Is Nature After Us? Yes, we know we live on a dynamic planet, but evidence has just been found it is even more dynamic than we suspected. A team of scientists who are oceanographers, in connection with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and several colleges used a radar satellite to find underwater volcanoes. They must have been flabbergasted with what they found. I imagine they might have expected up to 500 or so new ones to be found, but that was not the case. No, they didn’t even find 10 times that amount, they found almost 40 times that amount. To be precise they found over 19,000 unknown, under the ocean, volcanoes. Companies and scientists have often talked about mining the ocean for minerals. I have to wonder what effect this will have on their plans. Suddenly, it seems the idea is a lot more dangerous than even first thought. I know I wouldn’t like to be in an underwater facility and some unknown volcano erupts. It isn’t only volcanoes that cause disasters, but some of the worse ones which could be planet wide, were suspected of doing things like spewing so much ash and debris into the atmosphere it blocked sunlight for years in ancient times. It was said before the enormous find of volcanoes there were 1,350 potentially active volcanoes worldwide. I am not clear if the undersea volcanoes found were all potentially active or not. Scientists have stated they do serve a useful purpose in the ocean however and that is their effect on currents and in general water temperatures. Some of the other dynamic perils are tsunamis, and everyone may not know this, but there are a couple of different causes for them, and guess what, a volcanic eruption can be one. Both volcanoes on land or in the ocean can cause a tsunami. When a land volcano erupts large amounts of matter from the volcano might go into the water and displace it causing a tsunami. An undersea volcano which erupts might cause an explosion which also displaces water causing a tsunami. The most common causes of a tsunami, are usually earthquakes. There is also the chance a huge block of earth might slide into the ocean or even one of those enormous ice slabs causing one. We live on a perilous planet which has several natural ways of wiping us out, or at the very least, making our lives very unhappy. Some of these tsunamis can be incredibly deadly. In 2004 one of the deadliest tsunamis struck in the Indian Ocean. If you are wondering how powerful it was, it is said it contained the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs. This particular tsunami is said to have killed at least 225,000 people. The waves have been know to travel up to a speed of 500 miles per hour. We have set up a special system of detection buoys in the oceans which can detect even a wave just about one half inch above sea level. The warning time depends on a couple of different factors. One is the speed the wave is traveling and another is how far away it was detected. Another natural causes of disaster are earthquakes. The earth is made of tectonic plates which are always slowly moving, but sometimes they get stuck at the edges and this can cause an earthquake. There have been some really deadly earthquakes. Many scientists believe the deadliest earthquake, occurred in China in 1556. It was such a deadly one it managed to take the lives of an estimated 830,000 people. It has been estimated the earthquake was rated to have been a magnitude eight. It killed about three times as many people as the next worse earthquake which occurred in 1920 in China. Then there are the tornadoes. We still cannot figure out how they work. No one as yet has been able to figure out the path they will take. They might form, travel a meandering path and then even turn around and travel the other way. The most powerful tornado was said to have struck the United States in 1925 and became known as the Tri-state tornado. It had the longest path of 219 miles and lasted 3.5 hours. It traveled at 73 miles per hour. Almost 700 people died which was a record in the United States, but not in the world. The record for the deadliest tornado was for one which struck in Bangladesh in 1989. It was estimated about 1,300 unfortunate people lost their lives. Storms sometimes create many tornadoes and send them out over the area. Even if we eliminate volcanoes, earthquakes and tornadoes, there are still other ways mother nature is looking to wipe us out. Take the hurricane for example, also known as typhoon when it is a hurricane over the ocean. A typhoon can produce not only dangerous winds but large waves and sometimes rogue waves, which come from an unexpected direction and sink ships by capsizing them. If you are on a ship and caught in a typhoon it can be very dangerous to say the least, but hurricanes on land can also be dangerous. When we talk about hurricanes, the deadliest one on record occurred in 1780. It took about 7 days for it to travel from the Lesser Antilles and killed over 22,000 people. Hurricanes vary in the amount of intensity, but they are all dangerous. In 1974 Hurricane Fifi which became the Hurricane Orlene, killed more than 8,000 in Honduras. It killed a total of 8,200 people in nine different countries and the damage was estimated at almost 2 billion dollars. Some hurricanes have become very famous such as hurricane Katrina in 2005. It was not rated the number one hurricane in the U.S. however, that honor goes to the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 which is said to have caused damage in today’s dollars of 157 billion dollars. Another type of storm, which many of us don’t think of as being deadly, but which can be, is a snow storm. A severe snow storm is known as a blizzard. The deadliest blizzard in history occurred in Iran in 1972. It killed about 4,000 people. Ten feet of snow was dropped and it snowed for six days. That was northern Iran, where one would think would get the most snowfall, but in the south they received an incredible 26 feet of snow. Two towns were completely wiped out with no survivors. I haven’t even talked about floods or mud slides. Or even being eaten by animals. There are plenty of natural events just waiting to get us if we are not careful.
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