The most terrible disasters 01 with killer wave tsunami. Waves are tsunamis. How so? There must be some reason

The word "tsunami" comes from the Japanese language and means "wave in the bay", as a tsunami is a series of giant ocean waves that roll on the coastline. The word is of Japanese origin because it is in Japan that most of the tsunamis in the world occur.

A tsunami wave can be 100 km long and move across the ocean at speeds up to 800 km per hour. Sometimes a tsunami is a series of waves that hit the coast over a period of 10 to 60 minutes.

Because of the sheer size and incredible force of the tsunami wave, it is sometimes also referred to as "tidal wave". Throughout human history, in art, television and film, tsunamis have been depicted as a terrifying, catastrophic event reminiscent of the end of the world.

What causes a tsunami

Tsunamis are caused by sudden fluctuations of the earth's crust under the ocean floor. The most destructive tsunamis are usually caused by earthquakes. In addition, the cause may be a volcanic eruption, a landslide, or even a comet falling into the ocean.

Landslides cause tsunamis when a huge mass of destroyed rocks falls into the water. The effect caused resembles the effect of a large stone thrown into a puddle, when a puddle runs through the puddle and waves go. But when this happens in the sea, where thousands of tons of rock and earth fall, a huge wave arises, reminiscent of a tidal wave. It moves across the sea and finally reaches land, where it turns into a tsunami wave.

A volcanic eruption can also cause a tsunami. In this case, the volcano can be located on land, or under water - the so-called "underwater volcano". If a volcanic eruption occurs on land, a tsunami is caused by lava and rock fragments entering the ocean, which cause a large wave.

If the eruption occurs under water, then this powerful explosion leads to fluctuations in the earth's crust and breaks the water column. In this case, huge waves are formed that travel across the ocean until they meet land on their way. And that's when the tsunami starts.

How earthquakes occur under the ocean

The most common cause of tsunamis is earthquakes. It was the earthquake that caused the tsunami that occurred on December 26, 2004, on Boxing Day, in the Indian Ocean, as well as the tsunami that took place in 2011 in Japan.

To understand how earthquakes cause tsunamis, one must first understand what causes the earthquake itself, the consequence of which is a tsunami. The Earth's crust is made up of approximately twelve tectonic plates. These are huge pieces of solid rock that are in constant motion and fit snugly together, like pieces of a mosaic.

An earthquake under the sea floor occurs when one of the tectonic plates collides with another. Sometimes the slabs interlock and the heavier slab can slip under the lighter one. This leads to an increase in pressure and causes subduction, or slab subduction.

The heavier plate continues to move under the lighter one, causing the latter to sag. When the lighter slab can no longer withstand the applied pressure, it springs back and abruptly returns to its original state.

The incredible force with which the tectonic plate breaks free pushes the ocean waters apart, leading to a sharp rise in the water level in the ocean. A huge mass of water shoots up like a giant water mountain.

How a tsunami is formed

Everyone knows that what goes up, the next moment begins to fall down. And this is especially true of water, which always strives to form a perfectly smooth surface. Therefore, after the rise of a huge mass of water, the next stage will be its fall and return to the usual level.

The water mountain begins to sink, and the water that is under it is pushed out in different directions. The force of the movement of water moving across the ocean awakens those forces that are dormant in the lean ocean water, and the resulting waves travel thousands of kilometers. The speed of such a wave can reach 800 km per hour. But the force that drives it is under water and on the surface of the sea such a wave is invisible.

Finally, this force reaches the sea coast, where the sea floor rises and the water becomes shallow. However, the energy of water is still enormous. As a result, it “shrinks”, and the water is pushed up. Thus the latent force is transformed into waves on the surface of the sea.

Is there any way to resist this?

Unfortunately, it is impossible to prevent a tsunami. But there are several organizations around the world that use sophisticated technology to monitor the movements of the earth's crust and sudden changes in the movement of water in the ocean. Also in countries where tsunamis occur most often, such as Japan and the Hawaiian Islands, there is an emergency warning and emergency evacuation procedure.

Any earthquake that occurs underwater is immediately recorded. This also applies to earthquakes that occur on land. The strength of the latter is measured on the Richter scale. If such scientists register such an earthquake, the warning system is triggered, which means the need to evacuate people from the region.

Almost always, when people talk about tsunamis, they mean sea (most often ocean) tsunamis, which appeared as a result of underwater earthquakes. Indeed, the original Japanese word "tsunami", meaning "wave in the bay, in the port", was applied precisely to such waves. Today, a tsunami means a long wave in any body of water, which arose as a result of one or another powerful impact on the water column. Tsunami, despite its seemingly elementary nature and origin, is still one of the most curious natural phenomena for researchers and dangerous for the general population.

If you are caught by a tsunami wave, do not try to fight it, find a piece of debris that you can cling to and move with the wave.

Some interesting tsunami facts:

• in reality, a tsunami is not one long wave, but a series of successive surface waves following one another. At the same time, these surface waves can follow at a short distance and after an insignificant time interval, or they can “catch up” with each other after a few hours;
• The specificity of a tsunami is that its constituent waves are dangerous only in shallow water. Where the depth is large, that is, in the open sea, ocean, tsunami waves are fast moving waves (speed can reach up to several hundred kilometers per hour), but at the same time of insignificant height, about one meter, almost indistinguishable from the side. When the tsunami reaches shallow water, these waves are significantly slowed down, but at the same time they form high water waves;
• The scientific description of the tsunami was first given in 1586 by the great Spanish historian and geographer José de Acosta, who observed the devastating tsunami while in South America, the future capital of Peru, the city of Lima. But already the ancient Greek historian Thucydides in his writings conjectured that the cause of high sea waves could be underwater earthquakes;
• The main source of tsunamis is earthquakes, but long waves are also generated by other factors. Among them may be tropical hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, meteorite falls, landslides, and the like. For example, in 1934, on the coast of Norway, a forty-meter-high wave arose because a fragment weighing three million tons broke off a rock and fell into the water. The resulting tsunami destroyed a fishing village located on the coast;
• More than 80% of all tsunamis occur in the Pacific Ocean. This circumstance is explained by two reasons: firstly, the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is one of the most unstable parts of the earth's crust in terms of tectonics; secondly, the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean, devoid of a large number of large islands, provide the waves with the opportunity to pick up speed and thereby accumulate energy to turn into especially large and strong tsunamis in shallow water;
• the largest tsunamis, called supertsunamis by experts, are usually generated not by earthquakes, but by “bombardment” of the water column;
• waves of the largest seismic, that is, caused by an earthquake, tsunami, reports of which have survived to this day, reached a height of 75 meters and were recorded in 1771 in Japan. Meanwhile, the wave height of the largest known tsunami in history was 524 meters. This tsunami occurred in 1958 in Alaska and was caused by a massive rock landslide. From a rock located at an altitude of more than a kilometer above sea level, a fragment of more than 30 million cubic meters of stone separated - this mass, which gained great acceleration when falling from a significant height, served as the source of such high waves that hit the coast;
• one of the names assigned to asteroids is associated with the tsunami. In 2004, during the infamous tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the girl Tilly Smith, who was relaxing on one of the beaches of Southeast Asia, noticed the approaching wave, remembered the recommendations she had heard at school for saving from the tsunami and warned relatives and friends that they needed to move away from the coast. Thus, many lives were saved and the asteroid "20002 Tillismith" was named after the girl;
• scientists have not yet created a mechanism for predicting the occurrence of a tsunami, since the factors that generate long waves are short-term, so at present no one is able to accurately predict where a tsunami will occur. At the same time, there is a system for tracking existing tsunamis - these are special sensors dispersed over a particular part of the sea or ocean that record water pressure indicators and transmit them to the control center;
• Japanese teenager Misaki Murakami got back his football after he lost it during the devastating tsunami in Japan in March 2011. A year later, the ball with the name Murakami written on it was found off the coast of Alaska and returned to the owner.

