonder
if that was found out afterward and not available to
us at the time. I'll bet you're right. That sounds
like something that they like. I don't. I don't even
know if at the time we recorded they knew how
the breach occurred. Yeah, because we did. We recorded within
(33:21):
like a week or so of it happening. I think so. Um,
that place is still still like way hot. They're sending
they sending robots now. They're trying to figure out what
robot to use, and they haven't hit on it quite
yet because the place melts robots that go in to
try to clean up mess. Yeah. Yeah, all right, Well
(33:44):
we're gonna take another break, talk a little bit about
how we're getting better at predicting earthquakes, and then also
what it means for marine life. Right after this stop no,
you know stuff, you know? Okay, Charles, we're back. I
(34:27):
also want to say real quick before we do that. Um,
there are two at least two articles, and I believe
they're written by the same guy who went and covered
the two thousand eleven UM tsunami in the aftermath. One
is called Ghosts of the Tsunami. It's called It's It's
I think in the London Review books. It is amazing.
(34:48):
It's about how these these people in Japan like live
among ghosts as far as they're concerned. They see like
ghosts everywhere of their the people who died in the tsunami.
It's one of the better articles I've ever read in
my life. The other one is The School Beneath the
Wave and that wasn't the Guardian and um it's it
tells the tale of this one specific school that um
(35:10):
this guy who covered the tsunami knew all these different
stories and all these tales um that came out of it,
and this one, I believe he says that he um
put off writing about until last because it's so terrible
because the whole school of children just got swept away
by the tsunami, because the grown ups wouldn't listen to
the kids who they'd trained to re respond correctly to
(35:33):
a tsunami, and they just wouldn't listen to him, and
and it just swept away basically his whole villages group
of children. Would they have gotten out, Yeah, if they
listened to the kids, probably most of if not all,
would have survived. Man. Yeah, it's it's a tough one
to read, for sure, but both of them are definitely
worth it. Uh So when it comes to predicting these
um obviously in the same with earthquakes and tornadoes in
(35:56):
any natural disaster, what they're trying to do is just
get better and better about getting as much time beforehand
as possible. Because, uh then this article very simply points out,
like there's you cannot stop it. There's nothing you can do.
You can't build anything that can thwart or divert a tsunami.
(36:16):
So the only chance that people have a survival is
getting as early warning as possible to get as many
people out of there as possible. We'll still destroy the
towns and villages and cities, but at least you could
save some human lives. And unfortunately a lot of I mean,
it's getting much better, but most of the studying takes
place afterward, so you can try and get better about before. Yeah,
(36:42):
and one way that you study tsunamis is through things
like UM eyewitness reports. Yeah, you go, you go look
to see how high the debris made it up to. Yeah,
and how far it went, Yeah, how wide it was. Um,
some of the debris will end up like on the
other side of the world. Old sometimes if the tsunami
is big enough, because remember you hear about the tsunami
(37:04):
where it hit, you know, the closest place to place
it devastated the most, whether it was Sumatra in two
dozen four or um Japan in two dozen eleven. But
like that, say, like the japan one, it took it
carried stuff all the way over to California, like it
goes in both directions. It's just California was way further away,
so it didn't experience the destruction like Japan did, which
(37:27):
was right up on the place where it happened. Yeah.
So you know, equipment wise, they use UM buoys out
in the ocean, They use tide gauges. They have tide
stations that measure just the smallest little changes in sea level.
They do have seismograph stations that record you know, underwater
(37:48):
earthquake activity UM and anything apparently that's seven point five
or higher that is under the ocean. Earthquake wise, is
when an official tsunami watches issued, right, so when the
tsunami watches issued, then you won't hear about it quite yet.
They that means that they start checking out their gauge stations.
(38:09):
And if the gauge station reports a tsunami, right, um,
I think it's I don't know if it's a I
guess it's a change in tide is what the gage
station measures, right, So if there's a sudden change in
tide that doesn't coincide with the title schedules, will say, yeah,
that's a tsunami, send out the alarm and then they
(38:30):
alert every like the public through text messages or TV
or you know, the Paul Revere. However they do it,
how early can they do? You know, how early they
can get this stuff? Now? I I saw minutes for
for the two thousand eleven one, which like that's all
that In some cases, that's all you need. If you're
(38:50):
in a tall building, you just keep going up, that
can help. Or if you are close enough, you're getting
your car and start driving as far inland as you can.
Minutes can help. And they actually think that the death
toll would have been way higher in Japan had they
not learned as much from the two thousand four tsunami
and set up emergency systems like they had that the
(39:12):
death toll would have been much worse. It's just the
reason why it got as high as twenty thousand is
because it was such a big tsunami, like it topped
like a hundred and almost a hundred and thirty feet.
It was just enormous. That's that's what accounted for the
destructive force. Yeah, And the whole time I was researching
this stuff, I didn't see anything in our article that
(39:33):
talked about sea life because I was thinking, what's it
like to be a fish? When three three hundred mile
an hour tsunami rolls through and Uh, it can be devastating,
Like the base of the wave can completely change and
rewrite the topography of the c floor. Um, really bad
(39:53):
erosion will happen. And the what they called the benthic ecosystem,
which is the you know, the very sea bottom ecosystem
with all the crustaceans and sea snails and worms and stuff,
it can just wreck it. Uh. Coral reefs can be destroyed.
Um And in fact, in two thousand four, UH it
completely wrecked the coral reefs around the Indian Oceans, coastlines,
(40:17):
seagrass beds, mangrove forests, all these wetlands can be super
vulnerable and then species invasion, like you were saying, stuff
can move thousands and thousands of miles. That happens with
sea life too, so you can get an algae. Uh
And in fact they have recorded like algae and other
(40:39):
organisms and like oregon that came from Japan that have
never been there before. So sometimes that can be bad.
