There’s not much point worrying much over geological existential risks. They come too infrequently too be a major risk, and those that do occur more often, are not big enough to matter in the big picture.
Still, if there’s one risk that is both potentially highly destructive and occurs at a relatively high rate, it is megatsunamis that occur as a result of submarine landslides (masses of land slumping into water as a result of earthquakes or volcanic eruptions). In the Canary Islands, there have been 14 such slides in the past million years (once every 100k years). In the Hawaiian archipelago, there were 68 big slides over the past 2 million years. In total, it is estimated there have been at least 100 big slides that caused megatsunamis during the Quaternary, or once every <25,000 years. This is >1 OOM more frequent than supervolcanoes (~once every million years), which are in turn 2 OOM more frequent than very big asteroid collisions (~once every 100M years).
So probably won’t happen within the lifetime of industrial civilization (250 years and counting). But megatsunamis are a more realistic concern on these timescales. The collapse of a part of Cape Verde 73,000 years ago created a 240 meter tall megatsunami that wiped the coast of West Africa clean. The Storegga Slide in 6170 BC flooded Doggerland and could have been the origin of the world’s flood myths. A slide in Réunion 4,000 years ago flooded West Australia. So this is something that happens within historical time.
According to some early modeling in 2001, a 500 km3 submarine landslide off the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma could create huge waves that will retain a height of 10-25 meters by the time it reaches the Eastern Seaboard.
Such a 10-25 m megatsunami would advance ~30 km into low-lying Florida after just nine hours of warning time. The Caribbean and the West African coast would be wrecked. At least several 100,000sof people would die, a great deal of housing stock would be destroyed, and world markets would go into a hyperdepression. Portugal, Spain ,and the British Isles would sustain some more minor damage from 5-7 meter waves.
These projections have come under question as being too pessimistic or even entirely unrealistic. Nonetheless, it’s something to watch out for, given current developments.
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Why would the markets go into hyperdepression? West Africa is hardly the center of economic activity. In any event, US will just print more money.
So once again Moscow’s location is perfect.
The Severn Channel next to which I live has 10.5m tides. At high tide a 7m tsunami might double due to the narrowing channel. High tide + 15m would get close to my house. On the other hand at low tide it might not be noticed.
There was a Tsunami which flooded Cardiff in the 17th C with considerable loss of life. Bristol is back from the sea as it is a little way up river through a steep gorge so it escaped. There is suspicsion of another one in the 14th C which destroyed the original market town/port in the area, Kenfig and led to the foundation of Bridgend higher up river instead. (the idea that old cities still exist because they are sited to avoid natural disasters has some rationale).
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
― Yogi Berra
The printing presses will be underwater, but you will probably be able to moor at the Capitol, thus improving commuter time.
https://i.postimg.cc/5yvDZnRP/The-city-of-shifting-waters.jpg
IIRC there were several cool nuke assisted geological disaster scenarios modeled by the USSR in the 1960s.
The coolest/craziest such scenrio was taking out the isthmus of Panama using 4-10 100 MT nukes delivered by the Proton ICBM.
The Pacific and Atlantic waters start to freely mix across an artificially created 2-5km wide channels,the Gulfstream collapses and Europe resembles Canada or Siberia.
There was also a tsunami scenario of using giant nuclear depth charges in the geologically unstable ring of fire area..
According to the disaster movie “2012”, Africa will be swept clean, and then can be safely resettled by Euros and Chinese, who will only just survive the event by building gigantic arks.
Supposing that Hollywood only erred on the side of caution by placing this scenario nine years too early, I humbly suggest that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation now change its priorities.
Meaning what exactly? Humans cannot do anything about these mega-tsunamis. Watching out for them is about as useful as complaining about gravity.
Is that really sufficient. Sounds low.
After several hundred years? All that water in movement doesn’t “collapse” all of a sudden. Shutdown will take a long time.
Seems to me that the biggest threat to humanity is dysgenics.
However, if I had to choose among natural disasters by considering probabilities, I would ask, which one is most likely to spread atomophobia, to the point where the power of the atom is completely lost to Green ideologues?
Possibly Washington (not the city, but the state in North West America) has a greater risk of a tsunami, and would less warning time, and America has been very unprepared for this scenario.
Hopefully, timing of the event will be far enough in the future, that the adequate disaster preparation and infrastructure to prepare for this disaster will have been constructed there. (Although Japan had tried to prepare for tsunamis in the areas which were damaged in 2011, and yet when the tsunami came, there were shown to be still very insufficient investments).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOZv5pjne6s
Would only make the canal bigger, for nuclear-powered ships.