"Killer wave" is not a journalistic fiction, but a serious scientific term. Irina Didenkulova, laureate of the "For Women in Science" award, tells GEO about how such waves differ from tsunamis, and what you should be afraid of on the beach.

text: Karina Nazaretyan

Zacarias Pereira da Mata Shutterstock

What are killer waves?

Journalists often confuse them with tsunamis, but this is a completely different phenomenon. Here, for example, you stand on the shore and watch the waves. All waves are slightly different: one is a little more, the other is a little less. And suddenly a very large wave appears in this random field. It appears randomly, without any obvious prerequisite. Such waves are called killer waves.

And how to distinguish a killer wave from just a big wave?

Let's take a time interval (for example, 20 minutes), which fits more than a hundred waves. You select a third of the largest of them and find their average height. The killer wave should be at least twice this average height of the largest waves.

With this definition, of course, not every killer wave can “kill” someone. If the general background disturbance is weak, then the "killer" will be small. Therefore, killer waves are most dangerous during a storm, when the background waves are already significant. Moreover, their main danger is in surprise. They have no source per se, and because of this, they cannot be predicted.

How so? There must be some reason?

There are many reasons. For example, when waves move against the current. It gradually slows down the waves, and at some point there is a surge. Another mechanism is different focusing. For example, when waves move at different speeds. At some point, they all meet and form one big wave.

There is also a mechanism of modulation instability of waves. This is when a sequence of almost identical waves gradually breaks up into groups of large and very energetic waves, and killer waves are already born in these groups. We can say that the waves like to live in groups.

There is an interaction between waves and the atmosphere. In shallow water, waves interact in a complex way both with each other and with the seabed and shore, and this also gives rise to killer waves.

And it's completely unpredictable?

This requires a complex system, but it seems to me that it is impossible to build such a general system. In addition, it is necessary to distinguish between waves in the open ocean, near the shore and on the shore itself. If we talk about waves on the coast, then it is necessary that a sensor be installed on each beach that would catch these waves. And also to have a person who would follow this all the time. That is, it is still hard to believe that it can be implemented.

The probabilistic approach seems more realistic to me. You can identify the conditions that contribute to the appearance of killer waves. And when we know for sure that the probability of their occurrence is high, announce warnings. For example, signs "Dangerous" and "Fear the killer wave." Or put up red flags while swimming.

Well, the third possibility is a combination of these two approaches: to start monitoring the sensor especially carefully when the probability of a killer wave is high.

And if it were possible to place sensors on the beach, would it be possible to accurately predict killer waves?

Do not predict, but fix. But if a person fixes it far enough - five to ten minutes from the shore - this is enough for people to move away from the water.

Will your work help prevent rogue wave disasters?

Of course, everything is done for this. My part is coastal: what happens in the coastal zone. Probably, our merit is that we began to insist: there are also killer waves near the coast. Coastal waves have nothing to do with ship accidents, but they are responsible for the death of people on the shore - when someone is washed away by a wave. This happens quite often.

Now we are looking at which coastal structures are more dangerous. It seems that some of them - for example, parapets - seem to provoke the appearance of killer waves during a storm. That is why so many deaths happen on steep slopes and on parapets.

The issue of education is also very important here. It is necessary that people understand what can happen, what to expect from the sea, how to behave on the shore. This, too, is still lacking.

By the way, is it true that there are tsunamis in rivers and lakes?

Yes. If we define a tsunami as a long wave, then we do not care where the landslide came down: in the sea, ocean or in a river or lake - it will cause this big wave both there and there. It's only a matter of scale: it is clear that there is simply not enough water in the lake to cause much damage.

With a lake, we have a good example in Kamchatka - Lake Karymskoe. This is a volcanic lake, and inside it, under the water column, in 1996 a volcano erupted. The wave on the shore reached 30 meters.

And with the rivers there is a beautiful historical Nizhny Novgorod example. We found it in the chronicle. In 1597, the entire Pechersky Monastery descended into the Volga. As a result, a tsunami wave formed, which threw the boats 40 meters from the shore. By the way, this monastery still stands with us, however, it is already new: it was then rebuilt many times.

What is harder to predict - killer waves or tsunamis?

These are different phenomena, here the scale of disasters is different. A tsunami is a crazy energy wave. It causes a lot of destruction. This is not the case with killer waves: they differ from ordinary waves in amplitude. Their danger lies in surprise.

Of course, tsunamis are easier to predict. And already now they are doing it anyway, those tsunamis that are caused by earthquakes. An earthquake occurs, then its parameters are evaluated. Based on these calculations, they look at what kind of tsunami wave can be generated and calculate the propagation of this wave.

But this is with a tsunami from earthquakes. And, for example, for the tsunami caused by landslides, no forecasts have yet been made.

My work helps to estimate the height of the wave on the shore. In particular, we analyzed which wave is more dangerous and which is less. And is it possible, knowing approximately the shape of the wave, to draw any conclusions about the range of its run-up and how strong the flood will be. It would be desirable, of course, that this was once used in practice.

When do you think it will be used?

It doesn't depend on us. Science has come a long way in the last ten years. But scientists are not responsible for operational systems, other state structures are responsible for them - such as, for example, the Ministry of Emergency Situations. And they live by their own laws, often showing little interest in modern opportunities and developments. And this is not only in our country, it is in general in the world.

For example, the Mediterranean tsunami warning system still uses a decision matrix that is based solely on the magnitude of the earthquake. At earthquake magnitudes greater than 6.5, a tsunami alarm is announced, at magnitudes from 6 to 6.5 - a warning. It is clear that such a method is inaccurate and leads to serious miscalculations and errors. But at the same time, it is convenient in its simplicity, so it is difficult to refuse it even in the name of significant improvements.

How to change the notification system? Need to put people who understand in their places?

Yes, sure. First of all, it is necessary that a person be more qualified, able to work with a new system, which is obviously more complicated than a tablet. And, of course, you need to introduce an appropriate system - something with which a person will work.