Some you know, sometimes it works out and they just say,
all right, we'll set up camp here. But they can
displace native species, so that's all a consideration. And could
not find anything specifically about literally in the water, like
(41:00):
what happens to a whale that's yeah, that's swimming along
and then three miles an hour comes through, Like does
it just go kaboom and the whale explodes kind of
thing because I could kind of see that happening. I
don't know, or is it just like being in a
washing machine for a minute and then the whale is
like what the heck was that all about? What a rush?
(41:22):
Hopefully hopefully chuck let me let me We have some
very very sharp listeners who I'll bet some of which
are marine biologists, So we want to hear from you guys,
what happens to a whale that gets hit by a tsunami.
And that's us asking from our eight year old hearts.
We're gonna go play with our tonka trucks now while
(41:44):
we wait for the answer. Yeah, and of course anything
within the you know, I'm not sure how much distance,
but anything close to the inland part will just be
washed ashore. So, I mean millions and millions of bits
of sea life are now deposited on dry land. Yeah,
and we should say so so for the the unfortunate ones.
(42:07):
I mean, there, if you're a fish and you're getting
smacked around with this debris now like you're getting run
into a house, that'll kill you. Um, there's all sorts
of obstacles that aren't out in the water that are
now in your way because you're being pushed inland in
this huge surge of floodwater. One of the other destructive
forces of tsunamis is that they recede and when they
(42:30):
received they take all that stuff back out with them too.
So maybe your house survived the initial inundation, but it's
not necessarily going to survive all that debris being pulled
on it. As it's all pulled back outward into the
ocean too. They just go from bed to worse, from
moment to moment basically. Well, and I don't I think
it slipped by. I don't think we mentioned too that
(42:50):
it's no, it's not just that first wave like you
can get secondary flood pushes up to like an hour
and a half later. Yes, thank you, So that whole
wave rain. Right, You get the initial wave, and you
get another one or the initial flood water, and then
another one another one. Um. Yeah, I saw actually up
to like a couple hours later, and people have died
(43:11):
going back thinking after the right exactly. They go back
and then it's like nope, here comes around too. Yeah,
I can't believe we haven't done this one before. We
definitely have. And I looked a bunch. Yeah, I did too.
Um And I also tried every word combination I could
think of, and nothing came up. I even tried spelling
(43:32):
it s o O in a M. I that sounds
like us man. Um, I got one more, you're ready.
The tallest tsunami wave ever recorded. It was in Lituya Bay, Alaska.
It reached five hundred and twenty meters or se dred
(43:52):
and ten ft above sea level. Can you imagine. I mean,
that's like the tallest skyscrapers. It's up there for sure,
just coming at you. Well, if you want to know
more about tsunami's you can search that word. Don't spell
it s O O N A M I. It's spelled T,
(44:14):
s U and A M. I think uh in the
search bar at house touff Works dot com. And since
I spelled some stuff, it's time for listener mail. I'm
gonna call this story from a nice lady from a
strawberry farmer. How about that? Those are great stories? Hey, guys,
stumbled upon your podcast and have become obsessed. My husband
(44:36):
and I own a strawberry farm. Doesn't that sound lovely?
It really does. What a nice way to live, you know, man,
And I recently started listening while I'm working outside. The
other day I was walking the fields and listening to
an older one on cremation and a story. My mom's
dad passed away in the early nineties when I was
very young. Two thousand twelve, my grandma lost the family
(44:57):
home in Long Island, New York to Hurricane Sandy. My
mom had an additional home in Florida, UH and moved
there the following summer, my mom and dad drove out
to New York to pack up what was left to
the house before it was going to be demolished. My
parents found this little wooden box with no labels. But
Dad tried to open it and could not, and unknown
to my mom at the time, he put it in
the van drove it back home to Wisconsin. When my
(45:19):
mom found it, she asked my grandma what it was
and she replied, Oh, yeah, that's your father. I'm just
trying to do my best long Island accent. Needless to say,
they were glad that they were unsuccessful in opening the box.
My mom rightfully labeled the box and now we all
get to see Grandpa every time we visit their home.
Thanks for entertaining me while I walked up and down
(45:41):
rows of strawberries, checking on plants and weeds eight acres
at a time by hand, mother lawn or hand prune
ten acres of strawberry plants. She's just rubbing it in now. Ps.
We ever do a show in Milwaukee? Well, Danielle Clark,
we have done a show in Milwaukee and it was great,
So I'm sure we'll come back at some point. Yeah,
(46:06):
or maybe both, because I think we found out like
they don't actually drive down the road to one another.
It's weird. It is weird. Well, if you have a
great story about something we talked about, like dan Yelle
thinks by the way, Danielle Um, if you want to
let us know about it, you can tweet to us.
We're all over Twitter. You can check us out on
(46:28):
Facebook or on that too. You can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com
and as always, joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
dot com.
Salt Lake City, Utah, and Phoenix, Arizona. We're coming to
see you. Yes, we are, so come see Yes, why don't. Yeah,
we put out the call to Salt Lake City and
said should we come there? And tickets are going gangbusters.
You guys really responded. Yeah, we thought you were just like,
this is all just a joke, but no, it's turning
out quite well. We're gonna be there October twenty three
(00:22):
at the Grand Theater in Salt Lake City, and then
the next night we'll be in Phoenix at the Van Buren.
And we can't wait to see you, guys, So please
come out and see us. And if you want tickets,
you can go to s y s K live dot
com for those. And Chuck and yes to our friends
down and Melbourne. Boy, we are super psyched because you
(00:43):
love us and you sold us out very quickly. So
we have added a second show that I believe is
actually an earlier show, isn't that right? Yeah, it's a
five thirties show. I believe that Melbourne is the one
that we added, and it's gonna be cool. It's gonna
be like a sweet little Mattinee. Yeah, we call that
happy Hour in our kind tree. Yeah that's right. So
make sure you guys bring a slab each. That's right
(01:04):
in Perth and Brisbane. Step it up. Yeah, that's right.
