3 ms·
There are three to six hundred year old stones that dot the northern coastline of Japan, telling people not to build below a certain point because of tsunamis.
by alphonsegaston 10y ago
There are three to six hundred year old stones that dot the northern coastline of Japan, telling people not to build below a certain point because of tsunamis. This wasn't a once in a millennium event.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.ht...
Unfortunately, humanity no longer seems wise enough to extend this same concern for future generations.
- lostboys67 10y agoYou misunderstand what a 1 in x event means it is a probability not a clock. We had 2 1/250 year floods in my village within 5 years - exacerbated by the land owners not maintain the waterways on their property
- Retric 10y agoThis is not one event 600 years ago, this is several events over 600+ years where people marked safe areas. 26,000 died in this one but even with a smaller population in 1896 one killed 22,000 people. These are 1:100 year events not 1:1,000 year events and people are really bad about things that happen less frequently than 1:50 years or so.
- alphonsegaston 10y agoI didn't misunderstand anything about probability. Japan is among the most seismically active regions in the world and tsunamis and large earthquakes are(in historical terms) a regular occurrence. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_tsunamis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_tsunamis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_earthquakes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_earthquak... They don't hem to this probability no matter how you try and frame it.
- huxley 10y agoThe term is misleading and leads to poor decision-making