Please tell us about the catalog of killer waves in the World Ocean that you have compiled.

This is an interesting toy, I like it - unexpectedly, a lot was actually pulled out of nothing. We collected information from the media: newspapers, YouTube videos, navigation sites. They also received information simply from people, from personal conversations. I tried it for the first time in 2005, but then I could only select nine events. This is not much, but already something, because before that there were no attempts to streamline the accidents that occurred due to the fault of killer waves.

But over the next five years, we managed to collect almost a hundred events, from which we pulled out the maximum information: at what depth was the wave, when, where, under what conditions. We looked at it from different angles and got quite interesting statistics. Everyone really loves it: scientists because there is something to think about, and journalists because such horror stories are collected there.

When will it be possible to predict tsunamis and killer waves?

In general, it takes years to develop and implement any system. First, you need to invent it, then run it, test it until it starts working normally. It should take at least five years.

If we talk about tsunamis, then there is a tsunami warning system on the Pacific coast in the Far East, but, for example, in the Black and Caspian Seas, no. At the same time, it is also impossible to simply completely shift the Far Eastern experience to the Black and Caspian Seas: the features of these basins are different, they must be taken into account and the system debugged in an appropriate way. Well, I already spoke about the imperfection of the existing systems. However, in order to improve something, it is always better to have something already.

There is still absolutely nothing on the killer waves.

And when will this be done?

Let's put it this way: I hope that in my lifetime I will catch it. In the end, everything must sooner or later move off the ground.

Irina Didenkulova, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Applied Mathematics, Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University. R. E. Alekseeva, laureate of the L’Oréal-UNESCO Prize “For Women in Science”.

The heavy-duty tanker Sinclair ripped up the water surface of the ocean off the coast of South Africa. The team slowly secured the cargo on the deck: in a few hours, according to weather forecasts, the ship was supposed to enter the storm zone. And suddenly the deck sailors froze in horror. With complete calm, a monstrous wave as high as a ten-story building was approaching the tanker at great speed. It was too late to run. People grabbed for anything. A mass of water hit the deck. The powerful tanker spun in the whirlpool like a piece of wood. When the wave subsided, some sailors were missing, many were injured ...

In the arsenals of the Greek god of the seas Poseidon and his ancient Roman counterpart Neptune, a lot of things are in store to intimidate those who appear as uninvited guests in their water domains. Storms, typhoons, tsunamis are by no means a complete list of manifestations of the gods' strong temper. However, one of the most incomprehensible phenomena that disturb the world's oceans, and at the same time the minds of scientists, are "water mountains" or "cannibal waves", giant lonely waves that suddenly grow in the middle of the ocean surface.

Sunk in the abyss

For centuries, seafarers have passed from mouth to mouth terrible stories about killer waves. But even experienced sailors, not to mention pundits, they were perceived solely as chilling inventions. Back in 1840, the French navigator Dumont-Durville managed to see a giant wave about 35 m high, but his message at a meeting of the French Geographical Society caused only ironic laughter.

In 1979, there was a story with the Sinclair tanker, which, fortunately, left a large number of eyewitnesses to the mysterious phenomenon. This forced many scientists to reconsider the frivolous attitude to marine horror stories. However, even then, the researchers argued that even if such waves occur, this happens no more than once every 10 thousand years. The study of this incomprehensible phenomenon was taken seriously only after an English cargo ship sank off the coast of Japan in 1980. "Derbyshire" . Numerous checks have established that the ship, almost 300 meters long, was destroyed by a giant wave that broke through the main cargo hatch and flooded the hold. At the same time, 44 people died. In the same year, the oil tanker Esso Languedoc collided with a killer wave off the southeast coast of Africa. Captain's assistant Philip Lizhura managed to capture on the camera the full power of the water shaft, which shot up no less than 30 meters. The tanker was lucky: he stayed afloat. The study of giant waves came close.

In 1995, the British cruise ship Queen Elizabeth II and the Norwegian oil platform operating in the North Sea fell victim to the killer wave one after the other. The captain of the liner, which, by a lucky chance, received minor damage, very accurately described the terrible meeting: “At some point, it seemed to me that there had been a monstrous navigational error, and we would now crash into a thirty-meter chalk rock at full speed. But in a moment, the “rock”, turning into a giant wave, collapsed with its entire mass onto the decks of the ship.” A laser radar was installed on the oil platform, which accurately recorded the height of the water "mountain" - 26 meters. The mangled platform survived, and scientists received irrefutable evidence of the existence of sea monsters.

Under pressure from transnational shipping companies, the European Union in 2000 undertook the development of a project for an in-depth study of "superwaves".

Killers from nowhere

During the implementation of the project, statistics were announced that turned out to be even more terrible than the deadly ramparts themselves. In the last thirty years alone, about 200 ships have gone into the abyss of ocean waters or received serious damage, including more than twenty supertankers, which, as it was believed, were “knee-deep sea” and no storm was terrible. At the same time, there are several hundred dead sailors. And how many among this number of small trawlers, yachts that disappeared without a trace, it is impossible to calculate at all!

Experts identify "classic anomalous" waves, that is, waves of large amplitudes (the largest recorded wave was observed in 1971 near the Japanese Islands and had a height of 85 meters), which can be predicted within the framework of the theory of wind processes and the actual killer waves, the appearance of which is not fits into existing theories of chance. An important circumstance that makes it possible to distinguish the phenomenon into a separate scientific and practical line is the appearance of killer waves from nowhere.

To date, oceanographers and physicists have only been able to draw up a rough map of dangerous areas. This is the coast of South Africa, the Bay of Biscay, the North Sea. However, the planetary phenomenon, as they say, takes place in other parts of the planet. "Monsters" were seen even on the Black Sea, and although their height reached only 10 meters, this was enough to sink several small trawlers.

At the beginning, it was believed that the waves - "morons" (they are called so) arise during a storm in areas with strong currents. The same "ninth wave" that sailors are so afraid of. The waves, as it were, absorb underwater energy and give birth to a giant that destroys everything in its path. The theory was based on the fact that most often such waves appear at the Cape of Good Hope, where warm and cold streams join. It is there that the “three sisters” are “registered”, the phenomenon of giant waves, following one after another, being captured by which, heavy supertankers break under their own weight, like fragile boats. However, rarer, and much more dangerous killer waves appear in fairly calm weather. And in other seas and oceans….

Today, waves are recorded by satellites from space, their computer models are created, but so far no one can explain the reasons for all cases of rogue waves. Moreover, even an early warning system cannot be created at the moment. Swedish professor Mattias Marklund, who heads the European project to unravel the anomalous phenomenon, believes that since a giant wave occurs instantly, even with the most advanced navigation systems, it makes no sense to notify ships of the birth of a "monster", it will catch up and hit anyway. All that researchers have been able to do so far is to create a detailed map of the "triangles of death" in the oceans, where at certain times and under certain circumstances the appearance of bloodthirsty giants is possible.

