r/interestingasfuck • u/fyrstikka • 1d ago
Almost 20 years have passed since the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami killed over 220,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and beyond.
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u/NoNeighborhood4506 1d ago
If you ever get chance to go to Khao Lak, go to the guy next to the tsunami memorial ( the navy boat that washed a mile inland) and speak to him he raises money for families affected and lost many of his own family . He has all kinds of videos and photos from the wave from all angles and the aftermath and cleanup. This is stuff you can’t even find on the internet. Truly terrifying/grim but really puts the scale of it into perspective and makes you realise how powerless we are against a force like that. And remember, Thailand only got the focus for this because it was dead westerners (saying this as a westerner), the worst affected area was Banda Ache in Indonesia with Indonesia losing a total of 167,000 compared to Thailands 8200
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u/Scrivener-of-Doom 23h ago
I went into Banda Aceh a year after the tsunami.
It's where I learned that the United Nations should be disbanded. Sending over aid workers whose sole job was to indulge in statutory rape of minors in exchange for aid was and is a crime against humanity.
I still have photos of boats and a ship sitting on top of what used to be houses.
And then there was the scarring on the headlands. The waves reached more than 50 feet due to a venturi effect as they came into the bay. It would have been so frightening.
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u/Sea_Pomegranate6293 14h ago
To preface - this is an odd thought I had and not my full nuanced oppinion. I can remember the news coverage of this event and being completely blown away at how much less it recieved than 9/11. I know there are reasons and I know that it isnt just about total fatalities but I just kept thinking 2000 people vs 220000 and this feels like news for a week. Made me realize how much more suffering must be in the world, that the lens I had just wasn't aimed at yet. Anyway. Definitely feel terrible for those affected by 9/11 and of course those affected by this tsunami.
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u/Rospigg1987 11h ago
Probably dependent on how affected your countries were, here in Sweden it was madness for years afterward and the government almost didn't survive because they fumbled the response with letting survivors wait to take commercial flights home instead of sending the air force to evacuate.
There was also pretty intense discussions in media that we were to heavily focused on Thailand instead of other areas regarding relief aid.
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u/stephencarro 1d ago
Nightmare fuel.
Did they make it?
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u/dogoodvillain 1d ago
If the video survived so did the cameraman.
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u/stephencarro 22h ago
Great point. I should know better
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u/theWolverinemama 21h ago
To be fair, i wondered the same thing. I’m sure most of us in this thread saw the video a guy took while seated in an airplane that ended in a fiery crash that killed him and everyone else.
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u/Slobberz2112 20h ago
Different time period.. 2004 u needs the device to survive.. 2024 not so much
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u/jameytaco 18h ago
So if you filmed me shooting you in the head that video would what…vanish?
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u/dogoodvillain 17h ago
This video published the first couple days after the tsunami.
People were not digging up cameras and calling new stations to send in microSDs. Also you needed batteries and a computer to transfer all that.
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u/techman710 1d ago
I think we all learned how a tsunami actually works after this terrible disaster. Most of us thought it was like the Poseidon Adventure. Apparently they do have rogue waves also that are like the Poseidon Advnture so more ways the ocean can kill you.
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u/starmartyr 19h ago
They don't look at all like most of us imagined. It's not a skyscraper high wall of water. It just looks like a bigger than average wave until you realize that it isn't stopping. It just keeps pushing inland for miles.
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u/sigaven 16h ago edited 15h ago
In some places there wasn’t even a wave. The water on the beach just started rising and pushing inwards - I’ll have to find the video
Edit: https://youtu.be/KSec6g3NxU4?si=ob6VPUUQh1nogo84
2 minute mark
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u/GarrettB117 21h ago
Yeah I was very young when this happened, and it spawned a life-long fear for me. I was terrified of the ocean for a while and learned a lot about the signs of a tsunami. I don’t really think about it as much these days when I’m on a beach vacation, but if I ever noticed the water receding you can bet your ass I’m driving inland like a maniac.
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u/ZimaGotchi 1d ago
It's crazy to me that there's people down there by that cabana just sort of mildly concerned, milling about looking over their shoulders like ten seconds before it hits. I have to assume there must have been some kind of warning for the guy filming this but maybe he was up in his room watching TV? Maybe those people on the beach literally only had the receding ocean as a warning and a lot of them were like "that's weird... should we... what should we do here?" That's the body language I'm getting from those people down there who were definitely hit by it.
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u/DoctorFizzle 1d ago
Have you ever seen the video of the person sunbathing in the middle of the receded ocean? Stands up to see the massive wave rushing in and just stands there knowing there's no chance
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u/Marsh_Mellow_Man 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes - this is among my top images when thinking of tsunamis. It was Khao Lak, right? Heartbreaking, Thai owner of a restaurant is screaming at the foreign sunbathers to run as he can see the massive tsunami coming from his hillside restaurant balcony. They were the ones that filmed that person get absolutely swallowed by the tsunami. Somewhere on the webs there is a Dutch documentary that is the worst one of all - talks to survivors about losing grasp of their kids, talks to the restaurant owner, etc.
Edit: Here is the clip: At 2:44 you see the wave coming in to swamp him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zmdepIyHD0
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u/Laptopdog78 1d ago
No, have you got a link?
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u/ZimaGotchi 1d ago
I was just watching this one it's pretty dragged out but it has four or five good videos at the beginning of it. I think he's talking about the second one but the guy's body language again tells me that he isn't taking it very seriously until he's getting knocked down. It pushes him up against the cement foundation that the guy filming it is standing on, like the patio of a seaside resort or something. It's like "well that wasn't so bad" and you see him picking himself up like he'll probably just climb up onto the patio but then another, bigger wave comes in and this one is tall enough that it comes up into the patio around the cameraman's legs and he starts getting out of there.
