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The Worst Disaster ever in Britain!
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
We are seeing before our eyes the worst disaster ever in Japan. An Earth quake at 8.9 on the Richter scale (unheard of any where) followed by a huge Tsunami, followed by an explosion in their nuclear plant Fukuhsima Daaichi #1. I hope the Japanese people and authorities can overcome all this series of Calamities.
The World is jumping to their rescue as they have always jumped to other peoples' rescue; they were the first to send help to Christchurch, New Zealand recently. The US has offered all help and sent immediately some emergency generators for the Nuclear plants.
What is the worst disaster ever in British History? Apart from WW1 and WW2, I mean a disaster. I can't think of any; some floods, some rains, but can't think of any. Can you?
Tas -
Message 2
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
I should imagine the Black Death rates highly. Then there would be the great flood surge that struck the east coast in the 50s?
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Message 3
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
I was just thinking: the great fire of London in the 1660s and he Great Plague. how about the Great Influenza epidemic. Any other?
Tas -
Message 4
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
I think that, if you go back far enough in history, there have been several storms and flooding that killed several thousands. But these are hundreds of years ago, when housing was not so solid for many people.
The storm of 1703 is the worst I could find. About 8,000 to 15,000 were estimated to have been killed. The lack of solid figures indicates a poor over all infrastructure, I suspect. See link :
I would have to agree with Grumpy that the Black Death is the worst disaster ever, with estimates of between one third to one half of Europe's population dying.
However, in living memory, there have been no disasters, outside of war time, that are on a par with the Japanese tsunami.
In 1987, we had the 'Great storm', but that killed only 18 people.
We have had some major accidents, such as 'Piper Alpha', in the North Sea, and the 'Herald Of Free Enterprise' sinking. These killed around 200 each, more less.
The flooding of the 1950s killed less than a hundred in the UK, though about 2,000 in Holland. See this link :
Overall, Mother Nature is not too un-kind to us in the UK. -
Message 5
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
To me though and in terms of loss of life the numbers were few, because i wasn't much more than a boy myself, the worst had to be the day a coal slag went roaring down a hillside in South Wales distorying a whole generation of children
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Message 6
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
The fire of London of 1666 is only known to have killed about half a dozen, though it did de-house many thousands of London's residents.
The influenza epidemic killed, according to a quick Google searh, about 250,000 in Britain, so that would certainly qualify. Forgot about that one, though it is not a 'single event' disaster, spreading as it did over several years. Of course, Britain was not singled out by this as it struck almost everywhere. -
Message 7
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
I remember Aberfan too, Grumpyfred.
144 people died, including 116 children aged between 7 and 10.
I believe it was the only time the Queen has broken down in public - she was seen weeping as she spoke to the bereaved mothers.
A college student has made this documentary - the stoicism of the villagers as they waited for news of their children defies belief. Mining communities know all about disasters, but was there ever one as terrible as this?
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Message 8
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
I remember it well. I was teaching in Birmingham, and our Head was a Welsh-speaking Welshman (quite a lot of Welsh teachers in Brum). We were all at school preparing for a jumble sale, and the head went into his office to hear the 6 o'clock news. He came out as white as a sheet to tell us what had happened. Nobody felt in the mood for a jumble sale, but it had to go ahead.
When you're a primary teacher, any tragedy involving schools and children (and teachers) hurts. -
Message 9
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
I thought of Aberfan when I was listening to a British resident in Tokyo of some 24 years standing, married into a Japanese family. He commented on being surrounded by a kind of feeling of helplessness in the light of so much suffering nearby.. Cardiff felt like that. I think that almost everybody felt like rushing to Aberfan, even if it meant just scratching away with your bare hands. But you knew that it was an impulse that had to be checked.. Aberfan was such a small place, and the tragic slip so localised. Too many people would just have hampered things. Moreover, as far as I was concerned, there were people with much more relevant expertise and prior claims to the right to be there.