In 1806, the Irish hydrographer and Admiral of the British Navy Francis Beaufort (1774-1875) introduced a special scale according to which weather at sea was classified depending on the degree of wind effect on the water surface. It was divided into twelve steps: from zero (complete calm) to 12 points (hurricane). In the twentieth century, with some changes, it was adopted by the International Meteorological Committee. Since then, before a sailor who has passed a 12-point "excitement", hats are involuntarily taken off - to stand among the billowing huge water shafts, the tops of which the hurricane wind inflates into continuous clouds of spray and foam, is not given to everyone.

running after each other

Unlike "waves from nowhere", the causes that cause the most terrible and destructive sea waves - tsunamis, have long been established and studied. Their appearance is purely the result of catastrophic geophysical events. Old-timers of Primorsky Krai say that a tsunami can only be seen once. After all, it is almost impossible to be captured by giant sea shafts and after that to survive. An example of this is the tsunami at the end of 2004 in Southeast Asia. A giant wave swept away everything in its path, diverging across the Indian Ocean. Sumatra and Java, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh, Thailand suffered, the wave even reached the east coast of Africa. More than 230,000 people died as a result. This tragedy is one of the largest natural disasters in human history.

"High wave in the port" - this is how the word "tsunami" is translated from Japanese. In 85% of cases, a natural disaster occurs as a result of an underwater earthquake. Even a small, just a few meters, shift of the ocean floor causes a wave to spread from the epicenter in a circle over a huge area. And this despite the fact that only about 1% of the energy of an earthquake goes into tsunami energy. In the open sea, the wave speed, like that of a jet liner, is up to 800 km / h, but sometimes it is impossible to notice it. Due to the low height and large length (the distance between its crests), which is sometimes 1000 km, the tsunami in the ocean remains almost imperceptible. The ship she passes under will only rock slightly. The situation changes dramatically when the wave approaches the shore, in shallow water. Its speed and length drop sharply, the rear waves catch up with the front ones, as a result, the height grows - up to seven, ten or more meters (cases of 80-meter tsunamis are known). It bursts onto land with all its enormous energy (during a storm, only the near-surface layer of water comes into motion, during a tsunami - the entire thickness) and can pass several hundred, and sometimes thousands of meters along the ground. Each tsunami hits twice. At first - when it falls on the shore, flooding it. And then - when the water begins to return to the sea, carrying away those who survived after the first blow.

History of disasters

Tsunamis, which are included in the annals as a colossal natural disaster, occur with a frequency of about once every 150-200 years. The first historically recorded tsunami occurred in 365 AD. in Alexandria (Egypt), where the waves killed 5,000 people. In 1755, a tsunami caused by a devastating earthquake claimed the lives of 40,000 Portuguese. A formidable ocean wave hit Japan on June 15, 1896: the wave height reached 35 meters, then 27 thousand people died, and all coastal towns and villages in the 800 km strip ceased to exist. Last year's earthquake off the east coast of the island of Honshu in Japan (March 11, 2011), triggered a massive tsunami that caused widespread destruction in the northern islands of the Japanese archipelago. The earthquake occurred at a distance of about 70 km from the nearest point on the coast of Japan. An initial estimate showed that it took 10 to 30 minutes for the tsunami waves to reach the first affected areas of Japan. 69 minutes after the earthquake, a tsunami flooded the Sendai airport. The tsunami spread throughout the Pacific Ocean; warnings and evacuations were issued in many coastal countries, including along the Pacific coast of North and South America from Alaska to Chile. However, when the tsunami reached many of these places, it caused only relatively minor effects. On the coast of Chile, which is farthest from the Pacific coast of Japan (about 17,000 km), waves up to 2 meters in height were recorded.

But tsunamis can be caused by more than just earthquakes. About 10 percent of them are due to volcanic eruptions. The explosion in 1883 of the Krakatau volcano caused a wave that hit the islands of Java and Sumatra, washing away more than 5,000 fishing boats, about 300 villages and killing more than 36,000 people. And in the Lituya Bay (South-East Alaska) in the summer of 1958, a tsunami caused a landslide that brought down a mountainside into the sea from a height of 900 meters. Before the eyes of the shocked people, a huge wave rose up, which swallowed the foot of the mountain in another part of the bay. After that, she swept across the bay, ripping off trees from the slopes of the mountains at an altitude of up to 600 meters; collapsed like a water mountain on the island of Cenotaphia, rolled over its maximum height point, which towered 50 m above sea level.




DIY tsunami

In the middle of the twentieth century, as a result of the creation of thermonuclear weapons, it became possible to create man-made tsunamis. An example is the famous US underwater nuclear explosion in 1946 near Bikini Atoll. As a result of the explosion, a whole series of waves on the water arose. Approximately 11 seconds after the explosion, the first wave had a maximum height of 28 meters and was located at a distance of half a kilometer from the epicenter of the explosion. Moreover, it moved at a speed of about 25 m / s. In the early 60s of the last century, a thermonuclear superbomb with a power of up to 100 Mt was created in the USSR. Its parameters are: length - about 8 meters, diameter - 3 meters, weight - about 30 tons. Not a single combat missile was capable of carrying such a load. How, in the event of a war, to deliver a bomb to the enemy? They say that at that time the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov, put forward the idea of ​​hidden towing weapons by a submarine to the shores of the aggressor and its detonation near the enemy’s naval base. If we assume that it would be blown up at a distance of a kilometer from the coast, where the depth of the sea is 100 m, according to calculations, the height of the resulting wave would be 80 m. It is hard to imagine what damage it would inflict on the enemy. Fortunately, things did not go beyond the projects.


The water element did not bypass our country either. The first mentions date back to 1737, when the expedition of the Russian navigator Stepan Petrovich Krasheninnikov personally observed a terrifying sea quake on the eastern coast of Kamchatka: stood up and ran into the sea. About a quarter of an hour later, waves of terrible and incomparable shaking followed, and at the same time, water fell on the shore to a height of 30 sazhens. From this flood, the local inhabitants were completely ruined, and many died miserably in their stomachs ... ”According to the height of the waves, this seaquake is still considered to be one of the strongest ever. In 1952, an 18 m high tsunami destroyed the city of Severo-Kurilsk, located on Paramushir Island, the northernmost island of the Kuril chain. Early in the morning, the inhabitants of a small town were awakened by a seven-magnitude earthquake ... The old-timers, despite the calm sea, after the first shock rushed to the mountains. 45 minutes after the earthquake began, a loud rumble was heard from the ocean, and a few seconds later a high wave hit the city, moving at great speed and having a height of more than 5 meters in the central part of the city, where it rolled along the river valley. A few minutes later, the wave receded into the sea, taking with it everything destroyed. The retreat of the wave was so intense that the bottom was exposed for several hundred meters. Calm has come. After 15 minutes, a second wave hit the city; it reached a height of 10 m ... Within a few minutes, almost half of the inhabitants died in this whirlpool. But data on such a natural phenomenon in the Black and Azov Seas are scarce. These tsunamis are similar to violent storms and do not cause major damage. Perhaps the most striking example of the Black Sea tsunami is what happened in the autumn of 1854. The Crimean War was going on, the combined Anglo-French squadron landed troops in Evpatoria and was preparing for the siege of Sevastopol. Unexpectedly, clouds covered the sky, a heavy wind rose, the waves reached great heights ... The consequences of the storm were fatal: 34 warships sank, 1,500 people died, and the damage amounted to 60 million francs. In France, the loss of the fleet gave rise to the organization of the first regular weather service.


