disaster

Twittering while California burns

Disasters are social: They affect large groups of people, all thrown together by circumstance or location. So when I was at a dinner with Laughing Squid founder Scott Beale two weeks ago and he said, "The next disaster will be Twittered," I thought he was spot on. What better use could there be for a social media site like Twitter than to support people with a dire need to connect to each other and share information?

So how's social media doing in the current disaster, the Southern California fires (aerial pictures)?

As Allen Stern reports in Center Networks, … Read more

CNET Live - Episode 20 - Show Notes

Today was a disaster for me. Our call screening software kept giving me a run-time error. I fixed that when I uninstalled the Comodo firewall, but then Google Earth didn't work. So I reinstalled Google Earth and the the call-screening software gave me a runtime error. So that's when I started a system restore. That didn't fix the call screening software, but then I lost Web access. So I did another system restore with two minutes until show time. That's the one you saw on the air. Then I got everything but call screening working and … Read more

Disaster preparedness: Time is always running out

In the late 1970s, while attending the University of Miami in Florida, I became involved in the survivalist movement. I had been a Boy Scout--"Be Prepared," you know--so the survivalist attitude of "prepare for the worst" was an easy transition.

The members of the local survivalist community (at least the ones I knew) were good people: a high proportion of police officers and business professionals along with students like myself. What they had in common was a belief that something bad could happen to the United States.

The possible disasters included full-scale wars (nuclear, biological … Read more

The 'Disaster House,' for every paranoid

The work of a true paranoid, we can say with first-person certainty, is never done. The soundproof "WhisperRoom" may be good for countering the eavesdropping devices we're sure are embedded in our walls, for instance, but it's just a start. What we really need is something closer to the "DH1 Disaster House."

The brainchild of California architect Gregg Fleishman, the European birch structure is meant to be used in the post-apocalyptic environment left by disasters of natural and human-made origin alike, according to SCI FI Tech. And at 14 x 14 feet square, it'… Read more

Georgia and Florida: They're smokin'

Nashville is hundreds of miles from the nearest forest fires. Recently smoke levels there were 20 times normal. Health officials in the southeastern U.S. can now look at maps showing where the smoke is, and where it's going.

This smoke forecasting is being done by the Center for Forest Disturbance Science in Athens, Ga. Both hourly forecast updates and daily peak values of smoke concentrations are available on the Internet.

The 6-week-old fires have burned a half-million acres. And they're still outta control. These fires are a record for Georgia. That's sparked debate over lack of … Read more

The science of New Orleans: Getting out of town alive

Escape from New Orleans, a topic for scientific inquiry--and who better to study the problem than a scientist at Louisiana State University? Now Brian Wolshon has gotten a federal grant to continue his research. In an emergency, how do you get people out of town?

Even back before Katrina hit, the folks at LSU were thinking about disasters and the incumbent evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people.

Computer modeling developed at Los Alamos National Lab will be used in a new effort to understand, plan and predict evacuation. And the variables are daunting. Just try predicting the kind of … Read more

Wind-generated ocean swells not so swell

You may have missed this on your favorite blog site, and you definitely missed this if you looked at American TV news. Reunion Island got smashed on Saturday. Big waves. Lots of damage. It was not a tsunami this time. Certainly earthquakes can pack an enormous wallop, but the supporters of wind power surely have something going as well.

The European Space Agency (ESA) satellites were tracking the course of the big swells. Ocean swells, not rich guys with big heads. Big, really big waves. Some that slammed into Reunion without warning were over 35 feet high.

First, the satellite … Read more

400-year-old mystery solved: It was a tsunami, not a storm

We now know a lot about tsunamis that we didn't know a few years ago. There's even been significant research showing how hurricanes and tsunamis can act alike once onshore. Today, we learn a little more about a tsunami that occurred 400 years ago.

Scientists now conclude that it was a tsunami that flooded the Bristol Channel in western England. It flooded hundreds of square miles and scoured the landscape, killing about 2,000 people. And that was on January 30, 1607. Long before anybody in England ever heard the word "tsunami." At the time, it … Read more

Physics-defying fish tank is a disaster waiting to happen

Over in Japan, the Oita Marine Center features a funky fish tank that seemingly defies the laws of gravity, matter, and sensibility: thanks to some vacuum technology, the fishies can swim "out" of the tank so that you can feed them, pat them, etc.

Cool, yes, but this would be an absolute atrocity if anything went wrong. Those poor fish! Though I must say, some hilarity would certainly ensue if water started randomly spewing out all over a crowd of unsuspecting aquarium patrons. But still...those poor fish!

(Via Geekologie)

Wii Disaster Watch: Wii Injuries are So Totally Mainstream Now

When Crave launched its Wii Disaster Watch mini-feature a little over a week ago, many of you scoffed (light-heartedly) that you had to be a total idiot to bash up your TV or yourself with a video game controller. Well, that just doesn't seem like the case, unless you want to argue that humans are innately stupid. (Over here, the jury's still out on that one.) The latest news outlet to pick up on Wii disasters is Yahoo. Even the normally celebrity-gossip-focused Best Week Ever is on it. And in case you haven't seen it yet, there'… Read more