MEGA TSUNAMIS

It was only a matter of time when Donald Trump clamped down on California, the state he most hates.

• That ICE issue with immigrants is only a secondary matter.  He was waiting for any kind of protest to show this Democratic state who is the real boss.
• What he did in activating the National Guard and calling in the Marines without the involvement of Governor Gavin Newsom has happened in the past.
• Trump is out to embarrass Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to tarnish their image.

• 
  Most fearfully, he is merely testing out how he can refine his quest to become dictator.
• Can't the courts check him?  They have no enforcement capability.  Trump controls the Department Defense, Department of Justice and the National Guard.
• Even Time magazine agrees with me.

Oh well, the worse is yet to come.  On this nostalgic Tuesday, I reach back to Chapter 6 of my book, SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth, titled, Blackout:  Six Hours to Seattle.  I summarized this chapter through 9 postings in September of 2008, in reverse chronological order.

• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE (Part 1)
• A 1720 FOOT WAVE (Part 2)
• HISTORIC MEGA EARTHQUAKES AND TSUNAMIS (Part 3)
• SO WHERE WILL THOSE MEGA TSUNAMIS COME FROM? (Part 4)
• THE SCIENCE AND CONTROVERSIES OF MEGA TSUNAMIS (Part 5)
• THE HAWAII CHALLENGE TO LA PALMA (Part 6)
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE (Part 7)
• SO WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO SEATTLE? (Part 8)
• THE SIMPLE SOLUTION TO THE BLACKOUT (Part 9)

Note that Part 6 is the island of La Palma.  Last week I noticed that there was a movie on Netflix titled, La Palma.  Looked at Rotten Tomatoes and that their reviewers gave this film a 100 rating, while the audience said 29.  How can the discrepancy be so significant?  As I remain in the hold mode in writing a book about Six Hours to Seattle, I watched the flick, and myself gave it a 50 rating.  The concept seemed mostly okay, but some of the technical details were weak, and the ending had too much of a Hollywood feel.

During the summer of 2018, I went to Seattle to seek details I could use in writing a book, Six Hours to Seattle.  Here were the postings, also in reverse chronological order.

• FIVE HOURS TO LOS ANGELES?
• ALASKA: Earthquakes, Auroras and Cabbages
• THE BEST OF ANCHORAGE
• NOT DOING MUCH IN ANCHORAGE
• SIX HOURS TO ANCHORAGE: The Longest Night?
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Space Needle and Chihuly Gl...
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Victoria
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Seattle is Hot
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Life on the Waterfront
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Hilo and Seattle Okay
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: The Journey Begins
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: The Speculative Science
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Mega Tsunamis
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Hint of What is to Come

To explain:

• If part of the Big Island of Hawaii fell into the sea (as did La Palma in the film) there is potential for a mega tsunami.  
• A commercial flight leaving Kona or Hilo would take about six hours to reach Seattle, and so would this mega tsunami.
• Thus, the book would largely take place in the plane, and how the passengers, seeing this giant Big Island landslide, would react while they headed for Seattle.  One problem was that they wouldn't be able to land in Seattle.

• 
  However, after visiting Seattle, I came to a conclusion that a mega tsunami from Hawaii would not much affect that city.  See how protected it is.  On this journey, I also spent some time in Anchorage, Alaska, for this same mega tsunami would also head in that direction.  This city, too, is conformed such that it would be largely protected.
• Thus that change of book title to Five Hours to Los Angeles.

So what is a mega tsunami?

• Most damaging tsunamis in the past occur when there is a major earthquake in the ocean.  What happens is that two adjacent earth plates readjust through tectonic activity, resulting in an earthquake, where there would be a rise or fall in the sea floor that displaces a large volume of water.  Not much is seen on the open ocean, but as land is reached, the wave height dramatically increases, perhaps as much as 100 feet, although most far-field tsunamis only reach an amplitude of 35 feet max.  There are usually two or three waves, and any one of them could be the largest.