I thought of this too when a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ reporter found a road block 60 Kilometres from the nuclear power station site.. With the whole population needing to be evacuated from a ten mile radius, what they did not want was people crowding the roads for one reason or another.. That of course includes curiosity. I noted that 4 or 5 people had been swept out to sea on the North American coast when the tsunami hit. Perhaps they had not heard the warnings, but there are often people who do not appreciate the full extent of the danger when such things occur.
As for Tas' original post , and some of the disasters that have been mentioned, I think that the scale of a disaster in the final analysis depends a great deal upon not only the impact but the aftermath. It would appear that here the earthquake I hour 10 minutes before the tsunami was a warning signal that was acted upon, unlike the Boxing Dat tsunami when people did not seem to grasp the full significance of the sea retreating to the horizon. Moreover Japan is now a rich country, with a great capacity to respond, and of course a vital position as one of the leading global economies, which can not be allowed to fail.
And as in the India of Tas's roots, Shiva the destroyer has a role in new creation. In many ways Sir Christopher Wren's new St.Paul's was a statement of intent by the City of London, and that famous photo of that great dome standing proud surrounded by the fires of the London Blitz somehow seemed to sum up the British spirit of standing firm against such storms and coming through them better and stronger..
Cass -
Message 10
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
Hi Cass,
As a nuclear scientist and former Nuclear Safety Engineer, the events at Nuclear Power Plant Fukushima Daiichi are extremely worrying. I hope they pull through. There appear to be some fuel failures already.
Japan has not been as fortunate as Britain and they are used to Earthquakes of Magnitude 4, 5, 6, 7, but to get a magnitude 8.9 and that followed by a huge Tsunami and that followed by a near Nuclear disaster; it is as if all hell has broken loose on the poor Japanese.
I am in touch with a Japanese friend, a Nuclear Engineer and he is providing me the inside story. I hope all goes well. Just the cleanup will cost the Japanese several billion dollars. And that will be followed by the reconstruction of several cities.
You could see the huge skyscrapers swaying during quake. They were designed to do so but even so, to see a huge building swaying like a drunken sailor!
Tas -
Message 11
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
The Kanto earthquake of 1923 is estimated to have cost over 140,000 lives in Japan. We can only pray that this one is nothing like so costly in such terms.
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Message 12
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
Further, look at this
for figures on earthquake casualties. -
Message 13
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
The discussion on earthquakes reminded me of this
I was aware of the advantages of living near volcanoes because of the increased soil fertility but I'd never thought seriously about earthquakes. When you think about it, it's hard to recall any of the great ancient civilisations that weren't situated on seismic areas hence so many of the monuments being damaged by activity. -
Message 14
Posted by Harpo (U14643022) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
What is the worst disaster ever in British History? Apart from WW1 and WW2, I mean a disaster. I can't think of any; some floods, some rains, but can't think of any. Can you?Β
The Great irish Famine of the 1840s.
It resulted in the death of a million Irish people by starvation and related disease. By any standards it was a catastrophic disaster and it left an indelible scar on the Irish psyche and memory. -
Message 15
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
Yes, I agree with Harpo.
The Great Famine and possibly the Plague would be the worst British disasters in recorded history. Although the deaths in both happened over an extended period and not in a matter of hours as did the the tsunamis of both Japan and Indonesia.
We have a cousin teaching in Tokyo and her latest update on Facebook says the government has announced that the levels of radiation are decreasing and there is no threat to the public, but Tokyo is over 200kms away. Lucky girl just moved house 5 days ago, before that she was living by the sea. -
Message 16
Posted by Gran (U14388334) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
Aparently the Japanese earthquake was 2000 times stronger than the one we had in Christchurch, we had Japanese Search and Resue personel helping us but now they have gone home to help along with 48 of our own SOR people, as the Japanese asked us for help.
For Britain I would nominate the Great plague as the worst catastophe.
Gran -
Message 17
Posted by George1507 (U2607963) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
In recent times, there have been some awful tragedies.
The 1915 Quintinshill train crash - 227 killed, mostly young men en route to Gallipoli.
The 1918-9 influenza epidemic - nobody knows how many died really. Certainly hundreds of thousands.
