Run along.

So why did you post the comment in the first place if you can’t back it up lol?

It's a waste of time.

So there are no lies? Or how am I supposed to interpret that?

Haha, ok.

I hope you like it, I listened to it again today and it still brings me to tears. I can’t imagine what he and everyone else went through. It’s the not knowing that’s the hardest.

The story was originally covered by NHK so he may have. Hopefully your friend is ok and you can see each other sometime soon.

Because I’m not aware of any western lies being spread by mainstream media, so I would be curious about what lies you’re talking about.

I'll check out the episode, thanks for sharing it. He's been back to that area a few times since, so he might be familiar with it. Unfortunately it's been a few years since we last saw each other.

What's really scary to me is Japan is probably the most earthquake prepared country in the world, and still there was all this devastation. On the west coast of n america we can have similar intensity tsunamis and are nowhere near as prepared. Its going to be so much worse than this.

Why?

I was thinking, something like the Maeslantkering in the rivers could perhaps have blocked the surge going so far inland. But then I suppose if that worked that would've already done that.

Thankfully I have no experience with Earthquakes and I hope I never will. The footage in this seems terrifying, I'd fear the building would come down the whole time.

The people at ground level looking out at the ocean as alarms are going off and people are screaming at them to get to high ground always amazes me.

I've read someone describing it like earth sinking into the ocean.

I’d like to forget.

When there’s a big disaster, it’s hard enough to keep track of the people you know live there without adding to it the people who are visiting. And it was probably a safety precaution for the foreign workers at the nuclear plant, in case it went bad (which it did).

Why did they want the foreigners going back home?

I forgot about rotten dot com.

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We still do a lot of flood / tsunami drills, but the nuclear distaster has been forgotten.

Japan just recently reauthorized all the old nuclear plants to reopen, extended their licences thirty years beyond their end-of-life, and continues to dump radioactive waste from this disaster into the ocean unabbated.

There's a lot of footage from that day that will probably never air again.

Even in this, you may notice a scene or two where a camera pans around and you wonder, "Where did everyone go just now?"

Into the water. They're gone.

On the day it was much worse. Many times a helicopter was filming people running, or trying to drive away, only to rotate just enough to show the road they were on wouldn't take them out of the path of the tsunami. Then it would pan all the way around, showing some other part of the destruction, and when it came back the whole road was gone under the water.

I remember one heartbreaking scene where a guy hopped on his scooter and made a bee-line away from the wave, stopping to try to warn people crossing the road he was on that they were doomed. A few seconds later there was nothing but black water and wreckage where all of them had been.

There are 3 episodes, and for those that don't have a VPN, you can find all 3 at a bay that's inhabited by fellas with an eyepatch, a peg leg, and a parrot on their shoulder. Arrrr, Matey!!

Technically the twelfth year anniversary, but anyway..

Around 12:30 there's a moment that provides a very good reference for how the tsunami came: it wasn't a huge standing wave that crashed over the shoreline; it was a humongous, black amoeba that gradually overwhelmed the coast, the cities, and the people who stayed on the ground wondering what all the fuss was about.

Japan is no stranger to tsunamis, historically speaking. Tsunami stones mark the coastline and explicitly states where to build homes to avoid tsunamis, these stones are a century old. Specifically the Aneyoshi stone has a dire warning.

That aside: when it comes to earthquakes, other than building to withstand the force of that shock there’s not a whole lot you can do. I just went through a nearly 6.0 earthquake in late 2022 and it was terrifying.

If you want to see an absolute HORROR of tsunami footage, I recommend watching Boxing Day tsunami footage. The Bandeh Aceh footage is some of the most terrifying film in history in my opinion and I was raised in the rotten dot com age. There is nothing on this planet that could’ve prepared me for that, it’s unreal. I believe there’s only one known existing video of the tsunami actually hitting.

In some ways I think it’s worse because of the lack of preparation. I went through a tsunami deep dive/research phase a few years ago - had a design project regarding disaster prep materials and the content really grabbed me. Historical research and first person accounts of natural disasters became a bit of a passion project after that assignment.

Has he heard the story of the wind telephone someone set up in his garden? It’s just a pay phone booth that isn’t connected to anything where people come to talk to people who went missing in the tsunami. This American Life featured it in a really good episode.