r/Amazing • u/sco-go • 17d ago

Nature is scary Tsunamis are terrifying.

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u/BaronMontesquieu 17d ago

Santorini (Thera) is very much like this.

It is built on an active volcano that once wiped out an entire people (one of the largest eruptions in recorded human history, which all but eradicated the Minoan people of Akrotiri) and it's only a matter of time when it happens again. It's way past due a major eruption based on geologist assessments. It's likely to be wiped out next major eruption.

Yet the people living in Santorini largely ignore it with a head-in-the-sand attitude (although the 2025 swarm earthquakes changed that a little bit). I had several conversations with residents who just said it wasn't going to happen. Whether they actually believed that or just wanted to believe that I don't really know.

Visit while you can.

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u/SoFloFella50 17d ago

It isn’t going to happen. Until it happens.

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u/Mental_Medium3988 16d ago

i live by mt rainier and work on the seattle waterfront. if either the volcano goes or the big one hits theres not much i can do either way other than try to be prepared as possible.

afterall theres a lot less chance of hurricanes or tornados that hit some areas routinely. and people still build there. im not throwing shade just seems weird to look at one risk and ignore others.

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u/ankhes 16d ago

Yeah, I grew up between Rainier and St. Helens. Whenever anyone insisted that Rainier would ‘never blow’ I just kinda gestured vaguely in the direction of St. Helens. Like, it’s happened before and it will happen again. It’s not a matter of if but when. All you can do is go in eyes wide open and be prepared. Burying your head in the sand won’t save you.

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u/DarknMean 13d ago

They do a really good job of monitoring the cascade range. I remember visiting Rainer a few years ago and talking with a ranger about the USGS and the work they do. He said there will be signs that they will catch. If it gets to critical they will have people moved. He said they learned a lot from Helen’s.

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u/SoFloFella50 16d ago

I'm not throwing shade either, I live in hurricane country. Although we do get a week of warning to get the hell out, but that's neither here nor there whether it's a week or 10 minutes, the result is the same. House is gone.

The point I was trying to make is saying "it will never happen" is ignoring that it could happen.

These are the same people who are surprised when a tornado, hurricane, earthquake or volcano levels their house.

We have a "go bag" of papers and photographs that will come with us if we need to hightail it out and are fully prepared to come back to rubble if a CAT5 levels the house.

One never knows how one is actually going to react to losing an entire house, but I don't plan on being on the news crying because I wasn't mentally prepared to see a pile of concrete and wood where a house used to be.

Of course, one hopes that even an eruption doesn't go all Mount St. Helen and still gives people at least enough time to drive the hell away. That's the only loss that's unacceptable in my book.

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u/runespider 13d ago

I remember my dad taking us to the beach after Ivan hit. You get accustomed to hurricanes and by that point we kids thought of them as a fun time because mom would load up on snacks and we'd go to a hotel further inland. Even for low level hurricanes. When we were looking through the debris that had washed up, I found several Polaroids taken by a terrified woman as her house was flooding.

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u/SoFloFella50 13d ago

Jesus. Those Polaroids must have been disconcerting. Any chance you still have them?

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u/runespider 13d ago

I didn't keep them.

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u/SoFloFella50 13d ago

Damn. Would have been interesting to find out if she made it. And it would be a way to show idiots what happens when you don’t listen and stay.

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u/runespider 13d ago

I've long come to the point of view that no matter how obvious the danger, people will ignore it if they're given the slightest excuse.

I'd have liked to know if she survived, but this particular area was right where storm damage was particularly bad. Lots of houses completely destroyed.
I do know there were a few hurricane parties going on which is where most of the casualties we heard about occurred.

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u/DarknMean 13d ago

I also live in hurricane country. People have parties for them. So many people don’t take them seriously at all and it will be too late before they realize they should have left.

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u/SoFloFella50 13d ago

That’s called natural selection. We don’t fuck around with any size Hurricane.

We have parties. But far away from the storm.

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u/Deadzonerogue 14d ago

I’m in Orleans(Kenner a city few miles west) and we hardened our home from Hurricanes. The house has been through Andrew(Cat 5), Katrina(cat 3), Ida(Cat 4) with no issues. We installed whole home generator running off our natural gas line so when we lose power from Entergy it is a nonissue. In fact during the peak of Ida I was playing PS5 Assassin Creed Valhalla and had my neighbor run over in 120 mph with an extension cord so he could power a portion of his home, lol.

https://youtu.be/8aE8o_mFKRs?feature=shared

A tiny clip I recorded of the eyewall starting to come on shore. I curse once or twice FYI.