• 
  In contrast, mega tsunamis occur when a large amount of land suddenly falls into the water through a landslide, meteor impact or volcanic eruption.  The initial wave could exceed 1000 feet, and there would only be one wave.

Examples of modern megatsunamis include the one associated with the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa (volcanic eruption), the 1958 Lituya Bay mega tsunami (a 7.8 magnitude earthquake triggered a landslide which caused an initial wave of 524.6 metres (1,721 ft)), and the 1963 Vajont Dam landslide (caused by human activity destabilizing sides of valley). Prehistoric examples include the Storegga Slide (landslide), and the Chicxulub, Chesapeake Bay, and Eltanin meteor impacts.

• 
  Hawaii, in particular, has had numerous landslides that have caused mega tsunamis.  Perhaps 70 or so throughout time, with 17 major ones.  The most spectacular is the Nuuanu Landslide, which occurred 1.5 million years ago, where part of Oahu fell into ocean, no doubt causing a mega tsunami heading toward the Aleutians and North America.  Watch this video.  Google AI Overview:  waves as high as 1640 feet were generated.  I at this point like to say that I live on Nuuanu Avenue on Oahu.

• 
  105,000 years ago, a collapsed Hawaii island volcano caused a 1000 feet high mega tsunami on Lanai.
• In 1958, Lituya Bay experienced a mega tsunami up to 1721 feet.
• So the film, La Palma, drew my interest because:

One of the most discussed scenarios involves the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma. A study from 2001 by Dr. Simon Day and Steven Ward warned that a collapse of the volcano’s west flank could send up to 120 cubic miles of rock into the Atlantic Ocean. This event could produce a mega-tsunami starting 2,000 feet high near the volcano and still towering 150 feet upon reaching the Americas. This scenario was dramatized in the Netflix series La Palma, depicting the risk to US East Coast communities.

But are mega tsunamis just another over-the-top exaggeration?  Something that happens, maybe every 100,000 years, or millions of years?  Well, watch this video about the Greenland mega tsunami involving a landslide that triggered a 656 feet high wave.  This event occured on 16September 2023!!!

However, how many of you live near the ocean.  They say that 15% of the global population lives within a few miles of a coastline.  However, how far-in will a mega tsunami get?  In Florida, look to the left.  But in general, most of you are very safe from even a mega tsunami.  

• 

  That 2023 Greenland mega tsunami of 656 feet?  There were no fatalities.
• The 1958 Lituya Bay mega tsunami of 1721 feet?  Five deaths.
• I would worry more about a standard tsunami.  The Great Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 killed more than 220,000, but the maximum wave height was "only" 100 feet.  To qualify for a mega tsunami, it has to be several hundred feet to thousands of feet tall.

About Hurricane Barbara in the East Pacific?  Has already weakened into a tropical storm, and is now headed for Mexico.  But there is now Tropical Storm Cosme.  It too is now actually weakening and veering towards Baha.

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WHY DOES INDONESIA GET SO MANY TSUNAMIS?

70,000 years ago, Mount Toba erupted, ejecting 2,900 cubic kilometers, while in 1815 Mount Tambora threw out 80 cubic km of ash, the largest in historical times, killing more than 71,000, and in 1883 Krakatoa erupted, resulting in an energy release calculated to be 200 megatons of TNT (four times times stronger than the Tsar Hydrogen Bomba, the most powerful bomb ever detonated), causing 36,600 fatalities.    Super Volcano Toba almost wiped out Homo sapiens, Tambora resulted in a summerless Planet Earth and Krakatoa's eruption is said to have created the noisiest sound ever heard.  All three are located in Indonesia.

Krakatau (the recent spelling of Krakatoa) largely disappeared, but Anak Krakatoa was the result.  However, this relatively small volcano this past week erupted, and partially fell into the ocean, creating a 10-foot tsunami that on December 22 killed almost 500 in Indonesia.  

One reason why there was no advanced alert was that there was no earthquake.  Generally, that type of earth movement is what triggers the alarm.