So if you want to come see us, go to
s Y s K Live. Whether you're in the US,
whether you're in Australia, whether you're in New Zealand, it
doesn't matter. You can go to the same site and
hang out with us and there you go. See you
guys soon. Welcome to Stuff you should know from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(01:33):
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry over there. Tristan's reign of terror is over.
Jerry had him killed. Yeah, he shouldn't have tried to
take her place. I mean, he got what he deserved.
Now there's just a grease spot on the carpet. Yeah,
it was gross. You didn't have to leave him there
(01:53):
for a week, Jerry. I thought that was a little weird.
Also to bring in a acid bath into this, you right, well,
it made sense when she dissolved him in acid. Can
I say something Yes, the two that we're recording today, Yeah,
I feel like are such kind of classic core stuff.
(02:18):
You should know e things. I know what you're gonna
say that. I'm surprised we haven't done them yet. I
searched probably three times, maybe five Chuck, Yes, they doesn't
like we've gone over this stuff before. It. I can't,
for the life of me figure out what it is.
The closest I could come possibly was rogue waves, yeah,
(02:39):
for sure, or how yeah, or how nuclear meltdowns work
when we when we talked specifically about the Fukushima incident. Yeah,
I think that had to be what it is. Because
I'm still a little paranoid that we've covered this before. Yeah,
I am too, So we're paranoid together. Yeah, but we'll
we'll fail together there if we re record an episode
(03:02):
that we have done before. But it's okay, we'll be
all right right, everybody right, all right? So both of
our listeners, uh, Chuck and Buck. Wow, I know, isn't
that random that one of our two listeners is also
(03:22):
named Chuck? Did you see that movie? No? You know
that was a movie, right, Yeah, there was a movie
called Chuck and Buck. Was it a porno? Not exactly? Well?
What was what was it about? It was? You know,
Mike White, right, No, you'd recognize him. He's an actor
and a writer, one of my favorite writers in Hollywood,
(03:45):
and he it was his first little indie film, starring
him and one of the brothers, one of the filmmaking brothers,
the Wise Brothers. Man. You were not talking my language
right now. Yeah, anyway, it was. It was him and
he played sort of a creepy guy that had unhealthy
crush on this other guy, and it got made for
(04:08):
some very uncomfortable circumstances. You're talking about, I now pronounce
you chucking, Larry. I know the movie you're talking about.
I never saw that one either. Oh hey, speaking of dude,
I saw Norm McDonald stand up Dog. Is it great? Yes?
Probably probably the best stand up on Netflix right now.
(04:31):
I've been meaning to watch it and he's just a
it's it's he's at his peak. It's great. I don't
want to talk it up too much. Just go in
there fresh. It's just good Norm McDonald's stand up. You
don't want to talk it up too much other than
saying that it's the best thing, right. Yeah, I'm actually
downplaying it right now. That's how good it is. Yeah,
I gotta check that out. Alright, so back to it.
(04:53):
We actually started off talking about tsunamis and we veered
off right back in it. Now are back in it,
so or we'll talk about some of the more famous tsunamis,
like they've definitely been in the public consciousness over the
last in this millennium so far, just because there's been
(05:13):
two colossally huge ones that cause so much destruction. Um.
Which is ironic because we're finally now getting to the
point where we can warn people early about a tsunami,
and yet two of the worst tsunamis in history, whether
it's through the human toll or the financial toll, occurred
(05:34):
within eight years of each other, within the last twenty years.
It's it's kind of surprising. What you know a little
more about tsunamis. Yeah, so uh, and I found our
own article to be pretty good. Actually, well it was
written by three people, for goodness, how can that go wrong?
Including Robert Lamb. Well, always stand up for that guy's writing. Uh. So,
(05:57):
tsunami is uh. We have just discovered the word. First
of all, it is the Japanese word obviously uh. And
the T s u of tsunami means harbor and the
n a m I means waves, and that is what
a tsunami is. It is a series of waves generally,
or a or a wave. Although we will clear up
(06:19):
it's not exactly what you might think from Hollywood movies. No,
it's really really really not. Yeah, but it's in the ocean, obviously,
and these things can be as high as a hundred
feet and get this, they can travel up to and
in fact, the two thousand four tsunami traveled about three
hundred miles per hour, and that is not at land,
(06:43):
but through the ocean. Three miles. Yeah, and I've actually
seen them that they're clocked at six hundred miles per hour. Man,
can you imagine? No? I really can't. And I also
have trouble with the math itself, Like there's some weird
formula are calculating how fast the tsunami is traveling. But
it's a square root of the G force times I know,
(07:09):
times the depth of the ocean where the tsunami originated.
That's I don't understand how that equals how fast the
tsunamis traveling. So I'm just gonna take it for their
word that they can get up to six hundred Yeah,
that's crazy. So all right, let's talk about tsunami. So
tsunami is a what most people think of as a
(07:31):
giant wave. It's not necessarily what you're thinking of, like
you said, Chuck, but it is a wave in some way,
shape or form, and it follows a lot of the
um It has a lot of the same same um
traits or characteristics of a wave that you see like
on the surface of the ocean when you're sitting there
(07:52):
on the beach and the waves are rolling in. Technically
that's it's the same family. That's the little brother of
a tsunami. And so any kind of wave has a
couple of components to It has the trough, which is
the lowest point, has the crest, which is the highest
point and and happiest point generally. Yeah, typically that's where
(08:13):
the surfers like to hang out. Um, you measure them
from the height of the crest to the trough. That's
the wave height, right, and then the distance between the
crest of one wave and the crest of another is
one wave length. So it's weird to think of because
you think of the wave is just like you know,
(08:35):
the part that's kind of curving up out of the
ocean that you see in like graphic design or something
like that. Right, the wave is actually much bigger than that.