Several years ago, seismologists S. Ward (USA) and S. Day (Great Britain) predicted that the destruction of the active volcano Cumbre Vieja on one of the Canary Islands could cause a catastrophe on a planetary scale. The shaking of the earth's crust is quite likely to provoke the collapse of a gigantic volume of rocks. A mass of about a trillion tons will fall into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and form a water dome up to a kilometer high. This dome will generate a megatsunami with a height of more than 150 m. Its speed will exceed 200 m/s. The wave will hit the coast of Africa first, then South England and later reach the Caribbean and the east coast of America. According to the calculations of seismologists, the height of the tsunami here will be 20-50 m. This is enough to destroy and flood Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, New York. The number of victims could reach tens of millions. When the catastrophe will occur, scientists cannot say for sure. However, their opponents from the scientific world believe that the scale of the disaster is greatly exaggerated.

Imminent danger

Is it possible to foresee a tsunami and warn residents of the danger zone about the danger? Unfortunately, although the tsunami warning system exists in nature, it is not available everywhere and does not always work. And modern science is not yet able to predict the day and hour of an earthquake. And besides, with some earthquakes, deadly waves come almost instantly. Under these conditions, the effectiveness of any warning services is nil. And this means that only those who live according to the old Japanese principle can be saved: "When you hear about an earthquake, think about a tsunami, when you see a tsunami, run to the mountains." Of course, at the moment when the earth stands on end and houses collapse, it is difficult to follow this aphorism, but so far the scientists of the planet cannot offer another.

Alien provocateurs

We earthlings live, so to speak, on a shooting range. Every now and then at the "temple" of the planet cosmic "bullets" rush: from small ones, with a grain of sand, to very impressive ones. Fortunately, small ones are completely destroyed in the atmosphere, and the more serious the size of the alien, the less often it enters the planet. The fall of large asteroids to Earth still sometimes occurs, causing planetary cataclysms. The speed of cosmic bodies is enormous: approximately from 10 to 70 km/s. Their collision with the planet leads to an explosion and strong earthquakes. At the same time, the mass of the destroyed substance of the planet is hundreds of times greater than the mass of the fallen body. Therefore, the impact of an asteroid in the ocean or sea causes a tsunami of such destructive force that the same catastrophe in Southeast Asia in 2004 will seem like an easy workout for the heavenly forces. The fact that in prehistoric times asteroids fell into the ocean is evidenced by craters at the bottom of the oceans (about 20 of them have been explored to date). For example, the Mjolnir crater in the Barents Sea with a diameter of about 40 km arose as a result of the fall of an asteroid with a diameter of 1-3 km into the sea to a depth of 300-500 m. This happened about 140 million years ago. An asteroid at a distance of a thousand kilometers caused a tsunami with a height of more than 100 m. Or the Eltanin crater, located in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of about 5 km. It arose as a result of the fall of an asteroid 0.5-2 km in diameter 2.2 million years ago, which led to the formation of a tsunami with a height of about 200 m at a distance of 1 thousand km from the epicenter. Some of them could have fallen into the sea quite recently (5-10 thousand years ago). According to one version, the global flood, described in the legends of different peoples, could be caused by a tsunami as a result of a small asteroid falling into the Mediterranean or Black Sea. And the mysterious flowering country of Hyperborea, a fragment of which Greenland is today, according to modern scientists, went under water due to the fall of an asteroid 8000 years ago.

Over thousands of years of navigation, people have learned to deal with the dangers of the water element. Pilots indicate a safe path, weather forecasters warn of storms, satellites watch for icebergs and other dangerous objects. However, it is still not clear how to protect yourself from a thirty-meter wave, which suddenly arises for no apparent reason. Fifteen years ago, mysterious killer waves were considered fiction.

Sometimes the appearance of giant waves on the surface of the ocean is quite understandable and expected, but sometimes they are a real mystery. Often such a wave is a death sentence for any ship. The name of these riddles is killer waves.

It is unlikely that you will find a sailor who has not been baptized by a storm. Because, to paraphrase a well-known saying, to be afraid of storms is not to go out to sea. Since the dawn of navigation, the storm has been the best test of both courage and professionalism. And if the favorite theme of the memories of war veterans is past battles, then the “sea wolves” will certainly tell you about the whistling wind that rips off radio antennas and radars, and the huge roaring waves that almost swallowed their ship. Which, perhaps, was "the most-most."

But already 200 years ago, it became necessary to clarify the strength of the storm. Therefore, in 1806, the Irish hydrographer and Admiral of the British Navy Francis Beaufort (Francis Beaufort, 1774-1875) introduced a special scale according to which weather at sea was classified depending on the degree of wind impact on the water surface. It was divided into thirteen steps: from zero (complete calm) to 12 points (hurricane). In the twentieth century, with some changes (in 1946, it was 17-point), it was adopted by the International Meteorological Committee - including for the classification of winds on land. Since then, hats have been involuntarily taken off in front of a sailor who has passed a 12-point “excitement” - because they at least heard a lot about what it is: billowing huge shafts, the tops of which are blown by a hurricane into continuous clouds of spray and foam.

However, for the terrible phenomenon that regularly strikes the southeastern tip of the North American continent, a new scale had to be invented in 1920. This is a five-point Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, which evaluates not so much the power of the elements as the destruction that it produces.

According to this scale, a Category 1 hurricane (wind speed 119-153 km/h) breaks tree branches and causes some damage to small boats at the pier. Category 3 hurricane (179-209 km/h) knocks down trees, rips off roofs and destroys light prefabricated houses, floods the coastline. The most terrible hurricane of the fifth category (more than 255 km / h) destroys most of the buildings and causes severe flooding - driving large masses of water onto land. That was the infamous Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans in 2005.

The Caribbean Sea, where up to ten hurricanes forming in the Atlantic annually from June 1 to November 30, has long been considered one of the most dangerous areas for navigation. And living on the islands of this basin is by no means safe - especially in a poor country like Haiti - where there is neither a normal warning service, nor the ability to evacuate from a dangerous coast. In 2004, Hurricane Jenny killed 1,316 people there. The wind, roaring like a squadron of jet aircraft, blew away the dilapidated huts along with their residents, brought down palm trees on the heads of people. And from the sea, foaming shafts rolled on them.