The 26 December 2004 tsunami which killed 228,000 people was caused by a 9.2 magnitude earthquake in the ocean off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia.  On September 28 of this year a 7.5 earthquake struck Indonesia's Central Sulawesi province causing an earthquake that killed more than 2,000.

On 5August2018 a 7 earthquake struck the island of Lombok, Indonesia.  There was a foreshock of 6.4 on July 29 and an aftershock of 6.9 on August 19.  The tsunami was perhaps only about a foot high, but the earthquake resulted in 563 deaths.

The problems with Indonesia are:

• They were created by the Ring of Fire.
• There are 18,000 or so islands.
• They have the third longest coastline, 33,939 miles.  #1 is Canada and #2 is Norway, but they are not bothered much by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Thus, what is currently occurring in Indonesia is confusing, for tsunamis can occur without earthquakes.  NASA has developed an ionospheric measurement technique to detect and track any tsunami, but the concept is developmental.  Delft University of Technology also has proposed a Global Navigation Satellite System.  Much of this work was initiated by my golf buddy, Paul Yuen, way back in 1974.

The Anak Krakatoa landslide was only a 158-acre section.  The Six Hours to Seattle novel I was planning to write was outlined in SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.  Here, I've paraphrased from my 18September2008 posting from this book:

• Suppose the combination of a slow moving Category 5 hurricane stalls just south of the Big Island, bringing torrential rains to the east side, say, 48 inches over two days.  

• An earthquake of magnitude 9.0 triggers the eruption of Mauna Loa and Kilauea. This is a stretch, because the largest previously, the Great Kau Earthquake, only was an 8.0. But, say it happens, and, lava begins seeping into those crevices and faults along the line of the previously defined landslide boundaries, weakened by the horrific quake. 

• The extra percolating rain fluid, which also percolates to depth, becomes steam, and, with more heat, continues to expand like superheated gas. The eruptions continue for several days, heating the interstitial fluids, increasing the edifice pore pressure and, through thermal alteration, expanding fault cracks, weakening critical material interfaces and lubricating slip planes. 

• Decoupling along low friction and strength layers occurs at those flow boundaries of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and Kilauea. Of course, those 48 inches of rain added an enormous extra weight to the already metastable underground condition.
• The collective strains induced by all the above cause a catastrophic failure of the vertical and horizontal extension of dyke intrusions, and the whole monolithic block falls at 250 Km/hour (155 miles/hour) piling up 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the coastline at a depth of 3048 meters (10,000 feet), creating a 100 meter (328 feet—about as tall as the highest building in Honolulu, but only half as high as the Seattle Space Needle) tsunami headed toward Seattle. 

To gain more information for the above, this summer I flew to Seattle (and Anchorage, as I thought this Alaskan city also had potential for being a mega-tsunami victim).  I spent ten days developing Six Hours to Seattle (posts in reverse chronological order):

• FIVE HOURS TO LOS ANGELES?
• ALASKA: Earthquakes, Auroras and Cabbages
• THE BEST OF ANCHORAGE
• NOT DOING MUCH IN ANCHORAGE
• SIX HOURS TO ANCHORAGE: The Longest Night?
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Space Needle and Chihuly Gl...
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Victoria
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Seattle is Hot
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Life on the Waterfront
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Hilo and Seattle Okay
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: The Journey Begins
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: The Speculative Science
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Mega Tsunamis
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Hint of What is to Come

Turns out I eliminated both Seattle and Anchorage as possible mega-tsunami impact sites.  However, the possibility of large chunks of islands falling into the ocean causing mega-tsunamis continue to have validity, for this  has happened in the past.  La Palma of the Canaries has been mentioned, and the Nuuanu Landslide, largest of seventeen such debris avalanche, occurring more than a million years ago, no doubt caused a mega-tsunami that headed off for the west coast of North America.  Of particular significance me, I live on Nuuanu Avenue.  Bathymetric image of this slide to the right.  