1952 Harrow & Wealdstone train crash.
Football stadium tragedies at Ibrox (twice) and Hillsborough.
And so on - it's a sad litany. -
Message 18
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
Actually the "Spanish Flu" that hit the weakened and warn out population after 1918 is usually reckoned to have killed more people than the First World War.
But the relationship between such disasters and History is an interesting one.. Those who believed in History as a 'logos' saw it as a way to understand causation: what "made people tick". Clearly what it was most important to understand how to deal with things that people might or might not make happen- sins of commission and/or sins of omission, and how to make good choices in situations where future human conduct could be anticipated within probabilities.
R.G. Collingwood for example argued that history is all about understanding ourselves as individuals, groups and as a whole species: and that something like an earthquake and its tsunami is not "an historic event" since it is not consciously of unconsciously caused by anything that human beings can control. These are the things that people can never control, so all we can do is learn how to react to them..
But over the last fifty-sixty years or so there has been an increasing tendency to see human life largely in those terms.
Cass -
Message 19
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
Tas, were you thinking of true natural disasters such as earthquake and resulting tsunamis,volcano eruption and plague. Or do you include disasters in which man's intervention made bad worse. For example, devastating famine due to civil war and crop failure because the men are away fighting..
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Message 20
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Sunday, 13th March 2011
It always disturbs me when people talk about 'the worst ever' when it comes to natural disasters. We don't know if it was the worst ever, we only know if it was the worst since written records began. As far as other events in the past go, we only have references in journals and letters to go on. -
Message 21
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Sunday, 13th March 2011
Hi Jenny,
In my view we should include all disasters that caused a lot of loss of human life and property and changed history to an extent, short of WW1 and WW2. I know little about the history of disasters in Britain. For example, I had no idea of the small loss of life during the Great Fire of 1666.
I was aware of the Great Influenza epidemic of 1918 and also about the Great Plague of medieval times. The Great Plague seems to have been really something that had a profound effect on the history of Britain.
I agree with Harpo; the potato famine in Ireland was truly huge and changed much of the history of Ireland, of Britain and even America.
Tas -
Message 22
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Sunday, 13th March 2011
'The Great Plague' usually refers to the epidemic during the reign of Charles II (just before the Fire of London).
The mediaeval one is normally referred to as 'The Black Death' -
Message 23
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Sunday, 13th March 2011
Thanks for that Raundsgirl. I did not know that important difference, however it seems to me the medieval one had the great historical impact and was probably more lethal.
You may notice that now I always use Raundsgirl rather rounds Girl, so I am a quick learner.
Tas -
Message 24
Posted by hoddles off into the sunset (U14129169) on Monday, 14th March 2011
In recent times, there have been some awful tragedies.
The 1915 Quintinshill train crash - 227 killed, mostly young men en route to Gallipoli.Β
In terms of impact upon a local community, the sinking of the Iolaire as it entered Stornoway Harbour on New Year's Morning 1919 would would be up there with Aberfan.
200+ Lewisian servicemen returning home for the New Year celebrations were drowned within sight of home.
During the War, Lewis has suffered proportionately more losses than anywhere else in Scotland, which in turn was greatly over-represented in British casualties.
This must have been the final straw! -
Message 25
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Tas, may I be permitted to stray a little from your original topic of the worst disasters in *Britain*? I should like to ask something about the disasters that the Bible says happened to the Egyptians - the infamous "Ten Plagues" sent down by a wrathful Jehovah. I've always assumed that the accounts of the Nile turning to blood, the frogs, the locusts etc. were meant to be read as allegory, but apparently scientists are saying that a combination of climate change and volcanic activity three millennia ago *could* have triggered such a sequence of catastrophes.
This does seem to make sense - or is it yet another load of tosh? -
Message 26
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Temp, there was a programme about this interpretation a good few years ago and it did seem to be present a plausible case. I have sympathy with the idea that the rationalising of the incomprehensible and its incorporation into ideology and folk memory can transmit a valid, if distorted, version of actual events. Of course this might concertina events that happened over a longer period of time and pick up other adjuncts as well but I see no reason not to believe that there is some factual basis for these memories. Makes a lot more sense to me than 'god was thoroughly peeved and had a hissy fit'.
