Imagine you are in the movie Deep Impact. You live near a coast line which you suddenly find out is going to be devastated by the largest Tsunami in recorded history. You have no access to air travel or other escape…
Let’s say you have about 10 hours to work with.
In the movie Deep impact lots of people died trying to get as far away from the coast as they could. I have an idea for another solution.
I used to think a boat or a submarine might be a safe place to go, but the way the depicted the tidal wave in the Movie, that didn’t seem promising.
My latest idea is to dig a big hole in the ground using an excavator. Put a large water tight tank in the hole…say a boat or something. Then maybe fill the hole back in with dirt or gravel or cement if you have time. You would outfit the tank with pillows and food, water, and air…If you needed to survive a very long time you would need some way to scrub CO2 or vent to the air….and then just get inside and close it tight before the wave came crashing.
I think you should be able to survive the impact and be able to survive for several hours depending on how sophisticated your life support setup…
Questions: Would this work?
Question 2: How long would you need to have life support systems in your little underground tank? hours? Days? weeks?
What do you think? Any other great ideas about how to survive such a scenario?
As might the erosion of the soil around you when the “big slosh” drrains back into the sea. Dick Cheney’s secret abode, carved out of bedrock under the naval observatory, might survive, but deep running water is corrosive as hell !
As tsunamis only reach their full height when they reach shallow water a good tactic might be to grab a boat and head out to sea to a location with deep water and no shallow water between there and the tsunami’s point of origin.
Surfboard. Head out as fast as you can and ride that puppy in (see “Lucifer’s Hammer” by Niven & Pournelle). When it slops back out, be ready to jump off.
:eek: &c.
As I remember that book, the next scene after that surfer dud catches that huge wave is that he sees a skyscraper suddenly appear before him and he gets smacked like a fly on the wall… Not a good plan.
“Anyone lived in a pretty how town with upso floating many bells down”
I was under the impression that the wave created by a massive meteor strike would be moving really fast, as in close to the speed of sound. The “Deep Impact” asteroid was supposed to wipe out cities in the US all the way to Atlanta, and the nearest high ground to Washington D.C. was thought to be in the Appalacian mountains. Even skyscrapers along the coast wouldn’t be a good bet under those circumstances. If the wave didn’t simply go over them, they’d be toppled.
I live on the opposite coast, near Seattle. We’re slightly protected by the Olympic mountains along the coast, but a wave that size would probebly barely pause at that. Best bet around here is to get to the other side of the Cascades into Eastern Washington. Easily done in 10 hours, but not if everyone else is trying at the same time. Roads would jam up instantly.
This wouldn’t be an option for more than a handful of military folks, but what about a nuclear sub at about half it’s crush depth? Would that be deep enough to escape the turbulance of the incoming wave without being crushed by the water weight? I seem to remember a scenero like that in “Footfall” when aliens drop an asteroid into the Indian Ocean.
The thing about tsunamis is, they recede. The water flows back into the proper area, so longevity is not an issue for your escape pod. Once the wave hits land the friction from the land will begins to lower the crest, and it becomes a rushing mass of water, so crushing depth won’t be an issue inland a bit. Picture a wave coming up to a beach, and how it behaves. Now increase that a bit. Quite a bit. I’m voting for the “head out to sea” plan.
Also, remember there will be an -incredible- wall of wind comming before the actual wave. That will cause enough destruction on its own.
I remember a few years back reading an SAS survival manual, and under Tsunami, it pretty much said, “If you can see it, it’s too late. You will not survive a several hundred foot tall wall of water.”
Ok how about if: You live too far away from the sea to “head out to sea”. And you don’t have a boat or a submarine.
And…you cannot get out of range.
What would my little escape pod need? To be buried 20 feet down and encasedin Cement?
The water will recede…the coast lines aren’t going to change…so there shouldnt be hundreds of feet of water above…even if there is…scuba gear could be stored.
Let’s see…LeGuin, Leiber, McCaffrey, Moorcock, Niven–Hey! Somebody borrowed my copy of Lucifer’s Hammer and didn’t put it back! Anyway…
Niven & Pournelle always do their homework. In Footfall the captain of the submarine Ethan Allen says that tsunamis travel at between 200 and 400 miles per hour, so I’m sure that’s correct. Your 10 hour lead time means the strike was between 2,000 and 4,000 miles away. I’m thinking that even a big strike will lose some steam in that much time. (The sub captain turned tail and ran, hoping that the wave that piled up over his sub wouldn’t be enough to crush the hull. He was right.)
To survive by staying in one spot, you’d need air, food and water in a container that wouldn’t be crushed by, say 1/2 mile of water pressure. That’s a lot.
As I recall from the movie, the World Trade Center survived the impact of the wave (I remember the scene of the water flowing between the buildings). Could one hold out in a well-enough built and tall-enough building?
Digging a hole, setting up a pressure resistant chamber, supplying it with water, food, and air, and then locking yourself up in the darkness?, why bother?, rent a plane, or get on a balloon, plus you´ll enjoy the view.
&c.