There was a flank collapse of Mauna Loa 120,000 years ago that caused a 1,600-foot mega tsunami.  Not a typo...1600 feet tall.  Something like 120 cubic miles of material fell into the sea.  In comparison, the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption and landslide was less than ONE cubic mile.  This boulder was deposited half-a-mile inland on the island of Santiago by Fogo Volcano collapsing into the Atlantic Ocean 73,000 years ago. 

So Indonesia will continue to suffer from natural disaster cataclysms for a long time to come, thusly affecting much of Planet Earth also.  As tranquil as Hawaii might be, our volcanoes are still active, and the age of our islands are such that the probability is increasing for mega-tsunamis throughout the Pacific.  However, we only have a few islands and a volcano or two.  Indonesia has 18,000 islands and 127 active volcanoes.  I bet you simply ignored World Tsunami Awareness Day last month.

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SO WHAT WILL BE MY NEXT BOOK?

Day 61 of the Lower Puna Eruption and the flow continues.  Before this activity, the area got 10 tiny earthquakes/day.  Now something like 600/day, and some not so small.  Today, read about life in Volcano village.   Here are some frequently asked questions, with responses from the USGS.

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I was interested in who visits this site from around the world, and here is the latest tally as of an hour ago of the ten top countries that have the most links, followed by a few others:

COUNTRY       LAST VISIT

USA                 12 seconds ago 

UK                    7 hours ago

Canada            4 hours ago

Germany          9 hours ago

India                 23 hours ago

France             June 16, 2018

Australia          11 hours ago

 plus some other countries

Japan               9 hours ago

Italy                  12 hours ago

Thailand           9 hours ago

Indonesia         23 hours ago

Malaysia           19 hour ago

Chile                 5 hours ago

European Un.   13 hours ago

Russia              9 hours ago

Switzerland      10 hours ago

New Zealand   10 hours ago

Chile                22 hours ago

Slovenia           56 minutes ago

Tanzania          11 hours ago

Samoa             11 hours ago

   

Thus, this blog site is in daily contact with a good part of the world.  221 entities (Antarctica, for example, is counted as a domain) have visited SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR PLANET EARTH AND HUMANITY.

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I've been involved with a series of books since the mid-1970's.  First came Solar Wind Handbook for Hawaii, co-authored by Waqidi Falicoff (who was then in the School of Architecture at the University of Hawaii) and George Koide (who was in the Engineering School on the Hilo Campus of the UH).  If you go to Amazon, you can actually buy a used copy of this book for $20.09.

Then, one of my classes I taught in Technology & Society was so progressive, that they actually crafted a book that was published through funds from the National Science Foundation.  That was the best group of students I ever had.  Seventy of them in the mid-seventies, and they also got funded by county governments to present our case on Energy Self Sufficiency for the State of Hawaii to high school classes throughout the state.  Fifteen years later I co-authored a paper for Energy published by Elsevier entitled A Case Study of Renewable Energy for Hawaii.

Next in the later 90's was Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, a textbook published by Wiley, co-authored with Andrew Trenka, for the UNESCO Energy Engineering Learning Programme. You can buy a new copy from Amazon today for $177.30.

IN 2003 came another UNESCO effort entitled:

Energy from the Sea:  the Potential and realities of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)

This publication was based on a lecture I provided to UNESCO in Paris.

Then, after I retired, I used my campus office to write three books, SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth, SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity, and SIMPLE SOLUTION ESSAYS:

Here is the Star Advertiser's best sellers list for May of ...guess what year?

I've been serializing a first draft of Pearl's Ashes, with the Introduction appearing on 28 December 2016.    I'm now up to Chapter 25, La Mer, and there are only a very few chapters left.  This will never become a hardback because photos are very, very expensive to publish.  But there will be an e-book.