It goes from the front the top of the crest
all the way forward and includes the back of the
wave in front of it. Technically that's one wave, and
and it includes the trough and the crest. So bam,
(08:57):
that's a wave, whether it's a tidal wave or an
ocean so or his wife. Right. And then the frequency,
which is uh, what you would call the wave period.
Is it the time for two waves in a row
to hit the same point. Yeah, So if you like
had a booie and a wave went past and then
another wave went past the time between, that's the wave period, right, yeah,
(09:21):
or if you were a booy Sure, we should maybe
do one on I don't know if it's big enough
for a full episode, but undertow would be kind of
interesting to cover at some point. I'm surprised we haven't
done that one either. Yeah, that's uh. Last time I
was at in Charleston, Day two and three were fine,
but that first day was an incredible undertow and they
(09:44):
even talked about it on the news. It was pretty dangerous. Yeah,
so were you in the water, Oh, Yeah, I was
having fun. But it's one of those things where you're
playing in the water and you look up it's like, wow,
Emily is a mile away. Now, yeah, that's very dangerous.
It was really carrying me down the beach and the
skin has been peeled off your ankles and calves. Well, yeah,
you're just fighting through it, right until you eventually say,
(10:05):
I'm forty seven years old, What the heck am I doing.
I'm gonna go lay down right with a with a
gin and tonic, right, So you've got to figure it out, Chuck.
You know that I have my moments. So when we're
talking about waves on an ocean. Back to waves, by
the way, when when you're talking about waves on an ocean,
(10:25):
like the waves people normally think of, um, those are
actually generated by wind. And we definitely talked about this
somewhere before. Yeah, it's pretty interesting because I think most
people think of gravitational pull and things like that atmospheric
pressure and they contribute, but wind is kind of the
most common way that a wave will form, right, And
(10:48):
it does so by basically on a molecular level. And
this this article really goes into granular detail, but basically
air molecules push water molecules along and create these circular patterns.
Not circular on top of the surface, but if you're
looking at like a cross section of the water, circular
from the top into the water, usually down about a
(11:11):
meter underwater, and they can get higher and higher as
the wind gets stronger and stronger, right, yeah, And these
little guys are known as capillary waves, which is the
cutest wave, I guess. Uh. And then they just keep
circling around vertically like you said, until eventually it you know,
it's sort of dissipates the deeper it goes, obviously it does.
(11:33):
But so depending on how strong the wind is, when
that wave starts to whip up and froth up and
and and get like the back to it, right, yeah,
it's it has more surface for the wind to press on.
So the wind now can push it along even further,
so it can pick up height, speed, velocity, all that
jam and it can get kind of big and they
(11:55):
can get kind of fast. But the point is this,
what you're seeing is now water being pushed along. What
you're seeing is the transfer of kinetic energy from the
wind into water, and what a wave is the movement
of that energy. Through water. Yeah, it's an important distinction.
I think there really is, because if you if you
(12:17):
are at one point and you see a wave and
you touch it, and you somehow scramble forward and catch it,
when it's like fifty yards down or towards shore, you
touch it again, you're actually touching two different bits of water.
That's not the same water moving from point A to
point B. It's the energy moving through it, and it is.
(12:39):
It's it's it's a bit of a brain buster if
you start to overthink it, but it's also extraordinarily simple
if you don't. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so that's that's
a wave. Okay, that's a surface wave. Tsunamis are not
like that. No, And if you if you want to
understand how a tsunami is for armed and I think
(13:01):
we talked about this in earthquakes as well, which is
why it all rings so familiar. But that is not always,
but that is generally what kicks off in in in
the case of the most too recent devastating ones, what
kicks off the tsunami will be an underwater earthquake, and
those happen. If you took out all the ocean's water,
(13:24):
you would really just need to think of the sea
floor just like you would the rest of ah, the
hard stuff on the earth. Yeah, well put you know
what I'm saying, Yeah, no I do. It's like if
you're on a on a mountain and you come to
a valley, it's the same thing that's just underwater. Yeah. So,
like this is where we talk about plate tectonics, that
(13:44):
we have these huge plates, a series of them that
make up what's called the lithosphere. Uh, and that is
the top layer of the Earth, and they make up
everything that you see, including what's underwater, and they float
on top of the Stennis year. Do you think I
said that correctly? I think so. And I remember talking
about this is sort of a is that the lube? Yeah,
(14:09):
the hot magma lube. So because it's it's not exactly lub,
but it's almost like hot asphalt more, you know what
I'm saying. Like it's a solid, but it's a very
viscous solid. Right, And so those plates float on top
of the athenisphere, and there are boundaries between the plates,
(14:29):
and where those boundaries connect, all sorts of things can happen. Right.
You can have one plate going upward while the other
plates going downwards, so they're sliding alongside each other. You
can have one um, you can have them pushing up
into one another, and you have mountain ranges. Then you
can have ones where one slips under another one and
(14:50):
that creates ocean trenches when it's underwater. But you have
to think about this. This isn't happening quickly. This happens
at the rate of about um an inch, about two
and a half centimeters per year. That's how slowly these
things are moving when they're interacting with one another. Yeah,
but they're they're huge, and it's a lot of force
even though it's going slow. So what you were talking
(15:12):
about is subduction. UM. And sometimes in cases of subduction,
you can have a lighter plate that just sort of
snaps upward. Uh, when they meet each other and they
say hi, lighter plate snaps up, and that's what causes
the earthquake and a tremendous amount of of rock and
(15:32):
force shoot directly upward from the floor of the ocean. Right,
So now a tsunami has just been born, because that's
what it is. Right with a normal wave, you've got
wind blowing the water or wind blowing through the water.