One can only imagine what the crew of the ship is experiencing, having fallen into the "very hot" of such a hurricane. However, it happens that ships do not die during a storm at all.

In April 2005, the cruise ship Norwegian Dawn left the fabulous Bahamas for New York Harbor. The sea was slightly stormy, but a huge 300-meter ship could afford to simply not notice such excitement. Two and a half thousand passengers had fun in restaurants, walked along the decks and took pictures for memory.

Suddenly, the liner banked sharply, and in the next seconds a giant wave hit its side, knocking out the windows of the cabins. She swept through the ship, sweeping away sun loungers in her path, overturning boats and jacuzzis installed on deck 12, knocking passengers and sailors off their feet.

“It was a real hell,” said James Frahley, one of the passengers who celebrated his honeymoon on the liner with his wife. Streams of water rolled across the decks. We began to call relatives and friends to say goodbye, deciding that the ship was dying.

So "Norwegian Dawn" faced one of the most mysterious and terrible ocean anomalies - a giant killer wave. In the West, they have received various names: freak, rogue, rabid-dog, giant waves, cape rollers, steep wave events, etc.

The ship was very lucky - he escaped with only minor damage to the hull, property washed overboard and injured passengers. But the wave that suddenly hit him did not get his sinister nickname for nothing. The liner could well have suffered the fate of the Hollywood "Poseidon" - turned upside down in the film of the same name. Or, even worse, just break in half and drown, becoming the second Titanic.

Back in 1840, during his expedition, the French navigator Dumont D'Urville (Jules Sebastien Cesar Dumont d'Urville, 1792-1842) observed a giant wave about 35 m high. But his message at a meeting of the French Geographical Society caused only ironic laughter. None of the pundits could believe that such waves could exist.

The study of this phenomenon was taken seriously only after the English cargo ship Derbyshire sank off the coast of Japan in 1980. As the survey showed, the ship, almost 300 meters long, was destroyed by a giant wave that broke through the main cargo hatch and flooded the hold. 44 people died. In the same year, the oil tanker Esso Languedoc collided with a killer wave off the coast of South Africa.

“It was stormy, but not strong,” said the English magazine New Scientist, the senior assistant to the captain Philippe Lijour, “Suddenly, a huge wave appeared from the stern, many times higher than all the others. She covered the whole ship, even the masts disappeared under the water.

While the water rolled across the deck, Philip managed to grab a picture of it. According to him, the shaft shot up at least 30 meters. The tanker was lucky - he stayed afloat. However, these two cases were the last straw that caused companies involved in the export-import of raw materials to panic. After all, it was believed that it was not only economically profitable to transport it on giant ships, but also safer - they say that such ships, which are “knee-deep sea”, are not afraid of any storm.

Alas! Between 1969 and 1994 alone, twenty-two supertankers sank or were seriously damaged in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, killing five hundred and twenty-five people. Twelve more such tragedies during this time occurred in the Indian Ocean. Offshore oil platforms also suffer from them. So, on February 15, 1982, a killer wave overturned a Mobil Oil drilling rig in the Newfoundland Bank area, killing eighty-four workers.

But an even greater number of small vessels (trawlers, pleasure yachts) when meeting with killer waves simply disappear without a trace, without even having time to send a distress signal. Giant water shafts, as high as a fifteen-story building, crushed or smashed boats. The skill of the helmsmen did not save either: if someone managed to turn around with his nose to the wave, then his fate was the same as that of the unfortunate fishermen in the movie "The Perfect Storm": the boat, trying to climb the ridge, became vertical - and broke down, falling into the abyss with the keel up.

Killer waves usually occur during a storm. This is the same “ninth wave” that sailors are so afraid of - but, fortunately, not everyone happens to encounter it. If the height of ordinary storm crests is on average 4-6 meters (10-15 in a hurricane), then a wave suddenly arising among them can reach a height of 25-30 meters.

However, rarer, and much more dangerous killer waves appear in fairly calm weather - and this is not called otherwise than an anomaly. At first, they tried to justify them by the collision of sea currents: most often such waves appear at the Cape of Good Hope (the southern tip of Africa), where warm and cold streams join. It is there that sometimes the so-called. "three sisters" - three giant waves following one after another, climbing which, supertankers break under their own weight.

But reports of deadly ramparts came from other parts of the world. They were also seen on the Black Sea - “only” ten meters high, but this was enough to turn over several small trawlers. In 2006, such a wave hit the British ferry "Pont-Aven" (Pont-Aven), following the Pas de Calais. She broke windows at six deck height, injuring several passengers.

What prompts the sea surface to suddenly rise up in a giant shaft? Both serious scientists and amateur theorists develop a variety of hypotheses. Waves are fixed by satellites from space, their models are created in research pools, but they still cannot explain the reasons for all cases of rogue waves.

But the causes that cause the most terrible and destructive sea waves - tsunamis - have long been established and studied.

Seaside resorts are not always a paradise on the planet. Sometimes they become a real hell - when suddenly, in clear and sunny weather, giant water shafts collapse on them, washing away entire cities in their path.

... These shots went around the world: unsuspecting tourists who, out of curiosity, went to the bottom of a suddenly receding sea to pick up a few shells and starfish. And suddenly they notice how a rapidly approaching wave appears on the horizon. The poor fellows try to run away, but a muddy, seething stream overtakes and captures them, and then rushes to the whitening houses on the coast ...

The catastrophe that broke out on December 26, 2004 in Southeast Asia shocked humanity. A giant wave swept away everything in its path, diverging across the Indian Ocean. Sumatra and Java, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh, Thailand suffered, the wave even reached the east coast of Africa. The Andaman Islands went under water for several hours - and the local natives miraculously survived, escaping on the tops of trees. As a result of the disaster, more than 230 thousand people died - it took more than a month to find and bury all of them. Millions of people were left homeless and homeless. The tragedy turned out to be one of the largest and most tragic natural disasters in the history of mankind.

"High wave entering the harbor" - this is how the word "tsunami" is translated from Japanese. In 99% of cases, tsunamis occur as a result of an earthquake on the ocean floor, when it drops or rises sharply. Just a few meters, but over a huge area - and this is enough to cause a wave that scatters from the epicenter in a circle. In the open sea, its speed reaches 800 km / h, but it is almost impossible to notice it, since its height is only about one, maximum two meters - but with a length of up to several kilometers. The ship under which it will sweep will only shake slightly - that is why, having received a warning, the ships tend to leave the ports and go as far as possible into the sea.

The situation changes when the wave approaches the shore, in shallow water (enters the harbor). Its speed and length drop sharply, but its height grows - up to seven, ten or more meters (cases of 40-meter tsunamis are known). It bursts onto land as a solid wall and has tremendous energy - that's why tsunamis are so destructive and can pass several hundred, and sometimes thousands of meters along the ground. And each tsunami strikes twice. At first - when it falls on the shore, flooding it. And then - when the water begins to return to the sea, carrying away those who survived after the first blow.

