Hasta La Ideas

Widely posted on Facebook is the following footage, purportedly by Asahi TV, of the tsunami slowly and steadily engulfing a town in Japan. It is terrifying to see how in the span of just six minutes, it goes from a car calmly driving away to houses and buildings being removed from their foundations:

Much has been made of how Japan is the best-prepared country in the world for earthquakes, as in the Times piece entitled “Japan’s Strict Building Codes Saved Lives” looking at the anti-earthquake design features built into structures there. A separate YouTube video shows the resultant swaying behavior of skyscrapers dissipating the seismic forces:

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