"Was this the way it might end for all of us one day... sitting, watching the death of the world.
This was nature at its most overwhelming and deadly. An unarguable, unreasoning and fatal tide. A deadly surging force. Water, mud, wreckage. And somewhere in there, body after body: families, old, young, strong, ailing, vain, learned, dumb, no human accomplishment, skill or vanity could be proof against this sudden solid, liquid wall. All and everything hurled forward on the surge. Picked up like twigs.
And I wondered whether that might be how we would all go, ultimately. Glued to our screens taking in some unfolding ultimate horror in real time until we all faded to black, home after home crushed, or swamped, or razed while the last flickering beams of vision girdled a dying globe. Outliving us probably. A broadcast from nowhere, to no-one.
Weird thought. News helicopters aloft, still filming until at last there was nowhere to land, no base to return to. No fuel. Nothing. News crews ... the last men and women on earth.
But not this time of course. This was a horror isolated to Japan, we were safe; struck dumb, numbed by what we had seen, but safe at last to switch the channel when Friday night's vision slowed to a repeated show reel of deadly real-life horror. Cricket world cup. Night footy final. Life elsewhere went on.
Japan. Great chunks of it crushed. A gleaming industrialised, organised, clever, rich, resourceful chunk of the first world, humanity's finest swept away by the simple inextinguishable power of nature. The coiled energy of the planet itself, suddenly unleashed against... us.
None of our wealth or reason is enough to save us it seems when nature - either unbalanced or coolly in its cosmic stride - picks a time and place to run riot. Or just slip an inch or two this way or that. Or blow harder, rain heavier, grow warmer ... just vary a fraction from any of the small degrees that offer us home and comfort. The earth abideth forever. We may not.
Perhaps the weekend, with nuclear reactors poised on catastrophe and a death toll soaring, was too soon to learn from this experience, a horror still in its mad bloody throes. But then the lesson seemed so clear, so present: that natural force would have its day and never mind our feeble squabbles or yelps of protest.
Earthquakes have nothing to do with any of the hot button political issues that continue to touch on the planet's temper. But the past few days have given us a glimpse of possible consequences that might be wrought by the forces ranged either with or against us. Forces that will not be swayed by political point-scoring of bitter tribal contest.
The stuff that nature might sling us will simply be. Our words will be lost in the rush of mud, and fire, and wind, and death. What are we going to do about that? Would we change it if we could?" Source.
One final point: "The reconstruction of Japan will economically help the country and provide more demand for resources." Thus spake an eminent economist. You can see why economics is described as the dismal science.
(GDP only measures the effects of natural disasters on income and that makes the recovery look better than the initial impact. When a disaster hits, GDP falls due to lost income. But GDP doesn’t record the damage to assets such as homes and business premises (that damage would show up on the nation’s balance sheet). However, when people start spending to repair that damage – such as rebuilding their homes and buying new furniture and fittings – that spending boosts income and therefore is fully reflected in an increase in GDP.)
Time to read On the Beach again?