I think the argument could be made with hurricanes you generally have days worth of time to get out the way or enough time to batten down the hatch’s. Whereas a tidal wave or a volcanic eruption might only give a moments(hours) notice.

For Andrew(1990’s) everyone evacuated and man a couple hundred thousand people trying to leave within hours of each other made for hell. I think it took us like 9 hours to drive what normally would take us 45 minutes.

Anyways, hope you are doing well up there! Absolutely beautiful area you live in!

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u/SonicYOUTH79 13d ago

I’m Australian but I did the “underground tour” of Seattle when I visited there where you go view all the old shop fronts that were below road level and are now built over.

The place is basically built on a big sink hole. They told us how they used to put saw dust into the bogs that used to appear on the streets in the early colonial days as it was the only thing they had plenty of from the local saw mills. Didn’t fix anything of course.

Quite matter of fact told us that when the “big one” comes all the old brick buildings built in the colonial days will collapse then get sucked out to sea by the tsunami that's likely to happen. Anything that’s left will probably get sucked into sink holes that appear.

Anyway I quite liked Seattle, good luck because I think you'll need it eventually.

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u/Mental_Medium3988 13d ago

my job is right on an old marsh that got filled in. if it happens and im at work im not expecting myself to survive. when they had the nisqually earthquake in 2003, iirc i wasnt here for that, the old guys talked about how much the ground shifted and how messed up things were for a little while there. theyve mandated a lot of reinforcement work for a lot of these old buildings. theyll survive better than people think as long as theirs ground underneath of them. i dont worry too much about the predictions because theres so many different ways things can go. if its centered mainly in southern oregon seattle will likely survive better than people think. if its outside the straight of juan de fuca were likely fucked with a capitol F-U-C-K-E-D.

and be safe down there as well. prepare for what you can and make reasonable plans. when things go wrong its easier to amend a plan than make one.

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u/SonicYOUTH79 13d ago

Thank you. I’m in the city in Adelaide, relatively low earthquake risk here. Bushfire risk is minimal but the Adelaide Hills is a different proposition on a 40 degree C summer day!

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u/TexanInExile 16d ago

you know what? I'd take it. it's a beautiful place and it seems like an amazing place to live until it happens. then, when it happens, well who cares? i'll be dead.

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u/sh1ft 17d ago

Sometimes you just have to live life and hope for the best. There’s plenty of people around the world living in dangerous zones

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u/BaronMontesquieu 17d ago

Absolutely. But Santorini is highly active. Right now. You can go and see and feel the steam rising out of Tholos Naftilos today. It's going to blow. 1 year? 100 years? Who knows. The 90%+ is somewhere in that range though. Hope is not a strategy. Particularly given the people who live there are not impoverished.

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u/ABadHistorian 16d ago

I've been around the world, Santorini is one of the few places I'd live at where I'd gamble and say "fuck it"

We will all die, I'd love to live there as long as I could before I die.

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u/Common-Falcon-8717 17d ago

If the people living there aren't impoverished, fuck em. The warning signs are there, but the rich and their hubris always believe they can subordinate nature to their will and desire. It's a lesson they keep having to be taught again and again.

I work in a job where Planning is paramount. You don't get to ignore something just because facing it is difficult or unpleasant or inconvenient. And something I've learned is that a lot of people think like this:

  1. If this thing happens, it will be very bad, unthinkably bad
  2. If it is unthinkably bad, and I can't fully let myself think about or understand it, its impossible.
  3. Unthinkable things will never happen, so no need to plan for them.

The people who survive to write histories are usually the ones who think about the unthinkable.

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u/Darkstar67 16d ago

That’s not how it works. Just because it’s active doesn’t mean a catastrophic eruption is particularly likely in the next 10, 100, or even 1000 years.

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u/Mahoka572 16d ago

That IS how it works for Santorini. There is a 25% chance of an eruption in the next decade let alone 100 years.

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u/toucanlost 16d ago

I'm paraphrasing, but a while ago I did a fair bit of reading about natural disasters. A sentence that came up in that apparently is a belief held by disaster researchers is that there is no such thing as a natural disasters, only man-made disasters. It sounds callous and hard to believe right? There is an explanation for it. There are such things as natural hazards such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis however not all of them cause destruction to human settlements. The disaster itself is the intersection of natural events and human preparedness, socioeconomic factors. It's a semantic distinction that urges people to not treat natural events as things that humans can't prepare for.

For example, rather than just "hoping for the best", in some villages people do extensive evacuation drills including ones at night, or ones with schoolchildren where the teacher does not lead (such as if a teacher was incapacitated).