In 1755, a tsunami caused by a devastating earthquake claimed the lives of 40,000 Portuguese. A formidable ocean wave hit Japan on June 15, 1896: the wave height reached 35 meters, then 27 thousand people died, and all coastal towns and villages in the 800 km strip ceased to exist. In 1992, 2,000 inhabitants of the Indonesian islands were killed by a tsunami.

Experienced residents of coastal cities and towns in seismically dangerous areas know that as soon as an earthquake begins, and after it a sudden and rapid ebb, you need to drop everything and run without looking back to a hill or inland. In a number of regions that regularly suffer from tsunamis (Japan, Sakhalin, Hawaii), special warning services have been created. They fix an earthquake in the ocean and immediately give an alarm to all the media and through the street loudspeakers.

But tsunamis can be caused by more than just earthquakes. The explosion in 1883 of the Krakatoa volcano caused a wave that hit the islands of Java and Sumatra, washing away more than 5,000 fishing boats, about 300 villages and killing more than 36,000 people. And in Lituya Bay (Alaska), a tsunami caused a landslide that brought down a mountainside into the sea. The wave spread over a limited area, but its height was grandiose - over three hundred meters, while, having fallen on the opposite bank, it licked the bushes at a height of 580 meters!

However, this is not the limit. The largest and most destructive waves are born when large meteorites or asteroids fall into the ocean. However, fortunately, this happens extremely rarely - once every few million years. But then this cataclysm takes the scale of a truly planetary flood. For example, German scientists found that about 200 million years ago a large cosmic body crashed into the Earth. It raised a tsunami over one kilometer high, which broke into the continental plains, destroying all life in its path.

Killer waves should not be confused with tsunamis: tsunamis occur as a result of seismic events and gain high height only close to the coast, while killer waves can appear for no known reason, almost anywhere in the sea, with light wind and relatively little waves. Tsunamis are dangerous for coastal structures and ships close to the shore, while a killer wave can destroy any ship or offshore structure that it encounters.

Where do these monsters come from? Until recently, oceanographers believed that they formed as a result of well-known linear processes. According to the prevailing theory, large waves are simply the product of interference, in which small waves are combined into one large one.

In some cases, this is exactly what happens. A good example of this is the waters off Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of the African continent. The Atlantic and Indian oceans meet there. Ships around the cape are regularly attacked by huge waves, which are formed as a result of the collision of the fast Agulhas current and winds blowing from the south. The movement of water slows down, and the waves begin to pile on top of each other, forming giant shafts. In addition, superwaves can often be found in the Gulf Stream, the Kuroshio Current south of the coast of Japan, and the infamous waters of Cape Horn, where the same thing happens - fast currents collide with opposing winds.

However, the interference mechanism is not suitable for all giant waves. Firstly, it is in no way suitable to justify the appearance of giant waves in places like the North Sea. There are no fast currents at all.

Secondly, even if interference occurs, giant waves should not occur so often. Their absolute majority should gravitate towards the average height - some are slightly higher, others are slightly lower. Giants of double size should appear no more than once during a human life. However, in reality, things are quite different. Oceanographic observations suggest that most waves are smaller than average, and real giants are much more common than we think. Orthodox oceanography gets hit below the waterline.

A killer wave is usually described as a rapidly approaching wall of water of great height. In front of it moves a depression several meters deep - "a hole in the sea". Wave height is usually specified precisely as the distance from the highest point of the crest to the lowest point of the trough. In appearance, "killer waves" are divided into three main types: "white wall", "three sisters" (a group of three waves), a single wave ("single tower").

To appreciate what they can do, just look at the photograph of the Wilstar above. The surface on which such a wave falls can experience pressure of up to one hundred tons per square meter (about 980 kilopascals). A typical twelve-meter wave threatens only six tons per square meter. Most modern ships can handle up to 15 tons per square meter.

According to the observations of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), killer waves are scattered and non-scattering. Those who do not dissipate can travel quite a long distance by sea: from six to ten miles. If the ship notices a wave from afar, you can have time to take some action. Scattering ones appear literally from nowhere (apparently, such a wave attacked the "Taganrog Bay"), collapse and disappear.

According to some experts, killer waves are dangerous even for helicopters flying low over the sea: first of all, rescue ones. Despite the seeming improbability of such an event, the authors of the hypothesis believe that it cannot be ruled out and that at least two cases of loss of rescue helicopters are similar to the result of a giant wave strike.

Scientists are trying to figure out how the energy in the ocean is redistributed in such a way that the formation of killer waves becomes possible. The behavior of nonlinear systems like the sea surface is extremely difficult to describe. Some theories use the non-linear Schrödinger equation to describe the occurrence of waves. Some are trying to apply the existing descriptions of solitons - single waves of an unusual nature. In the course of the latest research on this topic, scientists managed to reproduce a very similar phenomenon in electromagnetic waves, but this has not yet led to practical results.

Some empirical data on under what conditions the occurrence of rogue waves is more likely to occur is still known. So, if the wind drives waves against a strong current, then this can lead to the appearance of high steep waves. This is notorious, for example, for the Cape of Needles (in which the Wilstar suffered). Other high risk areas are the Kuroshio Current, the Gulf Stream, the North Sea and surrounding areas.

Experts call the following prerequisites for the emergence of a killer wave:

1. area of ​​low pressure;
2. wind blowing in one direction for more than 12 consecutive hours;
3. waves moving at the same speed as the area of ​​low pressure;
4. waves moving against a strong current;
5. fast waves catching up with slower waves and merging with them together.

The absurd nature of killer waves, however, is manifested in the fact that they can also occur when the listed conditions are not met. This unpredictability is the main mystery for scientists and danger for sailors.

They managed to escape

1943 North Atlantic. The cruise ship Queen Elizabeth falls into a deep ravine and is subjected to two powerful wave impacts in a row, which cause serious damage to the bridge - twenty meters above the waterline.

1944 Indian Ocean. The British Navy cruiser Birmingham falls into a deep hole, after which a giant wave falls on its bow. According to the ship's commander's notes, the deck, eighteen meters above sea level, is knee-deep in water.

1966 North Atlantic. On the way to New York, the Italian steamer Michelangelo is hit by a wave eighteen meters high. Water rushes into the bridge and first class cabins, killing two passengers and one crew member.

1995, North Sea. The floating drilling rig Weslefrikk B, owned by Statoil, is seriously damaged by a giant wave. According to one of the crew members, a few minutes before the impact, he saw a "wall of water".

1995 North Atlantic. While crossing to New York, the Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise ship is caught in a hurricane and takes a twenty-nine-meter high wave on its bow. “It felt like we were crashing into the White Cliffs of Dover,” says Capt. Ronald Warrick.

1998, North Atlantic. BP Amoco's Sheehallion floating production platform is hit by a giant wave that blows its tank superstructure at a height of eighteen meters above the water level.

2000, North Atlantic. Having received a distress call from a yacht 600 miles from the Irish port of Cork, the British cruise ship Oriana is hit by a twenty-one-meter high wave.

