The Black Death #1

Now I know what you're thinking, "But Jared!!! The black Death (or as some people call it the black plague or bubonic plague) isn't a natural disaster!!! What are you? Some sort of person that's not as smart as me?" First of all, you're right. I'm not as smart as you. Congrats!!! But I'm way smarter person with below average intelligence. Second of all, the plague happened naturally. Even though it's a disease, it's still considered a disaster so be quiet and let me finish my last post geez.

    Here is a picture of the doctors that helped treat the plagues at that period in time. They were called

    plague doctors for their ability to fight the plague more effectively than other doctors.

It had begun in 1346 and ended in 1353. Named one of the most deadly plagues known to earth and now it has become my number one natural disaster! Ooh, shouldn't get excited about this.... This plague killed over 200 million people in Europe.

   The plague would leave buboes all over the body and they were very contagious. The guy spreading confetti over there is happy for them dying! No that would be horrible. They believed that the disease was spread by bad odors and so he's probably spreading smelly soap particles to clean up dirty Europe. 

Like I said, they believed that good smelling things was the way to ward off the disease and save them yay! Oops, looks like they were wrong, and dead. One of the reasons which makes this disaster very deadly. By thinking that was the way to cure the plague, they stopped or at least slowed down the process to finding what really stopped the plague in which case made it so more people became infected by it and made it last longer. In all truth, they found out eventually what really caused the plague. It was rats who carried it and spread it.

 Just a picture to up my visuals in the blog unit. It's of a rat which carried the black plague in Europe. 

 Rats are one of the big reasons why the plague was so deadly.

Just as I said the rats have greatly affected how deadly the plague was compared to if it started on human beings. Boats were major modes of transportation in the 14th century. If people were infected, they'd get thrown off the boat. Since they can't tell and didn't know it was rats carrying the disease, it was hard to stop it. Also, rats are quite the nimble, cunning and quick rodents so their capability to spread the virus was greatly increased. Which brings un to our next point why it was dangerous, the speed. This plague quickly covered Europe and infected many people. The plague caused people to become bed ridden which stopped the speed at which a cure is found which makes this very deadly.    

                                                  An image showing the year by year play on

                                                   the spreading of the virus. What speed!!!

That is why, I think, the black plague, deserves, to be, number 1, on my list, of the worlds, worst, disasters. Thank you to all my viewers and yes this is the last post once again. I'm happy to see people have learned off of my blog and maybe get a laugh or two. I hope you all enjoyed. See ya!

Sources:

-Personal knowledge 

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

-http://www.historytoday.com/ole-j-benedictow/black-death-greatest-catastrophe-ever

-http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/plague.htm

Afghanistan Blizzard #5

I'm excited that we are halfway done this whole blog thing. In a way, it makes me almost sad. Ha! Not at all, this project has been tedious and long and I can't wait until it's over. We should've just had a test that takes an hour then do this whole big project that takes over 10 hours to do total. I feel that in a way, our teacher is trying to help us. But knowing him, well, it explains it'self. Enough talk, let's get down to the graded stuff.

I've decided to take a U-turn with this next blog post. The last post was about a volcano eruption, which must have been very hot. But now, I'm going to do a blizzard this time, the Afghanistan Blizzard to be precise, Which you could imagine, is very cold. So we go from hot as hell, to cold as, well... Afghanistan I guess.

           Can't see the picture very well? That's because of all the snow and that's exactly what the
           people in Afghanistan could see and worse because of the cold and the snow in their faces.

It had begun February of 2008, and just to mention something that this had happened during the soldiers were in the Afghanistan war so that becomes a factor. Afghanistan temperatures can drop to the amount of -9 degrees Celsius during the winter so it does get very cold. The soldiers have obviously prepared for this so the chance of them bringing winter  gear is very likely so that isn't really a factor or concern but it's not the cold or the snow that's the biggest bother to them in this situation. The biggest problem caused by this blizzard is all the snow that's falling and being kicked up by winds. Like in the picture above, it's very hard to see detail and even differentiate people from trees. To add on to the viability thing, to tell the difference between a friendly soldier trying to help or a hostile soldier trying to blow your brains out. Because there is war going on there! A factor I'd like to add is that this probably caused a lot of death to American soldiers because they probably didn't think there'd be a storm and the soldiers stationed in Afghanistan probably had some sort of protection against this to be able to increases their visibility so they can be more proficient.

                                          A short video of some of the visuals of the storm.

In my third paragraph I describe how it's not the cold or snow that's the killing factor. I wanted to clarify saying yes, that's a fact. For only the soldiers, not the people living in Afghanistan. For them it was a living nightmare. As you may have seen in the video, their conditions are already horrible and it's a very poor country so not many people can afford things to keep warm in the winter so a lot of people freeze to death because of that. The snow could've helped them in some way to be honest. But I know a lot of you are thinking "But Jared!!!  Snow is bad, it's cold how could it possibly be helpful for them?!?" That's an easy one Tommy, snow itself is a natural insulator meaning it keeps in heat very easily. That's why igloos were very effective because it'd get covered in snow and keep the eskimos warm.

