Japanese Tsunami Pod (What were they thinking?)

Discussion in 'Boat Design' started by welder/fitter, Sep 30, 2011.

  1. ancient kayaker
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    ancient kayaker aka Terry Haines

    Any life pod designed to save lives in a tsunamai had better be designed to withstand the pounding it may get if it becomes part of the debris, including cars and trucks, that tsunamis tend to push around once they come up on land.

    One of the problems that people ran into trying to escape the tsunami was the closing down of an elevated stretch of highway for damage inspection following the earthquake. That created a huge traffic jam. The last guy to get onto the highway crashed a barrier to do so.
     
  2. Poida
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    Poida Senior Member

    So, Para' it appears to me what you are saying is, the authorities do not assist in the evacuation of people who are not able to leave the affected areas.

    It sounds like a Japanese style of selective breeding.
     
  3. paradoxbox
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    paradoxbox Junior Member

    well the time between the earthquake and the tsunami arriving was around 10 minutes. there wasn't exactly a lot anyone could do - either you ran immediately upon hearing the sirens to higher ground, or you were swamped by the waves. nothing the government could do to help you.

    a lot of people ignored the warnings and left their workplaces to go check on their property or their family and they were killed when the wave reached them. unfortunately it's very likely the family members they were out to check on had already gotten to safety. despite the unbelievable severity of the quake there were not many structural failures or landslides.
     
  4. Mr Efficiency
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    Mr Efficiency Senior Member

    The basic idea probably has merit, but no way the product in the OP is adequate to the task.
     
  5. Ad Hoc
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    Ad Hoc Naval Architect

    And neither are Japanese houses. That is where most of the problem lies too. The buildings that survived, oh...steel/brick/concerete. Those that were washed away....cheap rubbish made of thin crap wood. Unfortunately 99.99% of all domestic houses in Japan are made of cheap crap wood and cheap shoddy workmanship.
     
  6. DennisRB
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    DennisRB Senior Member

    Why not make concrete houses with a corner facing the shore?
     
  7. hoytedow
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    hoytedow Carbon Based Life Form

    I like this idea.
    Well anchored to steel pins in concrete base of course, with steel doors and shutters on steel re-inforced concrete structure.
     

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  8. paradoxbox
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    paradoxbox Junior Member

    what good is a concrete house corner if the rest of the house washes away, you'll just be left with a bunch of standing concrete corners

    they'll never make houses more durable in japan. the housing and real estate system here is just weird and it will never change. basically houses are demolished every 30-40 years regardless of whether they're in good condition or not, and new, cheap, crap houses are built on top of them, and they'll be demolished in 30-40 years too.

    unlike everywhere else in the world, here, buying a house is guaranteed to make you lose money if you sell it (well you'll lose money even if you don't sell it)
     
  9. viking north
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    viking north VINLAND

    This whole process is just natural selection(hazards of life)-- man seems obsessed with trying to save the world against itself. Excluding the human health factors in building the factory and machinery, The manufacture of toxic chemicals/vapours/glass dust inhailation in the hands on construction of such folly will kill far more of the human species than what such devices will ever save. This and the manufacture of thousands more pie in the sky junk are slowely killing or poisioning outright untold numbers of living creatures. Prime examples that come to mind, the manufacture of faux(false fur) to save the harvest of fur bearing animals. The toxins involved in this industry are killing far more humans and animals thru poisioning the earth in the manufacture and landfilling of the product that it should be a no brainer to harvest natural and farm raised furs. (man made fur a product of oil literally never breaks down in a landfill) The other big fallacy is wind generation and electric vehicle battery production. These so called earth saving industries are nothing but a smoke screen when the manufacturing and disposal toxins are brought into the equasions. Here's an interesting fact-- the recyling of a typical metal non alum. food container creates more pollution than it's manufacture new when with the act of washing it out with potable water (drinking water) is considered. Likewise with many more re-cycled products when all factors are included in the process. We are a vastly overpopulated world and nothing will save it's living species bar a majour human reduction incident, we are the problem not volcanoes/earthquakes/tidal waves/wars/sharkes or grizzley bears. The cold hard facts are these are positive effects on human survival regardless of the sadness of the loss of life. This is terrible food for thought but never the less one in which nature is in tune.
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2011
  10. ancient kayaker
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    ancient kayaker aka Terry Haines

    Depends where you were. In places people took shelter but the tsunami took far longer than expected to arrive. At one school people waited for about half-an-hour then started to leave the shelter; when the tsunami arrived they barely made it back to safety.

