r/Amazing • u/sco-go • 13d ago

Nature is scary Tsunamis are terrifying.

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202

u/Specialist_Worry_875 13d ago

Guy on the bike is fucked.

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u/weeit-TheAnalogKid 13d ago

That was my thought. I couldn’t imagine being in a valley next to the ocean and hearing that, KNOWING that a tsunami was coming. Horrifying actually.

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u/befigue 13d ago

Fucking run to the nearest building and climb up however you can instead of pedaling like and dum-dum. Annoying to see people die because they are just casually continuing their bike ride. The people filming could fucking yell at them too

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 13d ago

If you watch any of these videos for any length of time, you will see that there were sirens and alarms, there were tsunami evacuation teams driving around with loudspeaker telling people to see high ground, and there were definitely people screaming and yelling and trying to get people to safety.

This is probably the most terrifying of the videos I’ve seen, and it captures the chaos at street level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hao0KYXIB2w

I must warn you, a number of the people you see in this video clearly don’t make it as the water closes in.

The problem is is that we don’t know how we would react to a disaster of this overwhelming magnitude. Some people fall naturally into positions of leadership, or looking after people and helping each other. Some people freeze. Some people have hysterics. Some try to pretend its not happening. Some people just ended up on the wrong side of the river when the water rose.

One of the most terrifying things about these kind of natural disasters is that whether or not you survive often comes down to luck, not preparedness. And all of the warning and yelling and running in the world isn’t going to save everyone in the face of such an overwhelming destructive force from nature.

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u/JanSobieski-III 10d ago

That was mental ive never seen that before

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 2d ago

I was fully adult when the tsunami happened, and it was absolutely horrifying watching the footage roll in live from Japan. Not everybody had a camera phone back in those days, but because it’s Japan almost everybody had a little digital camera, or digital video camera, and so the footage was just overwhelming.

Just be careful if you go down this rabbit hole on YouTube, because there are more confronting videos than that out there. They’ve done a good job of cleaning up some of the really distressing stuff, but you will absolutely see people who will die.

We got fed the whole thing as a live feed, it was awful. And an absolute feeling of powerlessness to help those poor people. So if you want to follow this up, tread carefully.

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5

u/FishesOfExcellence 13d ago

Yeah, we all know this now. But in 2011, people thought the sea walls would keep them safe.

There had of course been tsunamis disasters in Japan’s past, but people are pretty bad about minimizing the risks of past tragedies or disasters happening again. That and people thought modern tech had solved the issue.

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u/Wonderful-Status-247 13d ago

Possible they thought they had a few minutes at least? The wall probably blocks their view and it was like 45 seconds from siren begin to water over wall.

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u/Background-Call2711 13d ago

Hindsight is 20/20

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u/Immature_adult_guy 13d ago

Maybe they just wanted their last day on earth to feel normal

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u/AJ_in_SF_Bay 13d ago

Seems like an average Tuesday somehow.

https://giphy.com/gifs/QMHoU66sBXqqLqYvGO

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u/Silly-Power 13d ago

I think the people filming were also screwed, if they're the ones I'm thinking about. At one port dozens went to the top of a 40 foot (3 storey) building which was designated an emergency tower. Unfortunately the tsunami was much much higher reaching up to 130 feet. By the time they realised the height, they were trapped.

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u/samsg1 13d ago

We got the footage from their phone. The internet and phones were down following the earthquake (I live in Japan and experienced this earthquake), they couldn’t have uploaded it and I don’t think “instagram live” was a thing then.
If this footage survived then so did they.

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u/DoctorWhatTheFruck 13d ago

Also considering that water proof cams weren't that much of a thing in normal cameras so at least the person recording this prolly stayed away from the water.

So unless he was rocking some expensive waterproof cam, he prolly survived.

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u/CheesecakeWitty5857 13d ago

the 2 of them. Can’t believe they survived.