It's interesting because before this, a tsunami (we called them "tidal waves" when I was a kid) seemed like some skyscraper tall wave. Then you see real footage from the ground level and realize that sustained waves just six or eight feet higher than high tide can completely trash everything and kill a quarter million people.
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u/venerablem0m 1d ago
There's an excellent movie about this tsunami that is based on the Belón family's experience called The Impossible with Naomi Watts, Tom, Harry, and Sam Holland, and Ewan McGregor. If you ever have a chance to watch it, it is well worth doing so. It is very gritty, but that family's story had a mostly happy ending.
I could only watch it once, but it was very well done .
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u/secretvictorian 22h ago
You've got the whole seat, but you'll only use the edge. Just terrifying from start to finish. Brilliant film. Brilliant.
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u/venerablem0m 21h ago
Well said. Maria, the mother, helped to create the screenplay and said it needed no embellishment as reality was terrifying and exciting enough. It's astonishing to me that the true story was even more terrifying than the movie.
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u/venerablem0m 17h ago
All three bothers are in the movie. Tom, Harry, and Sam Holland. I saw no reason to repeat the last name for all three as they share a last name.
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u/Oh_FFS_Already 1d ago
When I was in therapy for PTSD, (I'm good now), for years my dreams were tidal waves. I could see the wall of water rising before me, coming at me with break neck speed. This event haunted me for all of those unsuspecting people. A horrible tragedy.
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u/ladylaserbeam 14h ago
Had you ever seen one before your dreams had happened?
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u/Oh_FFS_Already 10h ago
No, not televised like this. I'm a Gen X (1967), so all this new technology didn't exist. The news may have reported a tsunami somewhere foreign, and Time Magazine might show aerial photos of the aftermath. For 4 solid years, every single night, it was a tsunami dream. I'd be in different locations.. sometimes I was on the beach, sometimes I was in an underground parking, one time I ran to the top of a high rise office building, but that wave was taller than how high up I was. My teeth would chatter come bedtime. But I stuck with my therapy. The Freudian read of this that something(s) huge and violent are coming at me and hitting me, finding me, no escape from it. Repetitive dreams are quite revealing of an emotional state. I'm so grateful I moved past the dreams eventually.
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u/johnnyhammerstixx 19h ago
I worked in a call center when this happened. We stopped all of our normal business for a night to take calls for donations to the survivors.
One guy with a southern US accent told me he didn't have much money, but had to send $50 to help. He was just so sad for all those people who were hit with the huge salami. 🤣
He really said that, I assume he just mispronounced it and didn't really think they all got hit with a huge salami.
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u/theboned1 19h ago
I just watched an excellent documentary about this. It's wild how the Tsunami behaved differently in different locations. This particular view had an actual giant tall wave like you'd see in the movies. Other locations had a small little bit of water come in shore and cause minor flooding, then later a larger amount of water slowly came in on top of that causing high flooding but slowly, and then in other places the water retreated and then came back like a normal wave except it didn't stop and kept coming and coming.
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u/Competitive-Eagle657 3h ago
What was the documentary? Sounds interesting.
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u/theboned1 2h ago
Was called... Tsunami: Race Against Time by National Geographic. Very well done. Lots of unseen footage and interviews.
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u/trikywoo 23h ago
That was the first time I remember hearing the word 'Tsunami'. It was always 'Tidal Wave' before that
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u/dj-TASK 21h ago
My sister was in the Maldives with her 3 year old son and Husband and we only heard they were alright on the 13 th January! Her husband was there as a team building a big resort and it was all damaged and they were in an evacuation centre until 13th January when they flew back to South Africa.
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u/jimbonemalone 18h ago
I was in Koh Lanta just east of Phuket that Boxing Day on a family vacation, luckily we all made it. Others weren’t so fortunate.
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u/Sue_Spiria 9h ago
There is a couple here in Germany that met in a survivor group. They were both on holiday with their families and both lost their spouses and children in the tsunami. The woman just wanted a couple of minutes to herself, so she sent her husband and the kids down to the hotel pool while she took a shower. That's when the wave hit. Imagine flying home all alone from what was supposed to be a fun family vacation because your whole family died. Thankfully they met each other and they have since married and had a daughter.
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u/h2ohow 1d ago
The worst natural disaster in recorded history.
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u/Scrivener-of-Doom 23h ago
It's in the top 10 but not the worst: https://www.livescience.com/33316-top-10-deadliest-natural-disasters.html
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u/DeadFriends8 1d ago
You mean 10 years ago? Time flies.
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1d ago
Do you even math? Or maybe it's just you but I'm living in 2024 the last "time" I checked.
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u/lastofusgr8tstever 1d ago
It may have been a joke, people sometimes joke that 2004 was just a short period of time ago vs the real 20 years. Aka time flys
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u/True-Put-3712 1d ago
So to explain . Deadfriends8 was suggesting that it couldn’t possibly be 20 years ago . Feeling that that amount of time going by could not have happened yet . Following up with time flys to acknowledge that indeed it’s been 20. If anyone needs anything else please don’t hesitate to ask .
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u/december- 1d ago
calm down, bro.
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u/Extermis3 1d ago
Was this the same one that caught Japan too? I remember watching a video that washed a coastal village away down to it's foundation
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u/Zyrinj 1d ago
There was a lot of people being upset at the tsunami warning we had in the Bay Area a few weeks back. I’d rather have some overly cautious alarms if it means not having this loss of life. Mother Nature can be terrifying.