I agree, though dysgenics might be a self-resolving problem in the long run. Still, it would be nice not to waste many centuries on that.
Could dysgenics help explain the collapse of Classical civilization?
Interesting comment. How so?
As far as an Atlantic tsunami is concerned, the odds are long, but it has happened before and is certainly possible when the volcano acts up and there are seismic swarms.
I remember the fuss about the Yellowstone volcano several years ago, with seismic activity and Yellowstone Lake heating up. It’ll eventually blow again, but the chances are long against it any given year, or during any given low-level seismic activity. A major eruption could destroy agricultural production in the Midwestern US for years.
Slamming ~200x 1 megaton nuclear MIRVs onto Yellowstone fault lines for 15 minutes straight over and over apparently won’t do anything but the Pacific and Atlantic touching balls will end the world?
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5l80RSfDmDs/YUfR4XEQRdI/AAAAAAAAHbc/-ouYN9EvhA4ibRV1LvJzdTHygukzNwfZACLcBGAsYHQ/s720/antarctic_nsidc_1991.png
Three oceans are touching balls, the world is not ending. Every winter atmosphere freezes and every summer fresh cold water circulates to three oceans.
Did you read that off an Indian forum somewhere? Or worse. Twitter?
It used to be just about axiomatic that this was the cause of collapse of all civilizations.
Of course, they didn’t use the word “dysgenics”. They would say something like, “The race had run its course.”
It’s really only us too-clever moderns who have come up with triple-bank-shot theories like “lead pipes theory” or “catabolic collapse” or whatever.
Old and busted: Hoping for the asteroid impact.
The new hotness: Hoping for the megatsunami.
Based.
Wasn’t Fukushima a very powerful tsunami? I mean, Fukushima reactions are retarded, everyone was focused on the nuclear power plant that didn’t really kill anybody, but the earthquake and the floods actually killed 20,000 people. But its like they are invisible.
And that’s in earthquake hardened Japan.
Now imagine Fukushima+, same earthquake and tsunami, but slightly more powerful.
So all those microchip factories, industrial materials factories, in East Asia are under water. How fast can we train the ocean squid to operate a printed circuit board factory? I mean, they are pretty intelligent, and will demand high wages. It can be a problem.
A few good quakes can put the planetary industrial centers under water. Problematic, unless you are an ocean squid.
Gibbon’s phrase for the citizens of the late Roman Empire was “race of diminutive men”.
They found house sized boulders inland from the coast on the south coast of NSW in Austfailia, and finally realised that they were moved from mega-tsunamis from island collapse in Hawaii. And Etna’s eastern flank collapsing wiped out much of the Levant eight thousand years ago.
You have NO idea whether the melted down Fukushima nukes have caused death already, or will do so in future. Why pretend otherwise?
This is clearly where the Biblical flood myth comes from.
This would kill all the birds with one stone since 99%+ of Euros & Asians would be drowned and you can’t pack 500 million into a dozen gigantic arks. Only Schwab, Gates and Soros’ heir would get tickets, not even Fauci or Biden. Store all the knowledge and AI on board and then you could have 4IR with a clean slate and no underclass to suck UBI off your new state.
This means sending a nuke down Yellowstone.
The threat posed by natural catastrophes to humans is overrated, since they are largely background forces feeding into existing trends of failure.
I think it is technically incorrect to say that a tsunami “retains” a height of 10-25 meters as it moves across the ocean toward the seaboard. Actually, it possesses no height to retain. It is in reality a strong pulse of invisible fast-moving energy below the surface. It might be at most one meter tall. A ship would not know that a tsunami has passed. then, when it reaches the shallow shoreline, the energy pulse forms a tall wave. The exception is that a tall wave in mid-ocean might exist every hundred kilometers or so. But in between these, it is just an energy pulse.
http://itic.ioc-unesco.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1204:why-arent-tsunamis-seen-at-sea-or-from-the-air&catid=1340&Itemid=2053
Better stock up on water wings for the whole family…
Beat the rush, order now!
How many Fukushima deaths have there been due to actual radiation poisoning? Next to none.
Its like when Americans tested their hydrogen bomb and Japanese fishing boat got caught in the blast range.
Well, yes, the skipper on that boat died soon afterwards. He was a syphilitic alcoholic and US Navy, while trying to rescue him, messed up his blood type, and destroyed his liver and he died. The rest of his crew was fine and were making anti-nuclear speeches into their 90’s.
