Or drive a car. Or a truck. Just stay home and cower. These are lessons I learned from the footage of Typhoon Jebi.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Or drive a car. Or a truck. Just stay home and cower. These are lessons I learned from the footage of Typhoon Jebi.
I’m surprised they didn’t show the footage of the tanker being rammed into a bridge. Here it is for you.
How do you cower at home if your home gets destroyed?
Make sure you’re cowering above the storm-surge.
Cower from somebody else’s home. Preferably on another continent.
Weather is weathery. And it’s gonna get weathier.
My main takeaway: Lots of cameras around, these days. Good footage.
(And establishes a baseline for future imagery — flying cows?)
Painfully.
It’s not as if those two things are mutually exclusive.
These disasters produce spikes in the concentration of plastics in the environment, and not just in the ocean. I just got through reading this, about what many have been fearing for awhile – namely, microplastic particles found INSIDE cells:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-humans-a-microplastic-invasion-may-be-taking-a-toll/
…when I came upon PZ’s post, then saw this even longer compilation posted next on Youtube as well:
I had to wince when the tsunamis caused by the Japan earthquake of 2011 carried all that debris (containing huge amounts of plastic, much of it in the form of foam building insulation) out to sea. Sure enough, the first widespread news reports of the ‘Great Pacific Plastic Gyre’ followed soon thereafter.
Looking at the compilation in that last link with the flying pieces of insulation flying off buildings convinces me that the problem of plastic pollution is as serious as any other specific pollution threat we’ve inflicted on ourselves, including the nuclear and greenhouse gas varieties. We’re doing ourselves in, and rapidly. Its scaring the hell out of me.
bicycling is unsafe even with slower wind… last year’s Cape Town event was cancelled when the wind was only around 100 km/h https://youtu.be/93sx0lpxqI4
Yeah, wind power is proportional to the third power of its speed, since air being a gas means its mass is proportional to its density and volume, so that is moving mass is proportional to its volume per time which is in turn proportional to its speed, and the kinetic energy of a mass is proportional to the square of its speed.
(Not very intutitive, except viscerally)
If you do need to drive a car or a truck in a typhoon, load it up with as much mass as it will carry and then some. Use a dense material such as steel, lead, or gold bullion. Keep the mass as low as possible and maintain the vehicle’s center of gravity. Wear body armor including protection to the head, body, and arms to fend off flying debris that might penetrate the windows or door. Plate would do in a pinch – have oil handy to avoid the tin woodsman effect. A rebreather with a 24 hour capacity might be useful when your vehicle becomes submerged.
The last clip in the video, looks like it is from Kyoto Station – I was there just a couple of weeks ago. The glass that fell down, fell a long way – 7 floors or so.
While I was in Japan, there was a milder typhoon happening, and the only thing you really could do, was to stay indoor, or get soaking wet (and blown around).
And yet according to legend, it was two typhoons, the “kamikaze” (or “divine winds”), that saved Japan from Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281. Of course, it may have helped that a joint arms operation like that across the Sea of Japan would have been difficult to pull off in the 13th century anyway.
I lived through it. I didn’t witness anything as dramatic as in those videos, but I did feel my building sway, saw lots of small flying debris, and then downed trees and bent traffic signals afterward.
My area didn’t get the worst of it, but one neighbor is going to have to get new siding for their third floor. I’m on the first floor of a concrete building, so all I had to worry about was the stove hood leaking like it does in every typhoon or heavy rainstorm. Also, I live next to some agricultural fields and okra is one tough motherfucker. After the typhoon, the branches were curved to the north, but the stalks were leaning just a few degrees that way at most. Looked like the congregation of some bizarre worship service.
And while cowering be appreciative that climate change is fake.
If the side of your vehicle is a large flat surface, park it away from the wind until the storm subsides.
Seriously, I feel for the victims. That’s gotta be hell on Earth.
On a lighter note: Roofs should be made more aerodynamic so as to not go all esplodey like that!
@Sparks
#17
Did making the Tacoma Narrows Bridge more aerodynamic help?
I feel for the victims too, and at the same time I think the forces of nature are excitingly impressive.
I’ve been studying AI for a while now – with a special interest in autoautomobiles. If these things can communicate with each other then with luck you can stop them going over bridges and into danger areas. One capitalist I discussed this with dismisses it as socialism!
As for the buildings you’d think someone would have noticed Japan gets hit by strong winds and specified some reasonable safety levels for the string holding those façades on.