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Message 27
Posted by hoddles off into the sunset (U14129169) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Football stadium tragedies at Ibrox (twice) and Hillsborough.Β
And Bradford and Bolton. -
Message 28
Posted by Stoggler (U14387762) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Just a quick point of order:
earthquake intensity is not measured in the Richter scale and has not been used by geologists since the 1970s.
Today, they use the MMS, which is the Moment Magnitude Scale.
As with the Richter scale, the MMS is a logarithmic scale. The two scales do generally produce similar numbers for medium-strength earthquakes but their measurements do differ for large-scale quakes (such as this one).
Any intensity measurements reported in the press will be from the excellent US Geological Survey, who use the MMS scale. -
Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Temperance
Re the Ten Plagues of Egypt-
All of these things can occur within the natural order when disrupted- which does not of course mean that God could not work through his Creation. Jeremy Bowen. (? Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ man in the Middle East) presented a programme about this some years ago..There is a theory that the great explosion in Greece that blew a huge whole which is still there, now a very round harbour, threw up a huge cloud of debris and caused a nuclear winter effect. This impacted upon the climate and changed the rain patterns.
The rain fell on the high land near the Red Sea and washed those red minerals down into the Nile with fatal consequences. Even the water drawn from the wells was red like blood. In this polluted water system the fish were killed. But with a much wetter Egypt the land was perfect for the proliferation of frogs. In some parts of Africa there are frog species that bury themselves in the mud and lie dormant for as long as it takes before water returns. And in these conditions perhaps those species that make up the food chain that prevents the millions of eggs in frogspawn from growing to maturity -the fish and those birds that fed on them- were absent .
But the flies from the rotting fish provided a bumper harvest for the frogs, which became a plague in themselves until the drying out process added to to morbid flesh lying around Egypt and made it a place of disease, perhaps born by things like rats that could feast on such food.
Mind you the great explosion has also been used as an explanation for the subsequent crossing of the Red Sea. As with the Boxing Day tsunami there was an initial drawing back of the waters which made it possible for Moses and the Israelites to cross, and then- as indeed in those old Bible pictures for children- a tsunami-type wall of water rushed up and wiped out all of Pharoah's pursuing army.
But perhaps there was more than one.
As a physicist Tas can perhaps tell me it is rubbish, but over my life time it has seemed to me that the Earth-plate activity does seem to fit in with the global changes in heat distribution. The ghost in the wardrobe who makes it creak every night about the same time is actually the effect of daily temperature changes. The wardrobe warms and expands in the day, and shrinks (and creaks) at night.
Cass -
Message 30
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Cass, can you remember what their explanation for the death of the first born was? I know there was one propounded but it's gone from my recollection.
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Message 31
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 14th March 2011
ferval
I am sorry I can not remember.. But I postulated the spread of disease: and what we see world wide these days in this kind of situation is a regular dread of Cholera, the "Victorian plague".. As I understand it one of the features of cholera is that for some reason the people most vulnerable are the young and healthy: and this could well have been the first-born sons of whom parents were so proud. Cholera also was no respecter of class, and sons were probably more susceptible than daughters because girls stayed at home and served a kind of apprenticeship with Mum.
Cass -
Message 32
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Wasn't it that a nasty fungus grew on the grain? The eldest sons were favoured and got the most food and so ingested the most mould, which caused them to sicken and die. Seems a bit far-fetched to me, but you never know.
Bit similar to the theory that murrain in cattle caused the sweating sickness - rich people - who could afford to eat the most meat - were more more afflicted than poor folk. -
Message 33
Posted by Stoggler (U14387762) on Monday, 14th March 2011
As a physicist Tas can perhaps tell me it is rubbish, but over my life time it has seemed to me that the Earth-plate activity does seem to fit in with the global changes in heat distribution. Β
What kind of heat distribution? Are you talking about inside the earth's interior Cass? -
Message 34
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Hi Folks,
Aren't we forgetting the obvious? The Titanic Disaster just before WW1? That was a major disaster that cos a lot of English and some American lives. I saw the roster of the survivors and it seems the Third class took far greater loses. I think a lady who survived as a little girl, died recently.