Same deal with Fukushima. There will be a lot of scary reports, but nothing long term will be linked to the reactor once long term comorbidities are accounted for.
Timing of article is splendid given that about the moment it was posted, (about 8.7 hours ago on the evening of 9/19/21), the Canary islands volcano just started erupting: https://www.metro.us/lava-pours-out-of/
Writing from East Central Florida, it’s enough to keep one awake, but I take comfort in knowing that if it takes out NYC & D.C., (as such almost surely would) it would be worth dying for.
R.C.
Advances in ancient and modern DNA strongly indicate there was no significant change in DNA. Most of the changes in DNA in ancient populations happened before the Iron Age (before Classical Civilisation). Regardless, there was no collapse of Classical Civilisation but it gradually morphed into something else while retaining many features of the old. For example, in Byzantium they still read Homer (a foundational text for young boys) and Aristotle but they read it differently.
LOL it did such a piss poor job didn’t it?
Beauty of diversity…
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/fatal-shooting-incident-takes-place-russian-university-ifax-2021-09-20/
Eight killed in Russian university shooting, gunman ‘liquidated’
A student opened fire at a university in the Russian city of Perm on Monday, killing at least eight people and wounding several, law enforcement said.
…………………………..
Another source, in Croatian:
https://www.telegram.hr/politika-kriminal/ovo-je-18-godisnji-napadac-koji-je-pucao-na-sveucilistu-u-ruskom-permu-i-ubio-osam-ljudi-ostavio-je-poruku/
Timur Bekmansurov
Ru:
https://www.vesti.ru/article/2615708
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4995910
Based on the Wikipedia link, which only mentions flooding around the North Sea, it seems unlikely that the Storegga Slide would have inspired flood myths in Mesopotamia and elsewhere, though it could of course be the source of lesser known Northern European flood myths.
Gang upland wins again.
But what about being zeroed by a (highly speculative) Verneshot
Life is full of surprises!
The Really Big One: An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.
Interesting:
https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2017/07/14/la-palma-part-2/
Dave Petley writes:
In Crichton’s State of Fear bad guys are trying to cause this to happen.
Let’s hope someone doesn’t take it as an instruction manual.
Technically speaking, I think the victims would probably have been a lot of ancient hominids, mostly not humans, but maybe the source of the ghost DNA that a lot of West Africans have.
I guess if you needed to pay a huge chunk of change for a ticket, it would mainly be the high finance people who survive, maybe some big real estate developers, and a few dictators. But very little to no scientists.
Wouldn’t necessarily give them high odds. Might make an interesting scifi story, if they survive in their New Zealand bunkers and are trying to look for other survivors to till the land and so they can exploit them.
Lots of Mystics/Saints Prophecies as to these Natural Disasters coming on top of the created Man made ones (CVirus/plagues) all coming together as to our times right now and what will happen between now and 2033 including this one by a Saint who has been very accurate (by the time this period ends around 2033 the World Population is predicted to be a fraction of what it is now due to the man made “Elite” plagues/depopulation and then the “Natrural”/God sent disasters):
https://whygodreallyexists.com/archives/800-years-old-prophecy-shows-destruction-coming-to-america-hildegard-von-bingen
http://www.catholicityblog.com/2017/06/prophecy-of-saint-hildegard-about-end.html
But Japan got lucky as the winds pushed the radioactive plumes from the meltdowns out to the sea (seriously energizing a US CVN – radioactive iodine and whatnot could be found behind various sorts of internal piping a long time after). Plus, they hadn’t loaded magnox, or there would also have been plutonium dust.
If the winds had been different, they would probably still be scrubbing Tokio with water and soap.
Lady luck smiled, so let’s build those nuclear reactors better. Why doesn’t Japan just set them onto pontons out at sea? Problem? Open the trapdoor!
I don’t need a rancid prophecy (basically random noise distilled into the significance inflation) to tell you that destruction is coming to America.
Palma volcano pretty spectacular but too close to people for comfort. Live feed AFAIK.
https://youtu.be/DmcmRVA86Xo
The reactor building took little damage from the Wave….
Issue was, the Generator Building housing power to move water into and out of the cooling ponds was basically destroyed….
Yes, it’s part of the whole system, but damage to the reactor was not the cause of the meltdown….
This old paleo anthropological narrative has changed with genome sequencing it’s very interesting I suspect that proto humans are much older than previously supposed and very mixed up even the ‘Homo Sapiens’ species division will be under question.
