TheBrit

eyeronic, it was awesome, in the way that it is so huge and powerful it's hard to come to terms with. And therein lies the problem. We aren't feeling that depressed over it because none of us have ever seen such a huge wave leaving devestation. We've seen earthquakes level buildings on the news, we've seen fires burn houses down in real life. All the news footage I have seen of the wave involved it washing a couple of people off a pier, that's not how 80,000 people died... There's very little actual coverage of the event and that is what is stopping us from looking at numbers and relating them to people being killed. September 11th, we were shown images of people jumping to save themselves from being burnt to death, that harrowing image has stuck with me since.

Xell101

I don't feel sad as this doesn't strike a cord with me. It's death, death is a function of life, invariably everything living on this planet will die, their's came before ours due to the environment, that's not sad, it's 'shit' as in 'shit happens', the environment killed those people. On matters such as this what gets me is personal loss and any glaring examples of the terrible failings of man.

ShaniFaye

nature IS awesome...for some strange reason when stuff like this happens I always think of the old butter commercials "Its not nice to fool mother nature" ...I know that sounds dumb but still....

I feel sad for all those people...the ones who live there and have nothing left...the ones that were visiting and have to go thru the hassels of getting new passports to get back home and more than likely lost all the possessions they had with them at the time...but...

I cry over man made deaths....not ones caused by nature...I think feeling helpless over natural disatures outweighs the "sad" emotion because there simply is nothing that can be done. In the states we get warnings (for DAYS) about hurricanes....I really think they need to do something about a warning system...I realize a tsunami doesnt grow like a hurricane but hell I read they didnt even know about the earthquake which caused the tsunami..I find that incredible

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Shpoop

actually, there is a system of buoys in the pacific ocean (and i think a couple in the indian maybe) that lets them know a tsunami is coming. problem is, only developed east asian countries participate, and there really was no way or infrastructure for them to reach the governments of countries in danger and spread the word. forget where i heard that

ARTelevision

The term "inappropriate" in this context validates the politically correct notion that we should advertise ourselves as sensitive, feeling people. I don't see a neutral response to this event as being inappropriate. I do, however, wonder how it is totally healthy to dwell on the experience of thousands of people whose lives have very little bearing on our own - especially when experienced via news reports. Actually, I have some concern for the "sensitive" ones among us. Living so in this world must be quite a burden for them.

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Carno

This is how I feel: better them than me.

My mind says, "Holy shit that is totally fucking unreal and amazing!" But my heart says, "Meh."

There have been days when I've been surfing waves so big that I feel like the most insignificant speck in the ocean. It's kinda hard to describe the feeling you get when you see a 15 ft wave break in front of you and you're paddling through the flats.. despair I guess would be a good word. And that's how I feel in the ocean. Where I know what to do and have some measure of control.

But when I imagine a 15 ft wave coming and I'm standing on dry land...whew. There's absolutely nothing you can do as the power of the ocean plucks your insignificant little body off the ground and sucks you up.

MSD

At first, when it was still a few thousand, I head on the news that two thirds of the population of some villages were washed away and killed. At first, I didn't really think about it. A few minutes later I started thinking about how painful it was to lose my father, and how it would feel to have the same happen to my brother and my mother. At that point I had to change the channel to distract myself. Fortunately, IHRA drag racing was on, and I quickly returned to my typical state of apathetic numbness.

All we can do now is to clean up the mess and work on a way to warn people more quickly in the future. Even basic things like teaching people to run to higher ground if the ground shakes or the ocean recedes rapidly would have saved lives.

nothingx

Being a big fan of Indonesian coffees, in particular that from the isle of Sumatra, one of the hardest hit islands, I am deeply concerned about the people there, and their ability to continue to produce coffee.

Jonsgirl

How can so many people feel so little?

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not ho-hum, just in denial that something with that magnitude of aftermath has actually happened. It's hard to actually fathom if you are not there, it does sadden me to see the numbers grow, but I won't watch the news for the reason that it is so depressing. I feel for everyone there and my thougths are with those who passed. 9-11 my ass, there's over a 100,000 number difference here and this is mother nature, not terrorism. Nature is more powerful than any human.

jorgelito

Actually, it was "preventable", many countries, us inlcuded already knew about it and had 3+ hours warning. We just didn't bother to pick up the phone and call them. Even a phone call would have saved some of them. Buy hey, who cares about a bunch of poor brown people. I mean look, no one here gives a shit about them anyways...

Being "sensitive" is not a bad thing like so many here think it is. It's called being human, a big part of our essence of humanity. It is not weakness, or politically correct. There is nothing wrong with feeling sympathy, empathy or compassion to your fellow man. In fact, it is quite human and "correct" to do so.

I believe there IS[I] something wrong with you if you don't feel anything at all.