You have with a tsunami, this huge release of energy
upward through the water column towards the surface. And this
(15:55):
this energy is like, yeah, we're going up and right
when it hits the surface, it really comes in contact
with gravity that says no, you're not. They go, yeah, okay,
we're going outward then, and they it spreads outward. And
this article gives a great analogy because it really drives
home what we're dealing with here. If you take a
pebble and you throw it into a pond, it makes
(16:16):
that ripple. Right, it's the same exact thing, but rather
than a rock going into the water, this is the
force of of um an earthquake under the water going
upward out right. And so that upward out movement that
is the tsunami waves that are being created, and it
(16:36):
spreads outward in different ripples, just like if you throw
a rock in the pond. Should we take a break?
I think we should. I'm getting kind of worked up now.
I love it. Uh, it's the earth sciencest man, that's
your jam. Yeah they yeah, that's true. All right. So
we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about the
speed of a tsunami and how that happens right after
(16:58):
this off? You know, stop, you know stop? All right,
(17:29):
So when we left off, I promised talk of tsunami speed,
and this is where it gets a little like, uh,
this is where like if you've learned it from movies,
then you've probably learned the wrong thing. Because the tsunami
moves the fastest in deep water. So when a tsunami
is going three hundred miles an hour, and and you're
(17:54):
of course you're monitoring things, which we'll talk about with
all all sorts of advanced equipment. But if you're just
looking with your naked eye, and the tsunami is going
at three miles an hour through the ocean, you might
see like a three ft high if that on the
surface of the of the ocean. Where you where things
really take action is when it gets close to shore,
(18:16):
because it really slows down and it gets a lot
taller because it's shallower water, right like the the shelf,
the coastal shelf that gets shallow and shallower pushes it upward,
so it slows and grows taller. Right, Yeah, depending on
the topography of what's going on. Wherever the tsunami is
(18:37):
reaching shore, it's gonna have a big difference, of course.
But the point is is it's compressing all this energy
upward as it gets closer and it slows down, and
it's like it's very difficult to to grasp how enormous
the tsunami um waves are, especially considering that what like
three ft like a meter maybe of of surface water
(19:01):
will be disturbed to to look like a wave like
a normal wave, right, but that wave goes all the
way down to the ocean floor, often miles. So you
have basically what amounts to a three mile tall wave
that's a tsunami rather than you know, a wave that
you see on the surface it's maybe six ft tall,
(19:24):
and then it's disturbing water three ft under the water.
This is a three mile tall wall of water moving
out in a ripple formation in in what's called the
wave train. So successive waves like those ripples spreading out
from that pebble um that are three miles tall and many, many,
many miles across, just coming at you. Basically, Yeah, and
(19:49):
when I said slow down, you know, thirty to forty
at land is still really fast. Obviously it's not three
but um, you know, right before this tsunami happens on land,
it can be really creepy. On shore, You're gonna notice
this beach water rising and falling in a odd ways,
(20:09):
and sometimes it will suck all that water out. And
I believe that movie, Uh The Impossible, didn't it show that.
I don't know, I've seen that in a movie and
it's really creepy looking, and apparently that's it is actually
very creepy looking in real life too. It's not like
a movie thing. It can suck all that water out,
(20:30):
and it may not look like a movie wave coming in.
It's more likely to look like just a huge flood
coming your way right right, like a very fast moving tide,
which is I think one reason people call them tidal waves,
even though the tides have nothing to do with it.
But it doesn't look like that huge wave that you
see in like um the Day after Tomorrow or something
(20:52):
like that. It's it's it's like a very fast moving,
fast rising flood water. And this on this fast moving
floodwater you have like huge raging rivers on top of
the water too. It's just this huge, chaotic, massive water
that is um that is moving inland very quickly and
(21:16):
with an enormous amount of destructive force. Yeah, and then
once it gets there, depending on where it lands, you
might have like areas that were you think are sheltered
because of high dunes, or you're in an inlet or
a bay. Sometimes they can act as like funnels. Like
if the tsunami goes through there, you just don't know
(21:38):
what kind of destructive power it's going to have until
it interacts with the topography and the land features that
it hits. No, but it does do some interesting stuff.
So um when So, first of all, that one thing
where the the bay or the harbor or whatever gets
the water sucked out of it's called drawback, and they've
studied that and actually concluded what you're seeing is the
(21:58):
trough of the way. That's the trough of the first
tsunami wave. So if that's the part that reaches land first,
the trough, that's gonna have drawback. So it's not always
going to have drawback, just only if the trough drives first.
The crest could arrive first, and then all you're seeing
is this floodwater coming out of nowhere. But um, there's
also supposedly the sound of a freight train or a
(22:19):
jet coming at you. So it's like a horrific sound too,
that's coming with this wall of water. But one of
the other things, um, I think you're about to talk
about was wrap around effect. Yeah, and that's along like
a coastline. When I sort of I sort of thought
of it as like, uh, or maybe it's harbor resonance.
(22:40):
Like I'm not sure which is which. But when you
have like a fish tank and you imagine just shaking
it with your all your force and it's just banging
off of interior walls, is that around No, that's harbor resonances.