Amazing daylight drone footage of Palma, some nice homes and pools being destroyed. Vent seems to have opened further down the hill, towards the more populated areas.
https://twitter.com/ACFIPRESS/status/1440054791053275144
I took a big interest in the Fukushima ” accident”, mainly because I heard there was a earthquake of 9 magnitude and being from Alaska , I’m very familiar with what the richter scale jolts feel like. In 64 Alaska had a quake and it registered a 9, and I wasn’t there during that time but the evidence is everywhere – from the old town of Valdez to the different elevations in streets , downtown Anchorage.
So I looked on line for phone videos etc, from residents of Fukushima and I found 2 of them. One showed the infrastructure looking down to the Sea and the other was taken up near their river that cuts thru part of the town. Neither of them showed a 9 hitting the areas, in fact I saww no bridges , overpasses, roads, etc. near the sea or going over the river – damaged. I saw no buildings toppled and I saw people walking along the river – nothing like a 9 just hit. Later I found a couple engineer reports about the power plant itself and their accounts showed some real discrepancies on the explosions in reactors that were actually down and had their power rods taken out and in storage. The main thing I noticed – who was contracted out to perform maintenance and renovations on the plant prior to the explosions. The last thing I looked for was who had a bitch with the Japanese Gov. – and I found one big one. In fact there was a lot more info after I started looking, Another conspiracy theory – definitely. Tsunamis can be man made and all the super powers and Israel – know it.
The only part of the DNA in which we can see some Italian influence across the Empire is the Y-chromosome, but it becomes substantial only in some areas, like SW-Iberia (where many legion veterans were settled). It’s also my case, my J2b relatives hail mostly from central Italy.
That would make for a cool doomsday device. Skaven in Warhammer have Skaven tide where they build under the civilization and then emerge all at once. Then they also just have a giant bomb too.
Edit: that reminds me I want to do a skaven play through where I just use underempire to conquer.
Thanks for the info A – unfortunately I don’t have any of my details because they were stashed on another computer that went Tango Uniform { Tits Up } but my info was not government related it was from independent engineers familiar with Westinghouse plants. It was very interesting , as some C Ts can be. Even down to the drilling ship that planted the nukes off shore. I have that curious gene and the more that government’s lie – the more fun it is to find other scenarios. Probably a retirement thing too !
I see that, after covering the Russian Government with pails of urine for the last five years, the EU and UK are desperately calling for them to send more of that nasty fossil gas that they want to phase out (in theory) as soon as possible.
Tony Blair shouldn’t have stopped new nuclear build in 1998, losing a generation of nuclear engineers and handing the industry to France and China.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/21/iea-calls-on-russia-to-send-more-gas-to-europe-before-winter
If Russia’s fulfilling their contracts, what’s the problem? That’s the definition of a reliable supplier.
I was primarily referring to Greek and Roman populations. However, you are correct that there were some Y chromosome pulses of Roman influence in Iberia and some other areas like in the Balkans where it seems Roman soldiers had settled after their military service and take local wives. As for Italy, there seems to have been an Eastern Mediterranean pulse during the Imperial period but this declined after the fall of the Western Roman Empire as the large cities acted like sinks and the rural native Italian population resettled the cities. As for the Greeks, there was a Slavic pulse in early/mid-Byzantium but only really in mainland Greece whereas Cycladic, Cretan, Dodecanese and even less so, Cypriot Greeks did not experience this. It seems that as Byzantium re-took complete control of the Balkan peninsula, in some cases, resettling Greeks from southern Italy, the Romans (Greek-speakers) took Slavic wives. The later resettlement of Anatolian Greeks further reduced the Slavic element.
However,it is frustrating there are so few Classical Greek and Byzantine aDNA samples to get a better picture. They unearthed dozens of early Classical skeletons in Faliro and many skeletons in a Byzantine necropolis when recently building the Thessaloniki Metro so we may have some results soon.
Could you name at least one natural gas-related contract Russia broke? Did anyone got a right to demand penalty? If not, no contract was broken.
European commission advised everyone to switch from long-term contracts (which Gazprom preferred) to spot market. Europe is reaping what it sowed. Tough luck.
The earthquake did not hit the coast all that much. The tsunami hit the coast. Much difference, equally devastating.
In fact, there were other industrial plants than just the old Westinghouse boiling water reactors doing their meltdown thing. Chemical plants were burning and probably dumping a lot of evil stuff into the ocean but nobody was interested.
No they can’t except in Hollywood dross.