It means you have lost your humanity.

ARTelevision

As I said, it must be difficult for the sensitive folks.

In any event, I wouldn't start impugning the humanity of those who don't wear their sensitivities on their sleeve or may have other more pressing concerns.

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warrrreagl

Carl Sagan once said, "Nature is neither benign nor malevolent; merely indifferent." My "sensitivity" seems to be more aligned with nature (something I know very well) than thousands of people I don't know at all.

I visited my folks over Christmas at their home in Florida that they're still rebuilding after a devastating hurricane season. The destruction is still horrific all over the beach, and I have much deeper feelings for their neighbors and friends who are still battling to find a place to live and bring some relief/closure to their situations.

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Cynthetiq

great statement.

from the rich and famous to the poor... nature doesn't care.

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VTBrian

I feel badly for those affected, but I think I am just having alot of trouble grasping the scope of the disaster. 150,000 ppl and rising is just so far beyond anything I can imagine.

Schwan

I feel sorry for all the people who lost their lives, especially since the waves hit the most unprivileged parts of the world. Most of the victims were people who didn’t even realize that there was anything beyond the vast emptiness of the sea that surrounded them. And then, suddenly, everything was gone. I can’t say I’m crying for them, because, as Art said, the degrees of our emotional strength differ from person to person. But I’m shocked none the less.

I do, however, spend a lot of time watching images that come off the wire services, and I’m gaping at the scale of the whole tragedy. Pictures showing a beach with several hundred dead bodies mixed with debris, satellite pictures of none existent cities, wiped out in a few seconds, and so on. And sometimes I imagine some of the islands on the Pacific that don’t get mentioned as often in the news.

These islands housed several thousand people (most of them were indigenous, others worked at military installations and so on). Now they’re empty. You don’t hear about them, because there’s not a single living person left alive there. I imagine standing in the middle of that bare island, in a place where a few days ago there used to be a thriving town with lot’s of people milling around. And then I imagine the vast emptiness and the roar of the ocean and crashing waves on the now deserted, barren piece of land. It’s shocking.

Now, when I wake up in the morning, I realize how lucky I am to live in a developed country, without fear of either tsunamis or earthquakes plaguing my everyday live.

If you have a problem grasping the scale of the whole thing, here’s a link that’ll give you an idea how 115.000 people look like, more or less:

http://www.toddbinder.com/Toll.aspx

skier

There is a lot of suffering and injustice in our world. We grow older, and become numb to the unfairness of the world, if only to protect ourselves from the possibility that it may happen to ourselves one day.

The people in south-east asia have lost everything. Lives of their family members, their homes, their jobs. The means they once had to survive in their land has been washed away. Rotting bodies are poisoning their water and there is a high chance there will be an epidemic of cholera or similar that will kill many who managed to escape the tsunami.

What if your home, your town, was completely destroyed? Your family dead, and there is no food to be found? The water you have to drink to survive is brown and certain to contain two or three diseases sure to make you very sick, and perhaps cripple you for life? Your neighbor bob, crying while pulling apart the rubble of his house, knowing his wife, kids, and sister are under there but doing so because he is hoping the the giant wave hadn't pulled them out to sea, never to be seen again? Can you imagine this scene happening to 5+ countries, to more than 5 million people? That's the estimate of how many have lost their homes.

Please guys, it may have happened far away, and was a natural occurance, but this is a disaster of gigantic proportions, and they are asking for our help. Even a small donation to the red cross could change someone's life in south-east asia. It could mean the difference from drinking fresh water instead of disease-ridden pond scum.

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Zephyr66

I worry about myself, if all that stuff were to happen to me, sure I'd feel terrible, but thats a hypothetical situation, it didnt happen to me. I'm just thankful for that

dobster

We feel we should respond to the SCALE of this terrible event, but i've just googled for world population info and quickly confirmed that worldwide 155,131 deaths occur every day. Each of those deaths can be regarded as a tragedy. My detachment through not being associated with anyone involved in the Tsunami disaster (to my knowledge) means that I feel that each of the individuals who are involved has experienced a tragedy no greater or lesser than that experienced by the loved ones of all the 155,131 souls lost on a daily basis.

Similarly, the loss of shelter and stability is not an uncommon event the world over.

As regards what we're obliged to do, who can say? Personally, I acknowledge the horrifying weight of this situation, but realistically I'm not capable of burdening myself with much more than that.

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Suave

That visualization worked amazingly well. I have to admit though, the overall event hasn't exactly made me weep with despair. Seeing some pictures, reading specific stories, and things of that nature have elicited pretty strong emotional responses however.

Logically though, I was thinking "well yeah it's bad, but how many people die of starvation in sub-saharan Africa daily, and no one even thinks of it?"