Apparently most of the men were heroic as was the band. These heroes were genuine; you can posture about heroism but when your life is at stake and you give it up almost nonchalantly, then heroism really counts.
Titanic would count in my view as among the greatest British disasters.
Tas -
Message 35
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Stoggler
Since my A Level Geography days of "Continental Drift" theory, we now have a picture of the Earth's solid surface being made of a number of large plates that are not fixed together but overlap at the edges.
Presumably at places of volcanic activity the plates do not fit together very well and any shifting opens up new vents through which the molten magma of the Earth's interior can escape producing a volcanic eruption like the one we have just had in Hawaii.
An earthquake is caused when the plates do something rather like the English front row did to the Scots on Saturday, pushing up and over, or perhaps just move laterally. Given that one factor in global warming was/is thought to be the "Greenhouse Effect" that prevents the Sun's heat that hits the Earth by day from escaping out into space at Night, it is obvious that the aggegate heating energy hitting the Earth's surface and being turned into heat is important: hence the change in ambient temperatures- winter and summer.
Obviously the Boxing Day tsunami would go along with the prehistoric perception that after the Winter Solstice the dynamic of the world changes in the Northern Hemisphere around the time of the mid-winter festival- turned into Christmas. And we have had a number of more minor incidents already this year though Christchurch was bad enough and New Zealand already suffered last Autumn- another heat change time.
(I do not like rating human disasters in any order- though I understand Tas' scientific training kicks in)..
It seems likely that something of this magnitude needed a greater build up of energy before the friction/inertia between the plates could be overcome.
Cass -
Message 36
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Tas
You may like me have watched the film in Brtain of the Fifties, when you were over here. My eyes are swelling as I think of "Nearer my God to thee...".. In 1971 I gained a colleague whose Grandfather had been in that Salvation Army Band playing as the Titanic went down.. She was a music teacher and a member of the Salvation Army.
Cass -
Message 37
Posted by Stoggler (U14387762) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Stoggler
Since my A Level Geography days of "Continental Drift" theory, we now have a picture of the Earth's solid surface being made of a number of large plates that are not fixed together but overlap at the edges.
Presumably at places of volcanic activity the plates do not fit together very well and any shifting opens up new vents through which the molten magma of the Earth's interior can escape producing a volcanic eruption like the one we have just had in Hawaii.
An earthquake is caused when the plates do something rather like the English front row did to the Scots on Saturday, pushing up and over, or perhaps just move laterally. Given that one factor in global warming was/is thought to be the "Greenhouse Effect" that prevents the Sun's heat that hits the Earth by day from escaping out into space at Night, it is obvious that the aggegate heating energy hitting the Earth's surface and being turned into heat is important: hence the change in ambient temperatures- winter and summer.
Obviously the Boxing Day tsunami would go along with the prehistoric perception that after the Winter Solstice the dynamic of the world changes in the Northern Hemisphere around the time of the mid-winter festival- turned into Christmas. And we have had a number of more minor incidents already this year though Christchurch was bad enough and New Zealand already suffered last Autumn- another heat change time.
(I do not like rating human disasters in any order- though I understand Tas' scientific training kicks in)..
It seems likely that something of this magnitude needed a greater build up of energy before the friction/inertia between the plates could be overcome.
°δ²Ή²υ²υΜύ Cass
I did A Level geography, and my degree is in geography, including a good chunk of geology, so I'm well aware of plate tectonics. My simple question was to get a simple answer - either "yes" or "no" to whether you were referring to the internal heat distribution or not.
From my knowledge, there is no evidence whatsoever that seismic activity is caused by anything other the internal movements of magma within the earth's mantle; the energy required to move tectonic plates is so great, that any energy resultant from temperature changes on the surface will be negligible, if not irrelevant.
The whole year is a "heat change" time (whatever that is!) - the earth is constantly in flux with temperatures changing daily and seasonally all over the globe, and it's not a question of just saying that such-and-such a time of the year is a "heat change" time.
