Ancient Crash, Epic Wave

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-11-18 06:25pm

Junghalli wrote:
Bubble Boy wrote:Makes me wonder if I'd feel any fear, really, since witnessing such an event pretty much ensures I won't be surviving it. I wouldn't bother trying to outrun it or hide from it. I suppose it would be a battle between my animal instincts and intellectual grasp of the situation...
Well, I don't know about you but I don't think I could really properly - ah - appreciate such an awesome spectacle if I was actually in front of it. It's awesome to think about intellectually but I think if I actually saw a wall of water dwarfing a skyscraper coming at me any appreciation of its grandeur would be drowned under stark, overwhelming terror.

At least you'd probably be able to see the top of it, if it's the 600m tall wave. On the other hand, cloud cover is often 4km or below on an overcast day. In other words, the 4km wave might very well tower above the clouds. That would truly be an awe-inspiring sight (or it would be, if you weren't too busy shitting your pants to feel awe).

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-11-18 06:34pm

I think that if I saw that, I'd skip from denial and all that, straight through to acceptance and then to:

Fucking hell! That's freaking awesome!

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2006-11-18 11:58pm

Darth Wong wrote:At least you'd probably be able to see the top of it, if it's the 600m tall wave. On the other hand, cloud cover is often 4km or below on an overcast day. In other words, the 4km wave might very well tower above the clouds. That would truly be an awe-inspiring sight (or it would be, if you weren't too busy shitting your pants to feel awe).

Hell, there are days here where the clouds dip below the top of the IDS tower. It's not even 250 meters.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-11-19 10:04pm

Xeriar wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:At least you'd probably be able to see the top of it, if it's the 600m tall wave. On the other hand, cloud cover is often 4km or below on an overcast day. In other words, the 4km wave might very well tower above the clouds. That would truly be an awe-inspiring sight (or it would be, if you weren't too busy shitting your pants to feel awe).
Hell, there are days here where the clouds dip below the top of the IDS tower. It's not even 250 meters.

Well, when they're that low, visibility is usually shit anyway. You wouldn't see the wave until it's almost on top of you.

Flagg · Post by **Flagg** » 2006-11-19 10:14pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Xeriar wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:At least you'd probably be able to see the top of it, if it's the 600m tall wave. On the other hand, cloud cover is often 4km or below on an overcast day. In other words, the 4km wave might very well tower above the clouds. That would truly be an awe-inspiring sight (or it would be, if you weren't too busy shitting your pants to feel awe).
Hell, there are days here where the clouds dip below the top of the IDS tower. It's not even 250 meters.
Well, when they're that low, visibility is usually shit anyway. You wouldn't see the wave until it's almost on top of you.

Please correct me if I'm wrong (probably a very good chance of that), but wouldn't the air pressure in front of the wave kill you before the water even hit?

Kamakazie Sith · Post by **Kamakazie Sith** » 2006-11-19 10:19pm

Flagg wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:
Xeriar wrote: Hell, there are days here where the clouds dip below the top of the IDS tower. It's not even 250 meters.
Well, when they're that low, visibility is usually shit anyway. You wouldn't see the wave until it's almost on top of you.
Please correct me if I'm wrong (probably a very good chance of that), but wouldn't the air pressure in front of the wave kill you before the water even hit?

Would it be instant death or would you have time to think about things as your body was being torn apart?

Flagg · Post by **Flagg** » 2006-11-19 10:50pm

Kamakazie Sith wrote:
Flagg wrote:
Darth Wong wrote: Well, when they're that low, visibility is usually shit anyway. You wouldn't see the wave until it's almost on top of you.
Please correct me if I'm wrong (probably a very good chance of that), but wouldn't the air pressure in front of the wave kill you before the water even hit?
Would it be instant death or would you have time to think about things as your body was being torn apart?

I imagine that if the air pressure didn't do it, the sheer mass of water would kill you instantly.
I ask because I used to have wierd dreams about massive waves like that draining the intracoastal waterway and then slamming into my car as I was driving north on US1 back in FL. The air pressure always flung the car away from the wave and I woke up just as the water would hit.

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2007-03-10 01:24am

Xeriar wrote:...wow, here is a case example of where Wikipedia and even Google utterly fails, hard. I really need to dig out that journal. I think it's about five or six years old, now, I found it on-line but not through Google :-/

Incidentally. the Marmara sea -did- flood in that time period, and the Turks have a rather absurd legend that still recalls it appropriately - the Black Sea was originally a large freshwater sea, eventually overflowing into the Marmara and then into the Mediterranean. It's not too early into the human consciousness - hell, the Native Americans have some pretty clear legends regarding ancient geological floods too.

Apologies for the necromancy, I debated posting here or in a new thread, but I figured there was more context here (even if it isn't much). Anyway, I finally found the journal in question. Sorry I couldn't dress the link, it codes for <> which confuses the forum software I guess?

http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?re ... 2.0.CO%3B2

The article in question from the GSA covers a different hypothesis not often presented, one with more evidence behind it in my opinion (and appealing less to emotion, which is always a plus).

Incidentally, the Turkish flood myth actually has the same version of events - the Black Sea flooding into the Marmara, and not the other way around.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-03-10 03:04am

I think if we knew the world was going to end from a honking big space rock, we'd do what Téa Leoni did in Deep Impact and watch that motherfucker of a supersonic tsunami roll in like a moving mountain range.

I'd also like to see a relativistic kill vehicle impact, along the order of several petatonnes. Preferably on the other side of the planet, to avoid the whole being turned to a gas cloud instantly without seeing anything problem.

Post by **Broomstick** » 2007-03-10 01:58pm

Quadlok wrote:If this happened so recently, shouldn't the Sumerians or Egyptians or some other early civilization have written about it? There were already several literate cultures near the Indian Ocean 5000 years ago.

That's the reason for the guys looking into myths.

Of course, oral history is not as reliable as scientific proof and myths tend to have great helpings of fantasy mixed in with any nuggets of truth that may be present. That said --

The Sumarians did have an epic flood myth, with the main character being Utnapishtim (if I recall anything near the correct spelling, which, let's face it, is a transliteration of cuneiform into the Roman alphabet). It may, in fact, be the myth on which the Biblical flood story is based even if there are some significant differences between the two. Although it is unlikely Uthapishtim's story is factual as we understand the term elements of actual events may have entered the mythic record.

The Ancient Egyptian/Kemetic understanding of history was quite different than ours. To them, the part of history that counted were the events that repeated, not the singular occurances. It has been noted by scholars of ancient history that while cultures near and around Egyptians might note a particular drought or a battle or other event the Egyptians simply never wrote such things down. Non-repeating events were abberations and simply weren't entered into the permanent record. Those that did sneak in, such as the reign of heretic pharohs, were subsequently obliterated by the Egyptians themselves.

Analysis of oral tradition, or written myths, isn't totally useless. In some cases Australian myths refer to landscape features that did exist tens of thousands of years ago when sea levels were lower but have since been covered with water. Other cultures also have oral traditions/myths that do have a basis in real history. You just can't accept EVERYTHING at face value. Claims must, as in the case above, be confirmed by real data.

Don't let the fact that the Bible has some whacked-out, contradictory stuff in it blind you to the fact that a significant part of it IS based on real locations and probably real events, particularly in the newer sections. Babylon and Jericho are real cities, and the Tigris and the Euphrates are real rivers, even if most people outside the Middle East first hear about them in a religious context.