But that is so you know when you're doing that, right, Like,
it just picks up more and more forced with each movement,
(23:01):
each oscillation from one side to the other. Right Imagine,
I know they're like, please stop, surely this is illegal, um,
but they imagine that happening in the harbor, like that's
what happens in the harbor. So it just gets even
more destructive. But the wrap around effect, this article just
totally completely gets it wrong. It's not the wraparound effect
(23:24):
at all. So the referround effect is if you have
a tsunami wave, remember these are many many miles across
and they're coming inland if they encounter, say like a
barrier island. This is a little island, right, You would
think that the barrier island would slow it down, maybe
make it, um take it a little easier on the
land the shoreline behind the barrier island. It doesn't do
(23:47):
that at all. The barrier island actually amplifies the tsunami
wave and they couldn't figure out how, but they knew
that it could amplify it by like but it doesn't
make any sense. So they started studying it. And I'm
not sure who someone's gonna call them they for now,
but um, they they figured out what happens is the
(24:08):
tsunami wave is split into two by this island, and
for a very brief time, when they come back together,
they are basically doubled in force. It's like two waves
together now with this force, and it amplifies it onto
the land behind it and makes it way worse. That
kind of makes sense if a picture it in my head. Well,
(24:30):
they actually do have cool pictures of it too, I
think on a Noah site. So look up like wrap
around effects tsunamis and it shows like you know, just
part one, two, three, four and all these I think
six pictures and it really drives at home. But I mean,
it definitely does make sense, but it also intuitively doesn't
at all, you know. Yeah, And you know, obviously they've
(24:51):
been in the news in the last like ten or
fifteen years, like you said, and the devastation that can
happen from a tsunami is just it's immense because people
live along coastlines and and we'll get to early warning later,
but no matter what kind of early warning you have,
you making get some people out of there, but it's
gonna wreck everything in its path. And that happened very
(25:16):
famously recently a couple of times. In December twenty six,
two thousand four, in the Indian Ocean, there was a
massive nine point one magnitude earthquake that apparently it shook
buildings twelve hundred miles away in Thailand. Yeah, that's a
big one. And they always you know, the I guess
(25:36):
the big mac version of earthquakes is Hiroshima bombs, right,
the magnitude of twenty three thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs. Yeah. No,
small earthquake, no, not at all. I think the next
most recent one was in nineteen sixty. The next biggest
one is in nineteen sixty and it was like a
nine point four to nine point six, and this is
(25:58):
a nine point one, So it was no sloutch as
far as earthquakes go. But the thing about this, the
two thousand four um earthquake that hits Sumatra, it was
one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. It
killed like about two hundred and thirty thousand people and
(26:20):
ruined No. I can't like if you go through the
list of like deadly tsunamis over history. Um. I mean
the next the next largest I saw was one in
Japan in um. I think that yeah, the nineteenth century
that killed twenty thousand people, so a tenth of the
two thousand four tsunami. And the reason why it was
(26:41):
so deadly was it hit eleven different countries that were
fully engorged with tourists on the holiday season. Um, so
there were a lot of people there, including a lot
of people who had never really been introduced to tsunami
preparedness or knew what was going on. If there was drawback,
(27:03):
and I think there may have been. Actually I think
I saw a footage of the drawback for that one,
So you're right, Um, people were kind of like going
out into the harbor, like, what's this And when that happens,
when the drawback happens and you're seeing the trough of
that first tsunami wave, you have seconds, maybe minutes to
get away, not go closer to it. Yeah, but it
(27:25):
wouldn't have made a difference in that case. Probably not.
You know, it hit and it was enormous and huge,
and uh yeah, it just it killed a lot of
people very quickly, because even if you do have the
time to do it, you have to get no less
than a mile inland and or no less than a
hundred feet above sea level, and you have a very
(27:48):
short time to do that. So my friend Dave Barnhart,
who listens to the show, Hey Dave, he is a
documentary filmmaker UM for nonprofits, and he he went down
there and did a series of documentary updates over the years.
He and I can't remember how many people, but he
followed specifically the lives an aftermath of of several different
(28:12):
individuals and families. Uh, and you know, went down there
himself and shot this stuff, I believe in Indonesia, and um,
I don't know if he's still following up but he
did it for many years and I saw a lot
of this stuff and he won some awards for it.
Is just just unbelievable, the stories of devastation and then
(28:35):
perseverance for some of these people that like started over
with nothing in the worst, most unsanitary, devastating conditions. You
can imagine living in, Yeah, I can. I was gonna say,
I can image me. I can't imagine. Yeah, I mean,
it's just heartbreaking to see this stuff, like quarter a
million people. It's just it's hard to even fathom. There. Um,
(28:57):
there's this one story you mean got obsessed with at
the time him about a kid named baby eighty one.
He was like the eighty first baby to be brought
into I think a hospital in Sri Lanka or something afterward,
and there was this huge like media publicity circus around
whose kid it was, and supposedly they're reporting that there
(29:18):
was like nine different families claiming him and there was
a huge battle over it, when really it was just
this one poor family who knew that it was their
son and who went to go make a claim, but
they they actually got arrested for trying to take the
baby out of the hospital and had to wait like
a month before they got him back through like a
d n A test. But it's just like like, first
(29:40):
of all, tsunami. Secondly, their baby gets swept away out
of the mom's arms in the tsunami. And then when
they finally find out the babies alive, they go to
take him back and they can't, and just like the
idea that that they have to prove that it's their son,
it just kept getting worse and worse and worse, and
apparently they had to move because they were known as
the Tsunami Family. Here's the last little bit for you.
(30:03):
They went and appeared on Good Morning America in the
United States and told their story. When they got back,
they were denied disaster aid because everyone assumed that they
had been paid for their appearance and that they didn't
need the money even though they hadn't been paid for it.
Isn't that awful? Yeah, I mean, one family that happened
to all of that. The story of the movie The
(30:26):
Impossible is a true story and an amazing story and
uh just a tough movie to watch, you know. Yeah.
So I was thinking back, like I saw that within
the last year or so, I think, and I was
thinking back to like some of those scenes, and now
that I'm thinking about, I'm like, how did they even
shoot that stuff? Like how it doesn't make any sense?
(30:48):
Like did they did they flood a town somewhere and
start filming and the actors in there, because that's what
it looks like. For sure? It was. It was pretty
remarkable what they did, like cinematically for sure. But you're
absolutely right, it's it's very tough to watch for sure.
Uh So that was UM two four and then just
what seven or eight years ago in two thousand eleven
(31:11):
in March, and we definitely talked about this in nuclear meltdown,
but the tsunami that hit Japan, this one had a
had a horrific effect in and of itself just from
the tsunami. I don't know what the final death toll,
but it was well over four or five thousand. I
think I think the official death tolls now at twenty
thousand dead. Oh wow, because I knew for a while
(31:31):
they were just people missing. Man. I think they finally
combined them all and just said twenty thousands the official
death toll. The the damage is upwards of three hundred
and nine billion US dollars it's the it's the most
expensive natural disaster in history. Well, yeah, and this one
was noted not only for its uh for its devastation
(31:54):
and for human life and money, but obviously the generation
er of the how do you pronounce it? Fukushima Nuclear
facility that was where it made. I don't know about
the most news, but that's what really set this one apart.