This is one of the best documented meltdowns ever – and as usual earthquakes/tsunamis are well-documented all the time – stop being silly. Get off conspiracy Twitter.
(GRS-S-56) Fukushima Daiichi 11. März 2011 – Unfallablauf, Radiologische Folgen (5., überarbeitete Auflage)
So Putin personally manages gas delivery to jurop from his control lair?
Right.
Nobody is even alleging contract violation so where are you coming from?
Maybe Russia can deliver gas to other markets? Surprise:
Russian pipeline gas exports to China nearly triple in 2021
I’m sure the US can deliver fracking gas by LPG carrier in the meantime.
Also, if there is a “conspiracy” it is Merkel dumping core and immediately misusing the Japan situation as an excuse to shut down nuclear reactors across Germany, none of which are near an Earthquake fault line or are even Westinghouse BWRs. The last one goes down this year AFAIK.
For some mysterious reason, Germany is still listed as top exporter of electric energy.
But apparently that happens because when all the windmills across Germany are turning, Germany doesn’t know what to do with the electric energy and sells it at practically zero or even negative prices to Norway, who then sells back stored hydropower at top rates when all the windmills across Germany are sitting still.
Happy handrubbing was heard across the baltics.
As others have pointed out, Russia isn’t breaking any contracts. If it were, the usual suspects (over here the BBC and Guardian) would let us know.
Uranium prices at 6 year high. China is building nukes big time, while the West is shutting them down.
https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20210909566/why-spot-uranium-prices-have-climbed-to-a-6-year-high
Paying more for household bills? Blame Russia’s meddling in gas markets, Western commentators say, even if the facts don’t hold up
The moment when you could use lobster for some boiling but you don’t have any.
Also, protect lava from COVID, we are all in this together:
https://twitter.com/Juanmi_News/status/1440408346075353095
If you don’t think that this C T scenario is possible – you have been programmed – for a very long time. Or you are as sly as a fox. But I run into people that have no idea how far things have come, since those ‘Nobel Prize mini nukes” disposed of 80% of all the steel, concrete and the rest of the matter from 2 – 100 story high rises, in a matter of minutes. Maybe Japan got caught dealing, a little too much with – Iran ? lol
. Israel is the top dog in nuclear research and they have had all the money, raw materials, and experteeeeze to blackmail half the world’s infrastructure. Not only do they have the nukes covered they have much of the high tech mechanics to go along with their nuclear capability. They also are super sub contractors on nuclear plants , all over the world. Taking out a stupidly placed nuclear power plant was a piece of cake for a team that deals in this type of operation.
Merkel ? she , like the rest of the worlds leaders – do what they are told . But who is behind that curtain, pullin the shots and making sure that the world’s leaders – get the drift ? Not GMC or el Dato Sabe’ ?
Who would take out their trash, unclog their toilets, get the generator back up running, clean the solar panels, etc.?
Think of a corporate manufacturing facility with only the C level management showing up to work.
Mixing Greek and Latin is bad enough, but Greek and Japanese? えーーー？！
Ōtsunami [大津波, おおつなみ] is better. Especially with the macron over the O:
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2D4Y2EJ/portrait-asian-happy-handsome-man-posing-he-holding-a-funny-mustache-card-or-vintage-fake-moustaches-on-his-mouth-studio-shot-isolated-on-blue-backgr-2D4Y2EJ.jpg
What I see is USrael, (((Ukraine))) and the waterpolacks conspiring to
bleed the Germans and blame it on the Russians; we´ll see how far they
think they can drive it before it backfires.
(The sweetest backlash so far is the collapse of CO2 (!) production in
the UK because of high gas prices 😀 )
Gazprom increased natural gas export to Europe in 2021, as compared to 2020:
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/energy/finance/gazprom-sees-moderate-gas-export-rise-in-europe-in-2021/31382
It is only natural that this increase was modest: only a total idiot floods the market with its product to depress prices. If you run a business, you can try this approach yourself, and then promptly file for bankruptcy.
It is equally natural that Gazprom tries to minimize fleecing by transit parasites, Ukraine and Poland. NS-1 works at capacity, because transporting gas via this route is a lot cheaper than through parasites who, like mafia, always want to get their cut.
https://www.docdroid.net/kZZXcGS/covid-19-the-spartacus-letter-pdf#page=7
interesting letter and many things you mention earlier about so called vaccines
Krakatoa exploded in 1882 (I think) The dust reached Scandinavia, and temperatures dropped 1-3 degrees for 3 years. That was a big bang!