The melodic Japanese word "tsunami" means "wave in the harbor." This phenomenon has long brought terrible destruction and death to people: it is mentioned in chronicles centuries ago. On average, seven to ten devastating tsunamis occur on Earth per century.

From Romulus to the present day

The Greek historian Thucydides, who lived in the 5th century BC, may have been the first to guess that gigantic waves rolling ashore and sweeping away everything in their path were generated by underwater earthquakes. Indeed, a tsunami is a huge ocean wave resulting from an earthquake in the depths of the ocean or in the coastal zone. A similar wave can also be formed as a result of huge landslides, the descent of glaciers or the fall of a large meteorite. Its speed can reach 1000 km/h. In the center of origin, the wave height can be only from half a meter to 5 m. In the coastal zone, its speed drops significantly, but the dimensions can reach incredible values ​​- from 10 to 50 m.

Chronicles say: in 1540, the tsunami that arose as a result of an earthquake covered Venice, surrounded on all sides by the sea. The city was thoroughly destroyed, about 1000 of its inhabitants died. After more than two centuries, a new tragedy happened: on November 1, 1775, a powerful earthquake occurred in the center of the Atlantic Ocean, after which 20-meter waves hit the capital of Portugal. Within a few minutes, Lisbon was practically wiped off the face of the earth, more than 100 thousand people lost their lives. The waves even reached the Spanish and African shores, bringing a lot of misfortune to the people who lived on them. Our country also experienced the power of destructive elements: in 1952, almost 20-meter waves hit Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and Kamchatka. The largest of the island cities, Severo-Kurilsk, was almost completely destroyed, and Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky suffered. The victims of the disaster were 2300 people.

Scary records

The tsunami in the northeastern part of the Pacific Ocean became a record height. In Lituya Bay, off the southern coast of Alaska, on July 9, 1958, a strong earthquake occurred on the very edge of the coast, as a result of which more than 30 million cubic meters of rock and ice fell into the waters of the bay from almost a kilometer high. A wave with a height of 524 meters (!) demolished all vegetation and even soil from the high banks. Numerous human casualties were avoided only because there were practically no people on this deserted coast. Unfortunately, small human losses during a tsunami are the exception rather than the rule.

In 1960, the Great Chile earthquake occurred. Born off the coast of Chile, 25-meter waves across the entire endless ocean reached Hawaii and Japan. This disaster claimed more than 6,000 human lives.

On August 16, 1976, a huge wave arose in the Philippine Moro Bay, just a couple of tens of kilometers from the densely populated coast. Very few of those who were close to the shore managed to escape. The number of victims exceeded 5,000 people.
For the time being, the Indian Ocean behaved peacefully. But December 2004 came. On that tragic day, nothing foreshadowed trouble, there were no reports of an impending disaster. The tsunami was triggered by a strong earthquake at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, but for the inhabitants of Thailand and numerous tourists, the onset of the disaster was sudden, since the earthquake tremors that could warn of an impending disaster were almost not felt. People felt something was wrong only when the sea water suddenly began to move away from the coast, exposing the bottom. After some minutes, she returned in the form of a 15-meter wave, advancing on the shore in a single wide front. It was difficult to notice it from the shore - the wave did not have a foamy crest and for a long time merged with the surface of the sea. By the time they saw her, it was already too late. Unfortunately, people had only a couple of minutes to leave the dangerous place. The killer wave left behind a terrible picture: almost all buildings were completely destroyed. The total number of victims exceeded 230,000 people. As a result of a natural disaster, the country's economy was seriously affected, primarily fishing and tourism, which deprived many Thai families of their livelihoods. To a greater or lesser extent, the cataclysm affected 14 countries in the Indian Ocean basin.

Who is the real killer?

The analysis shows that the frequency of tsunamis, as well as the scale of disasters, have increased markedly in recent years. And many experts began to speculate about the man-made causes of killer waves. Some experts say that seismic weapon tests may be the cause of the tsunami. And I must say, there are grounds for such conclusions. The idea of ​​creating a seismic bomb was born in England during the Second World War. A powerful bomb with a very strong streamlined body was dropped from a great height. Due to its solid mass and high fall speed, it deepened significantly into the ground, where it exploded, destroying even very deep and protected underground communications and structures. The warheads of some modern bombs and ballistic missiles can operate on the same principle. Given the power of modern nuclear weapons, a man-made earthquake no longer seems like an impossible task. Scientists are already talking about tectonic weapons, however, so far, hypothetical. These are devices or systems that can artificially cause earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or similar phenomena in given regions of the planet by influencing natural geological processes. It is difficult to say how close this task is to implementation. But it is known that the idea of ​​using an artificial tsunami to strike a potential enemy was seriously considered in the Soviet Union in the second half of the 50s of the last century during the creation of the first Soviet nuclear submarine of project 627. At the same time, new types of nuclear weapons were created, and the idea arose combine these two innovations. The author of the idea was Academician A.D. Sakharov. A special T-15 torpedo was designed. With a given firing range of 30 km, the result was a monster 23 m long, one and a half meters in diameter and weighing 40 tons. Due to its gigantic size, the submarine could only carry one of these torpedoes. The strategy provided for a hidden approach of Soviet boats to two coasts of the American continent at once - east and west - and a simultaneous salvo from several boats with T-15 torpedoes. The explosion of megaton nuclear charges was supposed to occur under water a few kilometers from the coast. It was assumed that the gigantic man-made tsunamis that arose after the explosion would sweep away everything on both coasts of America (for example, New York, Boston, Philadelphia in the east, Los Angeles and San Francisco in the west). Fortunately, these plans did not come true. According to a popular legend, when discussing the project, allegedly one of the admirals said: "We, military sailors, are used to fighting with an armed enemy, and not with the civilian population of cities." No one today can guarantee that such words were spoken, but, one way or another, the first nuclear submarine was armed with conventional anti-ship torpedoes. And in fact, humanity is more than enough of the disasters that the elements bring to it.

P.S. On June 7, 1692, an earthquake and the ensuing tsunami destroyed the island's capital, Port Royal. The small town was only formally listed as a possession of the English crown. In practice, it was the patrimony of pirates, at one time even the famous filibuster Henry Morgan was its vice-governor. The pirate capital was completely destroyed - one half of it went under water with the first strikes of the underground elements, and the second was flooded and destroyed by the resulting tsunami. From 5 to 10 thousand inhabitants died. Of the 50 ships in the harbor, none survived. The tomb of the famous pirate has also disappeared.
***
Devastating tsunamis off the Japanese Islands occur on average every seven years. A serious shock to humanity was the tsunami on March 11, 2011, when 40-meter waves hit the coast of Japan. The main word in those days was "Fukushima". The Japanese nuclear power plant bearing this name was badly damaged by the destructive effects of a huge wave. The consequences of the disaster are still being felt. They even talked about the "second Chernobyl", however, this was a strong exaggeration.