You had a tsunami disable a nuclear reactor for a
(32:15):
brief time, which is bad news. Yeah, it's like it's
shut down like it should because I guess they had
seismic detectors that are like tripped an automatic like safeguard system,
but the power got knocked out, so there wasn't any
cooling system. And it's not like it just goes from
incredibly hot nuclear reaction to you know, room temperature immediately.
(32:38):
You need to keep cooling it down, and they didn't.
And apparently from that meltdown. And I don't remember talking
about this in the episode. This is insane, but the
the meltdown created radiation that tore apart the water vapor.
That's amazing, and so the hydrogen separated and so the
place filled with hydrogen gas and it started exploding and
(33:01):
that's what blew a hole in the reactor and created
the leak. I don't remember that. That's nuts. I wonder
if that was found out afterward and not available to
us at the time. I'll bet you're right. That sounds
like something that they like. I don't. I don't even
know if at the time we recorded they knew how
the breach occurred. Yeah, because we did. We recorded within
(33:21):
like a week or so of it happening. I think so. Um,
that place is still still like way hot. They're sending
they sending robots now. They're trying to figure out what
robot to use, and they haven't hit on it quite
yet because the place melts robots that go in to
try to clean up mess. Yeah. Yeah, all right, Well
(33:44):
we're gonna take another break, talk a little bit about
how we're getting better at predicting earthquakes, and then also
what it means for marine life. Right after this stop no,
you know stuff, you know? Okay, Charles, we're back. I
(34:27):
also want to say real quick before we do that. Um,
there are two at least two articles, and I believe
they're written by the same guy who went and covered
the two thousand eleven UM tsunami in the aftermath. One
is called Ghosts of the Tsunami. It's called It's It's
I think in the London Review books. It is amazing.
(34:48):
It's about how these these people in Japan like live
among ghosts as far as they're concerned. They see like
ghosts everywhere of their the people who died in the tsunami.
It's one of the better articles I've ever read in
my life. The other one is The School Beneath the
Wave and that wasn't the Guardian and um it's it
tells the tale of this one specific school that um
(35:10):
this guy who covered the tsunami knew all these different
stories and all these tales um that came out of it,
and this one, I believe he says that he um
put off writing about until last because it's so terrible
because the whole school of children just got swept away
by the tsunami, because the grown ups wouldn't listen to
the kids who they'd trained to re respond correctly to
(35:33):
a tsunami, and they just wouldn't listen to him, and
and it just swept away basically his whole villages group
of children. Would they have gotten out, Yeah, if they
listened to the kids, probably most of if not all,
would have survived. Man. Yeah, it's it's a tough one
to read, for sure, but both of them are definitely
worth it. Uh So when it comes to predicting these
um obviously in the same with earthquakes and tornadoes in
(35:56):
any natural disaster, what they're trying to do is just
get better and better about getting as much time beforehand
as possible. Because, uh then this article very simply points out,
like there's you cannot stop it. There's nothing you can do.
You can't build anything that can thwart or divert a tsunami.
(36:16):
So the only chance that people have a survival is
getting as early warning as possible to get as many
people out of there as possible. We'll still destroy the
towns and villages and cities, but at least you could
save some human lives. And unfortunately a lot of I mean,
it's getting much better, but most of the studying takes
place afterward, so you can try and get better about before. Yeah,
(36:42):
and one way that you study tsunamis is through things
like UM eyewitness reports. Yeah, you go, you go look
to see how high the debris made it up to. Yeah,
and how far it went, Yeah, how wide it was. Um,
some of the debris will end up like on the
other side of the world. Old sometimes if the tsunami
is big enough, because remember you hear about the tsunami
(37:04):
where it hit, you know, the closest place to place
it devastated the most, whether it was Sumatra in two
dozen four or um Japan in two dozen eleven. But
like that, say, like the japan one, it took it
carried stuff all the way over to California, like it
goes in both directions. It's just California was way further away,
so it didn't experience the destruction like Japan did, which
(37:27):
was right up on the place where it happened. Yeah.
So you know, equipment wise, they use UM buoys out
in the ocean, They use tide gauges. They have tide
stations that measure just the smallest little changes in sea level.
They do have seismograph stations that record you know, underwater
(37:48):
earthquake activity UM and anything apparently that's seven point five
or higher that is under the ocean. Earthquake wise, is
when an official tsunami watches issued, right, so when the
tsunami watches issued, then you won't hear about it quite yet.
They that means that they start checking out their gauge stations.
(38:09):
And if the gauge station reports a tsunami, right, um,
I think it's I don't know if it's a I
guess it's a change in tide is what the gage
station measures, right, So if there's a sudden change in
tide that doesn't coincide with the title schedules, will say, yeah,
that's a tsunami, send out the alarm and then they
(38:30):
alert every like the public through text messages or TV
or you know, the Paul Revere. However they do it,
how early can they do? You know, how early they
can get this stuff? Now? I I saw minutes for
for the two thousand eleven one, which like that's all
that In some cases, that's all you need. If you're
(38:50):
in a tall building, you just keep going up, that
can help. Or if you are close enough, you're getting
your car and start driving as far inland as you can.
Minutes can help. And they actually think that the death
toll would have been way higher in Japan had they
not learned as much from the two thousand four tsunami
and set up emergency systems like they had that the
(39:12):
death toll would have been much worse. It's just the
reason why it got as high as twenty thousand is
because it was such a big tsunami, like it topped
like a hundred and almost a hundred and thirty feet.