Obviously the Boxing Day tsunami would go along with the prehistoric perception that after the Winter Solstice the dynamic of the world changes in the Northern Hemisphere around the time of the mid-winter festival- turned into Christmas.Β
There's nothing obvious about that at all! Especially as that earthquake occured in an equatorial region where there is no winter - the season known as winter is only applicable in temperate regions of the world, not in the tropics.
And connecting the Christchurch earthquake with winter doesn't work as it's summer there, being in the southern hemisphere! -
Message 38
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Monday, 14th March 2011
"Bit similar to the theory that murrain in cattle caused the sweating sickness - rich people - who could afford to eat the most meat - were more more afflicted than poor folk."
Mmm along similar lines that the milk maids didn't contract smallpox or stableboys didn't catch bubonic plague. Just a thought. -
Message 39
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Monday, 14th March 2011
We all seem to have forgotten one major disaster. The Titanic! -
Message 40
Posted by Stoggler (U14387762) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Others have mentioned the Titanic Tas
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Message 41
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Monday, 14th March 2011
I gained a colleague whose Grandfather had been in that Salvation Army Band playing as the Titanic went downΒ
Are you sure ?
Here is what the Sally Army say on the Titanic event....
Which says :
"The song was particularly associated with the disaster because it was thought to have been played by the ship's 'orchestra' (actually a seven-piece jazz band)"
I don't think the Sally Army has ever done jazz bands.
According to the link, the Sally Army did play outside the offices of White Star line in commemoration of the event. I wonder if this grandfather of a friend played there. Or not.
A bit like everyone whose grandfather once worked on the railways are claimed to be drivers of the Flying Scotsman, even if they worked in the wrong bit of the country and never actually drove a train.
Stop press : A little more on the band -
Another family legend sinks beneath the waves (can I say that, or is it still too soon ?). -
Message 42
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Stoggler
Thank you for your post..
Forgive me if I took the opportunity to formulate ideas that had hovered in the background unformed for some time..
In fact subsequent to posting, and reflecting as you say, upon the incredible forces within the Earth, I reflected some more upon the "experiment" being conducted in Japan, as sea water is being used in order to cool the nuclear core.
This relates to the importance of our ocean surface which acts as a means of managing and distrubuting energies not only from the Sun but also from the Earth. It seems to me that it has been essential to the stability of the Earth, and to the possibility of life as we know it evolving, that the Earth rotates giving day and night which so many forms of life are adapted to, and tilts changing the energy balance between North and South.
But as far as the tectonic plates are concerned we would probably agree that the accepted theoretical model has the Earth starting off as some kind of non-solid state that became magma etc, and that as the energy within the elements of which it (and we ) is made lessened some surfaces became solid largely through cooling. Fortunately for us the Earth has a larger water than land surface, and water is a great agent for acting almost like the classic functions of money-- it can transfer energy from one place to another, and it can also store energy. There are more or less unihabitable exrtremes of hot and cold on Earth, but even there day and night and seasonal change has often made human adaption possible.
But presumably increasing the average temperatures on both land and sea would have an impact upon the capacity of the oceans to have a cooling effect, taking geothermal heat out of the Earth and taking it sea-level, from which energy can escape into the atmosphere and space. We are, after all dealing with huge surface areas and a few degrees of change multiplied by factors of cubic capacity would have an enormous impact.
As for your concept of "negligible energy" that you dismiss, I was trying to explain to fascinating on her Civilisation thread the difference between the Western idea which tends towards overwheling force and domination, and the Eastern idea that the world is a potentially most unstable place and that it is the task of human intelligence to try to keep things in harmony and balance.. Then when everything is in perfect balance an Emperor could make all the difference merely by appying a featherweight.
And I would suggest that the Chinese have a much longer experience and history of living with and learning from such disasters than we have.
Cass -
Message 43
Posted by Mr_Edwards (U3815709) on Monday, 14th March 2011
As well as epidemics, there have been a couple of disasters occuring as a result of Volcanic eruptions.
