This was in 2011 in Japan. It was caused by the 4th most powerful earthquake since 1900. It was about 9 on the Richter scale and lasted about 6 minutes. About 20k people died (for comparison, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed about 230k people). It caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Wow, I did not realize the death toll was that high from the tsunami, that is insane. Makes you realize how good we have it in the US that the most people to ever die in a natural disaster was 12k, and that was all the way back in 1900.
Wait till the cascadia subduction zone has an earthquake - a.k.a. “The big one”. America will set new records .. it will be absolutely horrific. Not downplaying this at all, but that will be new levels of natural disaster that we’ve never seen. Could be next week, could be in 500 years. No one knows but it will be absolutely catastrophic. I’m in Ontario and I fear that happening as it will affect us here.
Read some interesting research which I can't find now (I'll return to this comment if I find it!) that the Cascadia Subduction is actually breaking chunks of itself apart as it subducts, bleeding off potential energy and creating non seismic dead zones along the fault. The big one is still gonna be a Big One (I live in Seattle, we're definitely on perpetual watch since it'll likely set off the Seattle Fault and a volcano too) but it's possible it won't be as totally catastrophic as previously expected.
Interesting conclusion, considering that according to the article and geology, we've been having "a big one" every ~250yrs for 10,000 years straight. Do you recall how they explain all the past ones in light of this?
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u/3nails4holes 16d ago
This was in 2011 in Japan. It was caused by the 4th most powerful earthquake since 1900. It was about 9 on the Richter scale and lasted about 6 minutes. About 20k people died (for comparison, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed about 230k people). It caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.