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jorgelito

A lot probably has to do with media over-saturation, fatigue and burnout. It'll probably get worse in the weeks to come, especially with money disbursements and the ensuing squabbles that will come.

It's like 9/11: at first there was shock and horror, but then, I was like oh who cares, get over it. I got so sick of it. I didn't know anyone who died in that "awesome" disaster and frankly, was annoyed that it screwed up traveling as we knew it forever. But I suppose we were all affected because were human and we have feelings. I remember how that Kenyan village made a donation of like 50 cows or something (which was equivalant to a lot for them) because they felt sorry for our loss in 9/11. That was pretty moving.

Then I got really irritated when the 'victims' were fighting over the money, police vs. firefighters, and the instant millionaires that came out of it later.

After awhile, 9/11 became just another ho-hum part of our collective history just like this will. Remember the Iranian earthquake last year? I didn't until I saw post in another thread (US Aid, I think) that showed all the world disasters of the last 100 years or so. Crazy stuff. We move on, we live.

One of the images that really struck me however, is the one of all those bodies washed up on the beach. Horrifying and illustrative of the magnitude of the whole thing.

raeanna74

I think one part of my emotional response, or lack thereof, is that I cannot relate this tragedy to anything in my own life. I cannot truely empathize.

If I hear of someone facing the possibility of a loved on in a coma for an undetermined amount of time I feel intense emotion. I've experienced the emotions caused by being in that position. I can sympathize with those affected by the tsunami. I cannot truely understand the situation an empathize.

Perhaps this is an illustration of the power of "walking in another's shoes". Unless you've experienced it you can NEVER understand the emotions of any situations.

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Shpoop

I have a hard time beleiving that. Nature's disasters have always existed, and mankind has generally found a way to cope with them. There have always been fires, but before the "Mankind Civilization" we know today took hold, fires were a regular event and would only burn the underbrush and dead trees, and not grow into raging blazes that kill thousands. Native Americans could tell when hurricanes were coming, based on the activity of local animals, and knew to move inland, and deaths were always minimal. There was even a small town in Thailand on the coast, very secluded and ancient, where every single person survived. As soon as they felt the earthquake, they knew to move to the hills because a tsunami would ensue. The problem is when we see ourselves killing the forests, polluting the oceans, and developing wetlands and prairies, we think that we have conquered nature, and get a false sense of invincibility. Nowadays, instead of bending to nature, we expect it to bend to us, which just doesn't work. So, in conclusion, most of these natural disasters are really products of mankind anyways, or at least are greatly worsened by mankind.

point #2, which I've already made: even when it is as bad as this, mankind is worse

Let's assume that the death toll rises to approximately 200,000, which is a reasonable guess. A generally accepted lower-end estimation of the death toll of World War II is 55 million. The tsunami is about 1/275th as large, or 0.36% as large as World War II. Again, I'm not trying to take away from the disaster of it, just stating that it pales in comparison with the horrors mankind is capable of. And even without the sheer numbers, it is still less tragic. I would rather drown than have to pick which of my children is executed first, watch him die, then watch the other die, and then finally die myself (holocaust).

killeena

I can't say I am too troubled by it. Of course it sucks, and I feel bad for everyone affected, but that is nature for you. It has always happened, and will always happen, until nature fires it's final shot by way of the sun consuming the earth.

Schwan

I see this example being brought up all the time. My gripe with it is that World War II lasted for six years, while the tsunami did its job in a few seconds. I don't think it's a valid comparison. The only comparable man made weapon, capable of delivering such destruction in such a short span of time, is an atomic or nuclear bomb. But I'd agree with the notion that humans are worse.

StephenSa

I don't know that I feel ho-hum about the tragedy, I just can't seem to generate any emotion at all. Its just too far away and abstract. I recognise that it is a terrible event that killed thousands of innocent people but I didn't know any of them. My life continues as before so its hard to truly feel anything. When I'm driving down the highway on the way to work and come across an accident scene I don't look. The accident didn't involve me so I have no interest in it (as long as help has arrived). I just want to continue on my way. The tsunami event is similar, I recognize it as a tragedy but honestly I don't lose sleep over it. I have to worry about my wife making it home alive every day. I have to worry about my grandmother with Alzheimers and how we can make her life as well as can be. I have my friends, family, job, and all the other things that make up my world to worry about and try to keep straight. It behooves me as a citizen of this planet to recognize tragedy when I see it and if possible help but I can't let tragedies outside my own sphere play too hard on my emotions. Life is long and each of us will have many tragic events to weather before we are done. While I sympathize, I'll save my tears for that which I cannot escape.