    Traditional Japanese houses are flimsy; if they fall down in an earthquake they hurt less people than when a heavier structure collapses. However many of them are exquisitely made by people who take great pride in their craftsmanship, at least, that was the case when I was there. There are many wooden structures in Japan that are supposed to be hundreds of years old, but on closer investigation they are found to have been rebuilt many times to keep them looking pristine. Nonetheless they are still revered; a bit like restoring a classic boat, where only the keel and a few frames might be original . . .
     
  11. Frosty

    Frosty Previous Member

    Same in USA --I saw a TV prog today about building a house and the chip board they use and nailed in windows . I sat watching with my chin on my chest as he described approved eanergy saving windows as he nailed em to the wall after a bit of insulation tape.

    The inside walls are plaster board but the outside is just chip board and then planks nailed on.WTF

    You can not get planning permission for a dwelling like that in UK.

    Its no wonder the Huricanes and tsunamis rip em to bits, even the big bad wolf could huff and puff and blow the house down.
     
  12. Submarine Tom

    Submarine Tom Previous Member

    I know, live in a submarine anchored out at depth! Seems to me somebody on here had an idea something like this before... kidding.

    The answer you so desperately seek, is to have a plan (a good but simple plan) in the event of a tsunami.

    -Tom
     
  13. Squidly-Diddly
    Joined: Sep 2007
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    Squidly-Diddly Senior Member

    Frosty, I feel your pain, I've built lots of McMansions out of

    "rustic lap planking" where the 'planks' where made out of pressed saw-dust, and came pre-primed on the exterior side.

    If you spit on the back side it would swell up in an hour from expansion.

    Anyways, the company had a "40 year guarantee" but they when bankrupt about 10years later.

    But we plan on tearing down most houses in 40 years and replacing them with mid-rise condos or shopping malls, and building more big cheap houses further out.

    On the bright side the big cheap houses ARE big and roomy, and cheap, and have decent energy efficiency, etc. Plus, and I hear this is a biggee from people from Europe, these new houses have floor and plot plans that "work" with modern living (cars not horses, washer/dryer not servants, kitchen near dining...not servants).
     
  14. Frosty

    Frosty Previous Member

    Got any bricks? We got this amazing stuff called cement --its easy to make, you mix it with water and it turns to stone like magic.

    It buggered the big bad wolf .

    Floors? we got floors,-- lots of em, at least 2. The servants live down stairs somewhere I dont know.

    You got servants too --I saw it on the telly, he was called chicken George.
     

  15. ancient kayaker
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    ancient kayaker aka Terry Haines

    There are still lots of wooden buildings left in the UK, going back to Elizabethan (1st) times and beyond. No reason why a wooden house can't last if you can just refrain from burning it down. Current UK building regulations were left over from the great fire of London.

    We do have brick and stone houses in Canada, many of those are on farmland and abandoned because the wooden floors burned out and the structure is too hard to knock down so people didn't bother, just built a wood frame house and left the wreck as a landscaping feature.

    I was raised in the UK, my parents' house had special ventilating bricks in strategic places like the bathroom to ensure you froze should you be lucky enough to get hot water to take a bath. There were more in the crawlspace, which was inaccessible to ensure nobody tried to seal off the cracks in the floors. These ingenious ventilation features supplemented the gaps in the windows and doors. Not something I would like to go back to.

    My school was heated in the Winter by a scientific principle, put lots of warm bodies inside a more-or-less enclosed space and punish them when they wriggled. There was a greenhouse on the roof which became my home room for the last 3 years I was there. The entire glass roof could be raised for ventilation but few of the panels closed properly - we even got the odd bird trapped in there.

    I must say those houses were durable. I recall my grandparents' house, had to have been at least 60 years old when I was a small child and way over 100 years by now. More recently during a trip "home" I drove my rental car down my grandparents' street: same houses, but all the front gadens were paved for parking their cars, two per household, no garage or place to put one, all the tiny but carefully manicured lawns and rose gardens long gone.
     
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