Then, of course, I spent ten days last month developing Six Hours to Seattle (posts in reverse chronological order):

• FIVE HOURS TO LOS ANGELES?
• ALASKA: Earthquakes, Auroras and Cabbages
• THE BEST OF ANCHORAGE
• NOT DOING MUCH IN ANCHORAGE
• SIX HOURS TO ANCHORAGE: The Longest Night?
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Space Needle and Chihuly Gl...
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Victoria
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Seattle is Hot
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Life on the Waterfront
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Hilo and Seattle Okay
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: The Journey Begins
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: The Speculative Science
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Mega Tsunamis
• SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE: Hint of What is to Come

I'm glad I took that trip because Seattle is no longer a target city.  Neither is Anchorage.  Perhaps I'll return to Five Hours to Los Angeles, my original title.  However the benefit of that trip was that the plot of a mega-tsunami generated by Hilo falling into the ocean has been augmented by a triggering of a mega-earthquake at the Cascadia Subduction Zone, followed by just the right amount of jiggling for the San Andreas to fall into the Pacific Ocean, leading to a mega-tsunami headed for Tokyo.  However, that combination is so preposterous that I have placed this effort into a state of gestation to evolve into something more reasonable.  Unless Steven Spielberg calls me for a movie script abstract.

That leaves a novel (I'm through with engineering-type books) on the Blue Revolution, or The Venus Syndrome, a worst case scenario for global warming.  Here is what this publication might look like, from The Huffington Post.  As the mega-tsunami or global warming subjects are too, too apocalyptic, I'm now leaning in the direction of the Blue Revolution, for here, the theme will focus on sustainable development for Humanity in harmony with the natural marine environment.  So to answer the question posed above?  I don't know.

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In the East Pacific, Hurricane Fabio will weaken over time and not threaten Hawaii.  In the Orient, Tropical Storm Prapiroon will entirely miss South Korea and bring some rain to Japan.

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ERUPTION vs MEGA-TSUNAMI

I was this week walking to the dining room at 15 Craigside, when one of the residents walked up to me and said something to the effect:  Crichton and Patterson stole your idea about an eruption on the Big Island.  So the next day I went to my computer and found that Eruption, by Crichton and Patterson, was #1 on the New York Times fiction book list.

How did their book come together?

• Michael Crichton was a Harvard-trained doctor who went straight into writing, creating Jurassic Park and other adventures.

• 
  His first book under his name was The Andromeda Strain. 
• All told, his books sold over 200 million copies, with a dozen adapted into films.
• He is the only writer to have a number one book, movie and TV show in the same year.
• Born in 1942 and passed away in 2008 at the age of 66.  
• His wife Sherri found parts of an unfinished novel centered around a huge volcanic eruption in Hawaii, and thought this should be completed.

• 
  What about James Patterson?
• Patterson has already sold 400 million books, and has collaborated with people like Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton.
• Asked to consider finishing the draft by Sherri of a mega-eruption that could crack open a stockpile of toxic waste so potent that this could destroy all life on Earth, convinced him in 2022 to take on that challenge.
• Thus came Eruption.

And yes, I've had a draft about some volcano-related uber-disaster on the Big Island that has been changing titles for 17 years now, and currently back to, Five Hours to Los Angeles.  Aside from both books linked to this same island and volcanoes, the science and stories are unrelated.  In fact, my story has no eruption.  This notion was called Six Hours to Seattle in Chapter 6 of my SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.  As a quick aside, here is a review of this book by Peter Hoffman, who in 2008 was editor of The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Letter.

I kept putting off this writing project until 2018 when I got serious, and thought I'd do some research by traveling to the two what I then thought were the most probable mega-tsunami sites:  Anchorage and Seattle.  From my posting of June 13 that year:

Tomorrow, I begin some serious development of SIX HOURS TO SEATTLE, my upcoming docu-novel of Hilo falling into the sea, creating a mega-tsunami heading for Seattle.  I'll be on Alaska Air 876, departing Kona at 10:55 AM on Saturday, June 16, with an intended destination of Seattle.  I could well see the potential calamity happening, for I'll be in seat 1A.  As you must know by now, the speed of a tsunami is just about exactly that of a commercial jetliner.  We arrive to see, from the air, Seattle being inundated.  Such is the storyboard of this book.

