[Nico]

Seems India has stopped counting the casualities...

[Rictor]

I think Canada upped its donation to $40 million, as opposed to the $4m it was at the beggining. It has also issued a moratorium on debt relief to the affected countries.

And props to the Japanese and Americans as well.

[Liberator]

I heard an interesting, and possibly disturbing, factoid about this quake.  It occured 58 minutes to the day that the Bam quake happened in 2003.  Something funny is going on over there methinks.

[Rictor]

Cthulhu?

[Liberator]

Well, I was thinking something more conspiritorial.  

Somebody on Coast to Coast was muttering about some mutual disarmament treaty mentioning something about not intentionally altering the weather patterns or performing other acts that could be explained away as Acts of God.

[pyro-manic]

Haha. So they've developed an Earthquake Bomb? Those eggheads at Groom Lake must be running out of ideas....

Seriously, we're decades (if not centuries) away from that kind of technology. We simply don't have the means of generating enough power to make an earthquake happen (this one was in the Gigatonne range). The only thing we have that can produce that kind of energy is a fusion bomb, and there hasn't been a warhead built that's anywhere near that size (biggest was about 50Mt IIRC).

We can sometimes make it rain, yes, but we can't affect plate tectonics just yet.  Besides, I doubt very much if something like that would be at all practical as a weapon...

[Carl]

all the nukes in the world couldn't cause an earthquake of that magnitude....i think.

[Tiara]

umm, you guys do realize that you only need to have a small fraction of those yields to create a massive shift on a fault line? Just place an odd 100 1-5MT nukes underneath the surface on a fault line and you'll be guaranteed to create a massive shift. The fault lines will become 'unstuck' and shift, creating an earthquake. (The more/heavier the nukes, the heavier the shift and thus the quake)

We don't have the bombs to directly create an earthquake, but we do have the bombs to indirectly create an Earthquake.

[Unknown Target]

Why don't all you conspiracy nuts just shut up? God, that's the dumbest ****ing **** I've ever heard. Turning a huge tragedy like this into some US world domination scheme.

[Tiara]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
Why don't all you conspiracy nuts just shut up? God, that's the dumbest ****ing **** I've ever heard. Turning a huge tragedy like this into some US world domination scheme.

Calm the f*** down. Most of this is harmless conjecture anyway. Hell, nobody here even takes it seriously (at least I hope so). No need to get all offended.

[Unknown Target]

*points at Liberator*
I'm doubtful no one here is at least considering it. And I'm sorry, but it's bad enough you're turning something like this into an anti-US conspiracy, but I'm also so sick of the fact that basically every thread is anti-US. Sure, I'm a US citizen, but I'm not blind to the ****hole my country is. If it was the other way around, I'm sure you wouldn't like it if every five minutes someone kept insulting your home.

[Flipside]

It's like an avalanche, you can cause an Earthquake at the right time in the right place, by hitting the ground with a hammer. However, science currently has no precise way of knowing the right time and place.

I have neither positive nor negative feeling towards the US over this, it's a tragedy, it's one of Earths little tricks, and the cause is tectonics not capitalism or pollution. Pollution can be blamed for freak weather conditions, but this is seismic, not meteorological, as far as I'm aware, theres very very little we can do to influence that.

[Sandwich]

The Washington Post has a "good" collection of photos and information.

Damn.

[Clave]

A lot of holidaymakers:

Germany: 60 dead
1,000 missing
Sweden: 52 dead
2,915 missing
Britain: 40 dead
159 missing
France: 22 dead
Up to 560 missing
Norway: 21 dead
400+ missing
Japan: 21 dead
Italy: 18 dead
570+ missing
Switzerland: 16 dead
500 missing
US: 15 dead
Australia: 12 dead
700+ missing
South Korea: 11 dead

[Gloriano]

Atleast 4000-5000 americans are missing in Asia, Colin Powell said in bangkok to press

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Clave
A lot of holidaymakers:

Germany: 60 dead
1,000 missing
Sweden: 52 dead
2,915 missing
Britain: 40 dead
159 missing
France: 22 dead
Up to 560 missing
Norway: 21 dead
400+ missing
Japan: 21 dead
Italy: 18 dead
570+ missing
Switzerland: 16 dead
500 missing
US: 15 dead
Australia: 12 dead
700+ missing
South Korea: 11 dead

Where'd you get those stats? Tell me that isn't supposed to be comprehensive...

EDIT: And an interesting story from the Arizona Daily Sun:


[q]AUROVILLE, India (AP) -- A premonition about floods led an Israeli couple living in an international community in southern India to build their house on stilts -- a move that saved them from the fury of the tsunami that tore through the region this week.

Yuval Skoles and his wife, Hannah, moved from Israel 20 years ago to live in Auroville, a spiritual retreat community, near the former French colony of Pondicherry on India's eastern coast.

When Skoles began building his beachside compound, his wife had dreams about floods, so he built the main house on stilts 16 feet above the ground.

In a part of India where ocean surges and tsunamis were unheard of before last Sunday, it was, frankly, a bit odd.

"It's the only house of its kind on the coast," Yuval Skoles said.

When the tsunami struck, the couple were in the main house. Their daughter, her husband and son were staying in a guest house -- at ground level. The tsunami swamped the guest house.

His wife urged him to jump into the raging torrents to rescue their daughter and grandson; she even threatened to jump in herself. But they were nowhere to be seen.

"For 45 minutes I thought I had lost my daughter," Yuval Skoles said.

But his daughter and her family had sought refuge inside a hilltop Hindu temple. They later walked back to the A-frame house on whitewashed concrete stilts.

They lost most of their possessions, and they have a lot of rebuilding to do.

But Yuval Skoles said he was happy. After fearing his family had died and then learning they had lived, he said nothing can get him down.

"Everything is great," he said.[/q]

[Clave]

The BBC, sourced from Reuters, so it's probably a lie....

[aldo_14]

It's highly unlikely you'll ever get anything near comprehensive stats for any aspect of the disaster........

[Sandwich]

BBC, eh? Fine, whatever - I don't want to get political.

[Turnsky]

Somewhat remarkable story of survival