23,700 dead in South Asia
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6754820/?GT1=5936


Mother nature can be so cruel. :(

Best thing is, I know people who are currently down there. Fortunately they were on the "other side" of Thailand, they're okay. but it was a shock, I tell you.

*bows head* It's so sad... But it does make you appreciate how fragile life actually IS. Makes you thankful for what you have, and know how easily it can all so quickly be taken away.


...My guy is gonna go to one of those places next month. He was supposed to be there January 3rd. I'm trying to think, but there was a possibility, I believe, that he was supposed to be there in December, actually...

...Wow...

I find it pretty impossible to imagine how grand the loss of life is. I know a fair number of people down there (mostly Sri Lanka) but presently, I've been unable to contact them all but one. Scary, scary feeling.

It reminds us of how fragile life is in light of the forces of nature. Prayers for those there now.

Somehow empty... God, I was so worried. and you should've heard my boss (the female one). She almost died yesterday.

A family I know in Kerala has to move out of their house because of this. All my relatives are fine though.

so many people...
 

as much i love water, all i can do is watch in amazment and fear

Can you imagine if this kind of thing hit North America? Or Europe? Holy crap what a nightmare that would be. Asia gets the worst disasters tsunamis, typhoons, and earthquakes all the time. Poor souls.

Seriously. The last time I was in India we had a couple of small earth quakes. My little cousins were scared as hell.

I was totally shocked when I seen this on the news. It's like something you'd see in a disaster movie but you'd never expect to happen in real life. :( Those 'home videos' where people were looking out of their windows were kind of disturbing to watch since they made the whole thing so much more real. So many people have lost friends and familys, I seen one guy on the news who last lost like 20 relatives - basically all of his family and he was the only survivor except all he had (home, family) is now gone.
According to this article the death toll could be as high as 55,000 and as up to 1.5 million people have lost their homes. I guess it's hard to build any sort of building that could take that kind of abuse. It actually makes my kind of wary since I live right next the sea. Even though it's unlikely that something like that will ever happen over here it still does send chills down my spine.

40-50,000 is a dusturbingly large number of people to just....not be there anymore....Just think about that for a while. 40-50,000 people, just gone, like that. That's the enire town I live in and then some, all dead at once. I can't imagine how much work a coroner would hafta do after this.

Just....insane. All of it.

40-50000 is about 8 to 9 times the people that live in my town. That's insane.

By the way. I had two interesting chats with my coworker (female) and a guy I know on the bus (male)

Anarky: Terrible, eh?
guy on the bus: The pedophiles dead? That's a good thing
A: Yeah, it would be if it only hit the pedophiles...
G: But the others are guilty too, they let themselves do something like that. They prostitute their children.
A: That's insane! YOu can't just blame people for their fate.
...

Coworker: I wonder if there is a way of getting away from a Tsunami
Anarky: My geography teacher once told me, that you sheould get out on the sea as far as you can.
C: Why would you want to do that? you're running away from a tidal wave...
A: Well, I remember it like this: When a wave is hitting the shore it's not water carreied from A to B but kinetic energy that is transported from A to B. Therefore the wave only builds up when the water gets shallow.
....

People are slowly about to miss the point. They should stop making such a big fuss about it, and leave the analyses aside. Just hit us with the facts. Otherwise people tend to get ignorant of the many people dead.

I just read another article on this disaster, and the death toll is now over 55,000 people. So unbelievable and so sad... I even heard that one tiny island got hit by tidal waves on opposite sides, and that all the people on that island (mainly tourists staying in resorts) are gone. This is definitely one of the most tragic events caused by mother nature...

It's completely horrifying... and humbling.

probably the worst natural disaster ever......correct me if I'm wrong.....this is the highest death toll for anything non-war related that I can remember. I don't even think 9/11 was anywhere near this......and I doubt there were that many people on the Titanic...

9/11 took about 6500 lives
The Titanic killed 1436 people (IIRC)

So even both together are not even close to the tsunami.

I today read in a newspaper (BLICK, the swiss national enquiror with a bit of a right-ish touch) "I saw dead Swiss people". yeah, so what? There's about 54950 other casualties to mourn. And the article sounded like "There was this swiss guy, lying there... dead. Oh, yeah, I thought I'd seen some 2000 dead Thais lying around somewhere too." Bloody newspapers.

It's topped 60,000 now... might surpass 100,000.


...It's inconcieveable how that many people can be just... gone. It really makes you think.

I do have ONE problem with the way newspapers are handling this... there was this big thing because some actor or model survived. Well, I'm happy for her, but shouldn't there be a big thing for ANYone who survivied this??\

Not just because she was famous.

My god, there aren't even that much people living in my town. Just think about that.

I still can't believe it. That zone of the planet is a disaster area. Heaven help them all.

Just heard on the radio that the death toll has reached 80,000. :(

The poulation of my city's about 200,000, so just imagining this is kinda stunning.

It's gonna hit 120,000. It's already surpassed 117,000.


Man, this really... makes you think.

Okay, I found this picture today... it is an image showing a beach, full of corpses and debris. I think it is the best picture on teh internet I've seen for a long time. It's nothing for people who get upset easily. I'll remove it on request.

NOT WORK SAFE btw
http://www.blaat.co.uk/Numb1/sa/ruumiita4ft.jpg

... My God...



EDIT - 125,282. It's hit that high, and rising.

I found more pictures, and they... wow. *wipes eyes*

Holy ****. Just imagine what it's going to be like to have to clean that all up.

there is nothing i can say about this..i am just speechless. it is mind blowing

This Tsunami is the worst thing I EVER saw in my entire life. I have a friend currently down there, but thank god, he is fine.

I just hope that the people down there will be fine, that they get as much help as possible and that everything is going to be fine...

the magnitude of the earthquake is 8.9 instead of 9, which was initially thought. This earthquake is from a subduction zone, in which the oceanic crust is being subducted underneath the continental crust. Also, this was a deep earthquake and deep earthquakes tend to be very large in magnitude. I have my own subduction zone in Oregon....the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It had an earthquake on January 26, 1700, which was estimated to be a 9. It sent a tsunami all the way to Japan. There is a short article on this in this week's Time magazine or last weeks.

Geeze... that picture's horrid. i can't even begin to imagine how horrible it must be to see this all in person.

Not only see it but also smell it. Just imagine that. (That's not supposed to be some sick joke or something).

Spoilered over 'cause it's a bit graphic.

It's hard to fathom that an undersea earthquake caused a disaster on such a wide scale that killed/affected so many. It just proves that no matter where you are, there are some things you just can't escape. It's an ineffable fact of mother nature.
I've already been praying for the victims and their loved ones. Just from the video I saw on the Weather Channel, I can tell it's on a much worse scale than any of us can even begin to comprehend.

Ok. What I don't really like about this is, that Indonesia or whatever country it was, that all countries helping them have to leave. That was kind of odd...