About 23,000 died in England of sulphur dioxide poisoning as a result of the Lakagigar eruption in Iceland in 1783.
Up to 65,000 in the British Isles died from cold, hunger and typhoid in 1816 as a volcanic eruption cancelled summer. -
Message 44
Posted by Stoggler (U14387762) on Monday, 14th March 2011
I can see where you're coming from, but current average increases in air and sea temperatures are just a matter of degrees and within the range that the earth has experienced in its history.
I don't think however that you should underestimate the amount of energy there is within the earth and how much is required to move the earth's tectonic plates, and then compare that with the few degrees warming that has occured within the last couple of centuries. Moving a plate that is millions of square miles on the surface, up to 70km thick in places, amounting to 7 billion cubic kilometres of continental crust (which excludes oceanic crust, of which I can't find a figure for a the moment) takes an immense amount of energy. The temperatures (and pressure) within the crust down near the mantle are of far more significance than the frankly piddly temperatures on the surface (or very near it). -
Message 45
Posted by rhmnney (U14528380) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Cass, doubtful if 'Actually the "Spanish Flu" 'that hit the weakest and worn out population". I was born in Britain in 1926 and had never heard of the Spanish Flu until hearing of a bad flu epidemic in the USA after WW1. In 1955 I was working in an engineering plant in the USA when some of the older workmen were talking about a Flu epidemic. I was curious so asked about it. They said that the returning American Troops from Europe brought it, it was called the Spanish Flu. They said the coffins were piled up, then running out of coffins, the number of deaths were as hight given the population ratios as in Europe. I very much doubt if the American civilians suffered as much hardship regarding food as the British, Germans etc.
Perhaps the Spanish Flu was as common among the 'Haves' and the 'Have-Nots' as was Tuberculosis. -
Message 46
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Spanish flu, like swine flu, struck the relatively young and healthy disproportionately compared with seasonal flu which tends to affect those at the age extremes, probably due to the phenomena of a cytosine storm where the immune system goes, as it were, into overdrive and the uncontrolled production of antibodies damages the vital organs, particularly the lungs.
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Message 47
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Of course it should be cytokine storm, I must be feverish.
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Message 48
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Stoggler
Well. I did put it up as "rubbish" to be shot down..
Nevertheless the few degrees range in history seems for example to coincide with the cooling of the climate in the decades before the Black Death, that seems to have meant that it was often difficult to feed Europe's enlarged population, and I do not know about earthquakes and tsunamis..though I have childhood memories of being worried about them, and an image that has often come as a flashback of watching a "tidal wave" hit the Devon coast in the Fifties. This later never made sense to me, until I heard of this tsunami going all around the world in diminishing waves.
So I have to stick with my life experience..and my sense of the changing dynamic of life, which may of course be subjective.
Perhaps I should have bothered to keep a diary. But it makes me think of all those Autumn's of crisis meetings in school staff rooms when the staff felt that things in school and outside were descending into a new "Dark Ages". I pointed out that this seemed to happen every year at the onset of the "Dark Times" and the "rape season" associated with it, as well as the new schedules on TV that were all about the kind of thing that we now have all year round. With All Hallowse'en and All Souls Day these things seem to go back into eternal dynamics..
Cass -
Message 49
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 14th March 2011
rhmny
There is controversy about whether it was the Spanish Flu, which was why I put it in quotation marks.. As it was found around the trenches in the IWW when often troops were keeping poultry in closely confined conditions more recent speculation has, I believe, pointed to Bird Flu.
By the way i notice that on Thursday at 10pm Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ 4 is showing again "Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen"- a World War One drama with Bill Paterson and Mark Gatiss.
Cass -
Message 50
Posted by rhmnney (U14528380) on Monday, 14th March 2011
Stoggler, for most of the people in the USA, the force of an earthquake is still known using the Richter scale, the recent one in Japan 8.9 but may go to 9. Of course the MMS is also known but for the general public the Richter is still quoted on TV and in newspapers. I've always though the Richter scale odd in view of the general expressions such as twice, half, etc when comparing values.
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