It was just enormous. That's that's what accounted for the
destructive force. Yeah, And the whole time I was researching
this stuff, I didn't see anything in our article that
(39:33):
talked about sea life because I was thinking, what's it
like to be a fish? When three three hundred mile
an hour tsunami rolls through and Uh, it can be devastating,
Like the base of the wave can completely change and
rewrite the topography of the c floor. Um, really bad
(39:53):
erosion will happen. And the what they called the benthic ecosystem,
which is the you know, the very sea bottom ecosystem
with all the crustaceans and sea snails and worms and stuff,
it can just wreck it. Uh. Coral reefs can be destroyed.
Um And in fact, in two thousand four, UH it
completely wrecked the coral reefs around the Indian Oceans, coastlines,
(40:17):
seagrass beds, mangrove forests, all these wetlands can be super
vulnerable and then species invasion, like you were saying, stuff
can move thousands and thousands of miles. That happens with
sea life too, so you can get an algae. Uh
And in fact they have recorded like algae and other
(40:39):
organisms and like oregon that came from Japan that have
never been there before. So sometimes that can be bad.
Some you know, sometimes it works out and they just say,
all right, we'll set up camp here. But they can
displace native species, so that's all a consideration. And could
not find anything specifically about literally in the water, like
(41:00):
what happens to a whale that's yeah, that's swimming along
and then three miles an hour comes through, Like does
it just go kaboom and the whale explodes kind of
thing because I could kind of see that happening. I
don't know, or is it just like being in a
washing machine for a minute and then the whale is
like what the heck was that all about? What a rush?
(41:22):
Hopefully hopefully chuck let me let me We have some
very very sharp listeners who I'll bet some of which
are marine biologists, So we want to hear from you guys,
what happens to a whale that gets hit by a tsunami.
And that's us asking from our eight year old hearts.
We're gonna go play with our tonka trucks now while
(41:44):
we wait for the answer. Yeah, and of course anything
within the you know, I'm not sure how much distance,
but anything close to the inland part will just be
washed ashore. So, I mean millions and millions of bits
of sea life are now deposited on dry land. Yeah,
and we should say so so for the the unfortunate ones.
(42:07):
I mean, there, if you're a fish and you're getting
smacked around with this debris now like you're getting run
into a house, that'll kill you. Um, there's all sorts
of obstacles that aren't out in the water that are
now in your way because you're being pushed inland in
this huge surge of floodwater. One of the other destructive
forces of tsunamis is that they recede and when they
(42:30):
received they take all that stuff back out with them too.
So maybe your house survived the initial inundation, but it's
not necessarily going to survive all that debris being pulled
on it. As it's all pulled back outward into the
ocean too. They just go from bed to worse, from
moment to moment basically. Well, and I don't I think
it slipped by. I don't think we mentioned too that
(42:50):
it's no, it's not just that first wave like you
can get secondary flood pushes up to like an hour
and a half later. Yes, thank you, So that whole
wave rain. Right, You get the initial wave, and you
get another one or the initial flood water, and then
another one another one. Um. Yeah, I saw actually up
to like a couple hours later, and people have died
(43:11):
going back thinking after the right exactly. They go back
and then it's like nope, here comes around too. Yeah,
I can't believe we haven't done this one before. We
definitely have. And I looked a bunch. Yeah, I did too.
Um And I also tried every word combination I could
think of, and nothing came up. I even tried spelling
(43:32):
it s o O in a M. I that sounds
like us man. Um, I got one more, you're ready.
The tallest tsunami wave ever recorded. It was in Lituya Bay, Alaska.
It reached five hundred and twenty meters or se dred
(43:52):
and ten ft above sea level. Can you imagine. I mean,
that's like the tallest skyscrapers. It's up there for sure,
just coming at you. Well, if you want to know
more about tsunami's you can search that word. Don't spell
it s O O N A M I. It's spelled T,
(44:14):
s U and A M. I think uh in the
search bar at house touff Works dot com. And since
I spelled some stuff, it's time for listener mail. I'm
gonna call this story from a nice lady from a
strawberry farmer. How about that? Those are great stories? Hey, guys,
stumbled upon your podcast and have become obsessed. My husband
(44:36):
and I own a strawberry farm. Doesn't that sound lovely?
It really does. What a nice way to live, you know, man,
And I recently started listening while I'm working outside. The
other day I was walking the fields and listening to
an older one on cremation and a story. My mom's
dad passed away in the early nineties when I was
very young. Two thousand twelve, my grandma lost the family
(44:57):
home in Long Island, New York to Hurricane Sandy. My
mom had an additional home in Florida, UH and moved
there the following summer, my mom and dad drove out
to New York to pack up what was left to
the house before it was going to be demolished. My
parents found this little wooden box with no labels. But
Dad tried to open it and could not, and unknown
to my mom at the time, he put it in
the van drove it back home to Wisconsin. When my
(45:19):
mom found it, she asked my grandma what it was
and she replied, Oh, yeah, that's your father. I'm just
trying to do my best long Island accent. Needless to say,
they were glad that they were unsuccessful in opening the box.
My mom rightfully labeled the box and now we all
get to see Grandpa every time we visit their home.
Thanks for entertaining me while I walked up and down
(45:41):
rows of strawberries, checking on plants and weeds eight acres
at a time by hand, mother lawn or hand prune
ten acres of strawberry plants. She's just rubbing it in now. Ps.
We ever do a show in Milwaukee? Well, Danielle Clark,
we have done a show in Milwaukee and it was great,
So I'm sure we'll come back at some point. Yeah,
(46:06):
or maybe both, because I think we found out like
they don't actually drive down the road to one another.
It's weird. It is weird. Well, if you have a
great story about something we talked about, like dan Yelle
thinks by the way, Danielle Um, if you want to
let us know about it, you can tweet to us.
We're all over Twitter. You can check us out on
(46:28):
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