degrawj

i understand what people are saying who aren't feeling very strongly about the tsunami, however, i kind of felt the opposite right after it had happened. i had gotten a text message alert on my cell about the earthquake, and i was like, "wow, holy shit." i went to look for information on the web, and on all the news sources, it seemed rather secondary. i turned the TV on, and none of the news channels were covering it. not CNN, Fox, MSNBC, or any of them. even the day after, it didn't even make the headline on the newspaper where i live. now seriously, i'm not putting anybody down for feeling "ho-hum," because that's what you feel, and there's nothing wrong with that, but when i saw how the news treated it at first, i was kind of pissed. i mean, thousands of people were reported dead already, and it didn't even make the breaking news on TV? i thought that was kind of sick.

jorgelito

Your news sources (CNN, MSNBC, Fox) aren't really news sources, they're more entertainment and therefore subject to the vagaries of a commercial market. (That's part of the problem)

So....if you want news, then go to NPR (web or radio) or the BBC.

john_713

I have to say i agree with the original post. We had a nationwide 3 minute silence today and i couldn't help but thinking it was too long. We have less time to remember every British soldier who has died in every conflict ever. This could not have been prevented (yea there might have been warnings but it would still have been a catastrophe) should we really dwindle on it? It is noones fault...will the innocents killed in Iraq get a nationwide moments thought if thats conflict ever ends?

Schwan

Ugh, same here. Poland had a three minute silence at noon today, even though we only have a minute's silence every year for the thousands that died during the Warsaw uprising of '44. It's a nice gesture, but I have a problem believing anybody truly cared.

bbrown4

I plan to give as much as I can to help those people throughout the Indian Ocean but I do so puzzled at our government. We step up (despite what the UN's Jan Egeland says) and recognize the need for humanitarian action to the tune of $350 million. We immediately send in our resources (Lincoln battle group, Marines, USS Mercy) - stretching our exaperated military even more thinly. We act without hesitation to help people on the other side of the world. Yet we are the same people who are engaged in two futile military campaigns. We are the same people who are flailing like a child in the dark for one man, still at-large, who sucker-punched us almost four years ago.

So I give to the tsunami relief because <b>that</b> is an example of what Americans do. As I do so, however, I wonder how the same leaders who reach out to those devastated countries can be the same ones who have placed this nation in harm's way so carelessly.

Untitled

From my own perspective, its just too huge for me to digest. The news can shout numbers of deaths at me all they want, but my brain simply can't process it. I feel sympathy for the people affected, but as some other's have said, my life goes on. A new semester starts, and my mind is occupied. I'm far from a cold person, but I cannot fathom that over 4 times the population of my home town has been wiped out....

moonstrucksoul

i honsestly have been so wrappeed up in my own little world that i hardly watch TV, CD's not radio, and try not to look at a newspaper. It will sink in someday, alot like 9/11, so surreal to me. almost unbelievable. a total tragedy.

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Daknjak

This is an old post I know, but why not contribute?
I recently found on the net a recording of the underwater earthquake that caused the tsunami. It was recorded by underwater microphones used to record just this sort of thing. It was by far the most eerie thing I have ever heard. Just imagining being fathoms deep in the darkness hearing this quiet sound come rolling in and turning into a deafening roar (as it did on my computer) I felt scared of that noise. I also saw video of the wave coming, and it looked so small when I watched it. It rolled in, but not like the movies have it towering over people. Maybe just bad point of view on the film. But that sound freaked me out. Here is a link so you can hear it. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8670264

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ShaniFaye

hey that was really cool...thanks for posting it Daknjak

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kramus

The tsunami made me feel cold and ineffectual. I had read somewhere that a magnitude 9 earthquake was powerful enough to rend the earths crust - it is at the outer limits of what we understand about the energy release capacity of our planet. And this let loose undersea, in a heavily populated area. I was frankly astonished at the low death toll, and how the destruction didn't run too far inland due to the relatively small waves generated (30 - 40 feet max I believe some of the worst hit places got).

The western world is past due for a major event that will make that tsunami look like a kiddie play park. There are sea mounts in the Atlantic (the Canary Islands) and the Pacific (in Hawaii) which are splitting apart. When they drop the water displaced will generate waves in the order of a couple of hundred feet in height and these waves will wash the entire ocean basin. They will travel at several hundred miles per hour, as well. This will transform the world, because the West will be rather preoccupied for a couple of generations after the shit hits the fan.

Seeing what happens on the (relatively) small scale of the Boxing Day Tsunami just brings home yet again how precarious everything is. And that in turn means that we should try to be a little more appreciative and effective in our lives. Because tommorrow someone else will be hearing about us - and I hope that we can make enough of a positive impact to actually be missed instead of just ignored or the source of bemused wonder.

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Seeker

That was incredible! Thanks for the link Daknjak.

Nature is so powerful, it reminds me of how small we really are in the scheme of things. I am always so humbled by nature...

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Daknjak

Here is a link to a story I read about how the earthquake changed the earths shape and rotation.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-009

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