h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi wildcat

I read your post in my journal and I thought I'd take the conversation here so it's more private.

There's no words to describe the devastation, life is so precious and it can be snatched away in a moment.
It just goes to show that possessions don't matter, but people do.

I just saw a couple on the news, I think they're locals, each of them were carrying a dead child (their own) after they'd been searching all day.



I don't know if the world is ever going to recover from this disaster...or maybe there's hope, tragedies like this seem to bond people and the survivors arriving back in GB are talking about how kindly they were treated by the locals.

Maybe that's the reason for this - if there is one - to teach us to be kind to one another.

Thanks.

Maybe, every once in a while, seems we do get that wake up call, now if EVERYBODY would just pay attention.

Events like this just gets my depression-anxiety-paranoia-phobias stirred up big time. I know, it isn't logical, but it does.

I haven't been watching the news, just can't bear it. You know, when we have floods, or a hurricane hits here in the States, it seems the news coverage is non-stop. The little new I have seen, the coverage has been a lot of telephone reports and taped footage. I guess the locations are pretty remote, and the situations are so bad, rescue and survival are the primary concerns NOT news reports.

This past hurricane season, Florida really got hit hard. I guess we kind of got used to things like that happening, and the people being prepared for them. This, no way anybody knew it was coming, nobody could be prepared, that's why it seems so surreal.

Surreal, that's a word we heard a lot September 11, 2001. When 9/11 happened, you could get angry about it. There were people to blame, you weren't really sure who, but out there, somewhere, someone was to blame.

This Tsunami, it isn't like that, there isn't anyone to blame. You can't even prepare for it like you can a hurricane or put sandbags up or evacuate like you can for a flood. At least with tornados you have a little warning, even if you don't have a super weather radio, you know there's a bad storm out there, you hear the wind, you can see the dark clouds; if you're lucky, and have one you can get to the storm cellar, or basement.

This started out with an earthquake in the middle of the ocean. There isn't any warning. Of course, I wonder which would have been worse the tsunami hitting like it did or if the earthquake had happened where the tsunami hit?

I think back to the earthquake that San Fransico hit (I ithink) back in 1989. I remember seeing it on TV. That had to be scary. Knoxville (where I live), well, East Tennessee in fact, is on a fault line. This whole region is full of caves, in fact the intire city is sitting on top of a huge network of caves. We have had some minor quakes, I don't remember what they registered on the scale now. (If you had a EMPTY paper cup setting right next to a table edge, it MIGHT have fallen off.) I didn't sleep well for a week.

Geologist say that if we ever have a really major quake, like one that hit out in the Indian Ocean the other day, the whole city will just collapse. Guess where I live? That's right, smack in the middle of town. Doesn't really matter, like I said this entire reagion is just crawling with caves. The hills and mountains around here are just full of them. So I don't know which I'm more afraid of, drowning, or being buried alive in a landslide/cavein.

Paranoid, who, me?