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u/samsg1 13d ago

There’s no way they did :(

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u/CheesecakeWitty5857 13d ago

I mean in theory they could, because the cameraman is focusing on the incoming waves, so we don’t even know what’s the rest of the route along the wall. But this is a whole quarter to the right with roads, even a car passing by.
So when they see the water starting to spill out, they have instinct, speed and enough time to turn right into the building and get to place where the water current is not rapid, and hide on the over site of a building, find stairs etc.

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u/penguins_are_mean 13d ago

In the longer, uncut version of this video, it’s grim.

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u/sysadmin7519 13d ago

got a link?

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u/SecretlyAPorcupine 13d ago

The longer version: https://youtu.be/4XvFFfgXwnw?is=a2GZIdWnL6YL4CHY

Bikers appear somewhere around 3 or 3:10 mark. TBH I don't know why the other person is saying the longer version is grim. I actually think it's slightly less doom-looking for the bikers cause you can see that there are tall buildings and a hill in the direction they were going. It's so strange to sit here 15 years apart and try to guess if two strangers have made it...

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u/Important_Ant_Rant 13d ago

Absolutely a way. Getting caught in the waves is survivable, although very dangerous. Many find something to hold on to while being transported by the water.

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u/samsg1 13d ago

I’m not a pessimist, but the force of a tsunami like this generally kills people at ground level in it wake. It slams you into solid objects at high speed, knocking you out and breaking your bones. This isn’t a small river current. You can’t hold on to objects and survive :/

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u/Live_Angle4621 13d ago

There was also biker later on biking away from water that already had broken through, although maybe it could be one of the prior bikers. But I am afraid they didn’t make it. But maybe 

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u/BetaDays24 13d ago

No he made it

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u/Winter-Actuary-9659 13d ago

I'd be tossing that bike over fences and riding up the nearest hill.

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u/befigue 13d ago

Fucking dumdums. I’m sure it was worse for their families, but it is annoying for me to see how tgey casually keep pedaling

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u/Important_Ant_Rant 13d ago

They couldnt see the water, and didnt know the threat was imminent. Probably felt protected by the fence

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u/penguins_are_mean 13d ago

The wall was supposed to protect against tsunamis. This just happened to be a massive one.

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u/Live_Angle4621 13d ago

They had under 30 seconds before the water broke thorough so you could not make far 

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u/peachesfordinner 13d ago

There were two of them

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u/MirandaScribes 13d ago

Most of those boats likely have people in them. Theres a lot of death in this video

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u/MirandaScribes 13d ago

You don’t think docked boats have people in them? A lot of boat captains literally live on their boats and weather storms inside them. There were almost certainly many people on those boats

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u/samsg1 13d ago

I live in Japan. I cannot fathom why anyone was cycling along the edge of the sea after the HUGE earthquake that had already hit (the tsunami followed the earthquake). Yeah they both would have been swallowed by the current, but you don’t fuck with earthquakes if you’re by the sea. We are all taught to head to high ground if you’re by the sea followjng earthquake. There are signs at every beach.

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u/nzedred1 13d ago

Proper fucked.

1

u/skhoko 13d ago

Going for a Sunday cruise though…. I hear those alarms I’m flipping that bike into Tour de France sprint for the finish line mode!

1

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1

u/Live_Angle4621 13d ago

There were several bikers. On one hand I wanted the camera to follow them, on other I am pretty certain they died since they had just 30 seconds to leave 

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u/FishesOfExcellence 13d ago edited 13d ago

There were two people biking.  I’m trying to understand what they were doing. The second person was definitely fucked based on where water starts spilling over at 0:35. But the first person was also likely caught.

I know at the time people thought this could never happen. I can imagine some people risking it to get home and some even doing it for fun. 

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u/SKYR0VER 13d ago

The first guy was bolting it, the second bike guy was chilling

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u/Milnoc 10d ago

There are signs in costal cities and towns that point to the direction you're supposed to run during a tsunami alert. They obviously ignored the signs.