California is a potential target from submarine landslides. A West Coast-seeking tsunami created by Mauna Loa Volcano could run up to 18 meters (60 feet) according to Gary McMurtry of the University of Hawaii. Dr. McMurtry mentioned to me that he would speculate that the Nuuanu Landslide (I live on Nuuanu Avenue) should have created a much larger tsunami, but there is no physical evidence remaining.

So about this book, the landslide sends a mega tsunami towards Seattle.  In Six Hours to Seattle I will be combining my geothermal reservoir engineering experience with the reality of the fact that for 36 years now I have been living on Nuuanu Avenue. The slide this time, however, would not be on Oahu, but instead, a giant chunk of the Big Island (the red area), more specifically, to include Hilo, where my wife and a couple of hundred relatives live, and that troubles me.  However, the odds of anything like this happening got be nanoscopic, if there is such a word.  Yet, the current Lower Puna Eruptions and geophysical/bathymetry conditions surrounding Hilo are intriguing.  As I earlier said, I very well know where the fault lines are, and appreciate the deadly potential.

Back to the book research effort, here is my summary from that trip to Anchorage and Seattle.

So what did I learn from this journey from Hawaii to Seattle and Anchorage, the two most likely targets of my novel entitled Six Hours to ?:

• Both Seattle and Anchorage are mostly surrounded by protective lands, plus both cities are at elevations from 60 to more than 100 feet.

• I'll need to look for another city.
• Tokyo is eight hours by tsunami, but not in the right direction of a likely major landslide from Hawaii.
• Santiago, Chile is 13 hours by tsunami, but there is no direct flight from here to there.
• San Francisco, too, is somewhat protected.

• Five Hours to Los Angeles was my original title, and looks like I might just return there.  Painting by Paul Jackson.
• However, my Seattle and Anchorage flights provided some characters I met, for, once the mega-tsunami is initiated, there will be scientific uncertainty as to what will really happen.  The anxiety will be at peak during the plane ride, and what comes next.

• The most likely mega landslide will be the Hilina Slump, 5000 cubic kilometers of earth into the Pacific Ocean.  Interesting that the Nuuanu Landslide was also 5000 cubic kilometers, from Waking the Giant, by Bill McGuire, who I interviewed when I wrote my chapter on Six Hours to Seattle.

• The Hawaiian Islands have been around long enough that mega landslides have occurred 15 times (or maybe even 70, depending on what you consider as major).
• These landslides tend to occur when the environment is moist, such as during times of sea level rise.I
• Is there any historical precedent for a mega tsunami?

• 
  Watch this clip of the Nuuanu Landslide, which probably generated a tsunami exceeding 300 feet over California.  This occurred about 1.5 million years ago

• Or this one, which wipes out Honolulu.
• Yet another, collapse of the Kilauea Volcano, generating a 100 foot tsunami over California.

These landslides as above happened more than a million years ago.  However, mega-landslides in Hawaii supposedly occur around every 350,000 years, so in a way we are long overdue for another one.  

I have not read that Crichton/Patterson book yet, but from what I know, the storyline about my potential book is totally different from Eruption.  For one, the characters would be on a flight that leaves the Big Island for, now, Los Angeles.  While in the air, the western part of the Big Island falls into the sea, triggering a mega-tsunami, which so conveniently moves toward the West Coast at the SAME SPEED as the commercial airliner.  Their publication is limited to one island.

One reason why I have not completed Five Hours to Los Angeles is that this would be a mega-disaster for which I have no solution to offer.  Similarly, I have backed-off from The Venus Syndrome, about the ultimate global warming cataclysm, because if that end of the world calamity begins to unfold, Humanity will be doomed.  I tend to be an optimistic person who seeks solutions, as my books and this blog site indicates.

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