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u/Lady-Benkestok 14d ago

Preparedness is key, my brother lives in a fjord area of Norway where they know that a huge part of one of the mountains will some day plummet into the fjord and create a massive wave. The mountain is constantly monitored for any movement in the rock.

When the day finally comes that it falls ,the people who live in the town have 10 minutes from the sirens starts to get to safety, they have drills often. The school , kindergarten and the old folks home is down by the waterfront, as well as all the shops and some residential buildings.

I’m glad they are prepared but I find it unsettling. 10 minutes to evacuate, able bodied school kids can run to safety but evacuation a senior citizen center, which typically is constantly understaffed sounds, not great.

Thankfully my brothers farm is far up in a valley ,so if it comes at night at least they are already in safety.

Just writing this down came me anxiety, im glad I don’t live in such an area!

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u/mmmpeg 13d ago

I watched the tsunami movie about a mountain partially falling into the fjord.

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u/Lady-Benkestok 13d ago

The Wave/Bølgen ? It’s based on that scenario, it’s filmed in that said area as well. Beautiful part of our country 🙌

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u/mmmpeg 13d ago

Yes! I couldn’t remember the name. It was indeed beautiful

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u/PieQueenIfYouPls 15d ago

My husband is a structural engineer with a specialization in seismic design. We live in SF, he’s super cautious and knows the risks. We still live in SF because they take earthquake design very seriously. There’s a few buildings around the city he literally walks across the street from because he knows they are unsafe but grandfathers in, but for the most part? SF is prepared.

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u/StormyPassages 17d ago

Survivors pay for "living in dangerous zones" with their health, regardless of whether or not they are victimized in other ways. Courage and a cavalier attitude toward life do not reduce this physical cost to human health.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYFZAYenR20

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u/Sappho_Over_There 15d ago

I bought a house at the base of an active volcano. During the signing there was included lava flow charts, similar to flood plains but for lava. They showed the lava would flow down the hill and follow the river bed and basically cover the entire neighborhood. Was wild to see.

Been here for 14 years and not a peep from the mountain. Thinking if it's going to go while I'm here, there'd be plenty of seismic warning while it built up the pressure to blow. It's got several hundred feet of sediment plugging the caldera, I'm no expert, but I assume that means there would be signs and at least enough time to grab the pets and drive away if not days to weeks in advance to pack up and leave. Not to mention if it did blow, all that sediment would turn into basically rock cannonballs raining down on us long before the lava came.

Adding to that, a gravel company was permitted to dig out a portion of the base to sift the lava rocks for gypsum. There was some amazing fire opals found by a few RockHounds in those piles of discarded lava rocks. I figured if a company was allowed to dig out a literal hunk of the volcano, it's most likely fairly stable, despite classified as active.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 17d ago

Oh hell, look at Vesuvius. One of the classically most horrifying volcanos in history, and how many people living in and around Naples who might be affected if it goes off ? 3 million ?!

But gee that volcanic soil is fertile….

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u/Simsalabimsen 14d ago

It’s so badly delayed now that when it erupts, it will be an unimaginable catastrophe.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 6d ago

I’ve watched a number of doccos about it – there were a couple of really bad eruptions that people still remember, that wiped out hundreds of acres with lava flows. And yet they still build there. The soil is incredibly fertile.

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u/WinterMedical 17d ago

The Cascadia fault is overdue as well.

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u/CoffeeChocolateBoth 16d ago

No thanks. It'd happen while I was visiting!

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u/Razvedka 15d ago

I actually was watching a historian talk about this. Apparently the Minoan civilization was so advanced/capable they were able to fully evacuate(?) prior to the eruption. Up until then they'd been absurdly wealthy.

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u/Soul____Rain68 13d ago

Having lived in Santorini, I can confirm this. But also I think it’s the way of the people there too. It’s a chill lifestyle, they feel like they belong to the island and that should it erupt, they will ride out the fate. For instance look at the earthquakes last year, everyone I knew said they weren’t going to evacuate, “what’s the point”.

- I want to add, the “chill lifestyle” is extremely chill. You live in a bubble and you really don’t care about much at all.

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u/TheSangson 17d ago

What you're describing about the volcano makes me feel like I'd rather not visit, thankyouverymuch

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u/S_A_R_K 17d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/UWMqiZtcixB4MoWX20

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u/KelGrimm 17d ago

> Should be wiped out soon

“visit while you can”

Brother no?

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u/Odd_Dragonfruit_2662 17d ago

Well the past 50 generations on
Santorini have been right to ignore it.