Mark;

With nationalism the only thing important is that the leader survive. Everyone else is insignificant and subordinate. Countries spend billions to defend honor and belligerence. The crumbs are left for the dogs. Scream loud and hard enough and you might get a crumb. In the mean time it is more important to invest in War or preparation for War. Rationalize it as “self defense”.

An interesting story was on television two days ago. It concerned one of the U.S. Helicopters that was hopping from Island to Island. They had an interpreter on board and landed on an Island that had been hard hit. People were in good health. They found the mayor of the town and through the interpreter asked how everyone survived. The Mayor answered, “We have a tradition going back hundreds of years. Whenever there is an earthquake we head for high ground”!

Technology does not always allow the “ultimate” answer. Sometimes a low tech solution works best – like tradition and being responsive.

Tom

>Alex,
>one problem with the warning system is that many of these people would not have tv or radio. india did spend billions no nukes but like all countries they consider their military/national security a better investment than humanitarian causes, other wise poverty and homelessness would be non existent in the west. the problem in areas like this is that even when they do have procedures in place to deal with something like this the system goes unused for a long time and falls into disrepair. the truely full time working models, like those in japan, are relied upon a lot and are maintained as tsunami's are regular threats.
>Slán
>~M
>
>>OK. So they don't invest a few million in a buoy-seismograph early warning system. I'll buy that (even though, India for example invested a few billion in developing nuclear weapons). But consider the 'cost' of alerting the people by radio/TV. Not much, right? All it takes is organization and a willigness to do it. If seismographs detected this all over the world, how come the involved governments didn't react? As said, those on the Indian Ocean's west coast (India, Sri Lanka) had almost an hour an a half to broadcat a warning. Maybe some people would have been saved, considering that many people saw the wave, ran and survived.