That'll do it for today kiddos. I'll wrap it up. Next post will be the last one and it's going to be a good one. Sorry for skipping from 5 to 1, don't complain none of us had to do 3 more blogs so be happy. Until next time!

sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Afghanistan_blizzard
https://prezi.com/zkzw2tixgg4w/2008-afghanistan-blizzard/

Nevado del Ruiz volcano #6

It's been a while since I've written another blog post and I feel pretty rusty so don't expect much from this post guys and girls. None the less, it will still be a good one because I've gone with a different type of disaster compared to hurricanes and earthquakes which I'm not very proud of just doing two types. Today, I've decided to do my blog on a volcano. To be more precise, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano. I really don't know that much about volcanoes so bare with me on this one. There's also going to be a lot of photos in this post because I just love how volcanoes look when erupting.

    I thought this was a nice photo to just show what the mountain looks like in general. It's a nice looking photo as well so another reason I put it up.

To start, we will go with a little bit of the facts to just give the idea of what happened during this eruption. So the Nevado del Ruiz volcano located in central Colombia, erupted November 13 1985, and affected the small town of Armero. In total, the eruption had killed about 24,000 people and buried four towns entirely in ash in the Andes region. 

The eruption itself that happened in 1985. Although it looks small, natural disasters and nature in general, is a great domino effect.

There is something extremely weird about this eruption which to me, makes it very deadly. For starters, this eruption happened around 31 years ago from today. Even today, there are some disasters that have happened like Hurricane Katrina like in my first post (if you have not seen it I would invite you to do so), that we can not do much against and still get greatly affected by. So seeing how we can't do much to defend against disasters today, imagine how hard it is to defend 31 years ago. They probably don't even have the technologie and ideas to do so. On top of that, Colombia is technically a third-world-country. It is so much harder to get materials to build a wall (Trump) or something to divert the disaster. In being a little town, it's even harder because they have less materials in general and less man power to do so and they don't get much time.

   Just an image of what it looks like when lava starts to cool down

and start to solidify. It's quite cool how it layers huh?

What really made this disaster really bad is that it wasn't molten lava that killed around 24,000 people, it was a mudslide triggered by the eruption that killed all those's people. Now some people may think, wow a mudslide, so dangerous, I'm shaking in my boots... Well for starters, here's a video of a mudslide.

You don't have to watch all 25 minutes, but just look

how big mudslides can get and how they could easily

push your house over.

On a side note, imagine if you wanted to go outside to play sports or whatever you people go and do outside and your mother told you that you could but you had to prepare yourself for the cold weather because it was in the middle of winter with a temperature of -21*C, so you needed your winter clothes, winter boots, and your winter motorcycle (if you got the joke comment please). So you get ready and you walk outside and all of a sudden, bam! It's not -21, it's 30*C outside and you're sweating your ass off because you thought it'd be cold. Well that's how the people of the little town of Armero felt. Although some ignored the predictions of an eruption, others still got prepared for it and when it happened, they weren't prepared for it because they thought it'd be lava instead of mud rushing at high speeds. You see how that could be deadly.

This isn't the same volcano but ain't it pretty?

Even if this volcano did not have a big and/or beautiful eruption like the photo above, doesn't mean it wasn't deadly at all. In fact, it probably made it more deadly because for lots of people, underestimating kills. So I think with all my heart, that the Nevado del Ruiz volcano eruption, earned it's spot as number 6,

Thank you all for visiting my blog once again and if this is your first time, I hope you keep reading and I wish you guys to comment because you guys might have ideas and I'd really like to hear them.

To finish, I would love if you guys would vote on the pole to what disaster you guys think are the most deadly and not to base it off of my blog but your own understanding of the disaster.

Sources:

-http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/nevado_del_ruiz.html 

-http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/13/newsid_2539000/2539731.stm

-https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=is%20colombia%20a%20third%20world%20country 

Cyclone Nargis #7

It's been a little bit since I wrote a blog so don't blame me for this one being a little less cool or interesting. It's not my fault. Anyways before we start I just wanted to say that this next one I don't know if it's going to be as deadly as the others but, it's always going to be a good one so sit tight and buckle your seatbelts. It's always going to be a bumpy ride!

So this is the first time that I ever do a cyclone and for thoses who don't know this, a hurricane, cyclone, typhoon, etc. They're all the same things. The only difference is the region that they are in. See? You learn something knew everyday? Unless you knew that already then well... You will learn something if you keep reading so stay tuned! We have quite a bit to uncover.

                                This should give you guys an idea of the different areas that
                                the different storms appear in and affect. As you can see, a lot
                                of the areas are covered by cyclones/ Which is what I'm
                                covering.

So if you haven't read the title which is unlikely. But if you haven't, today my post is on Cyclone Nargis. This cyclone made landfall Mai the 8th, 2008 in Myanmar which is near Thailand and Vietnam (if that gives you an idea where) and spent over 2 days destroying the area as much as it could. It caused massive damage in 37 different towns in the area and in 7 of thoses, there was more than 95% of the town destroyed. That means that 95% of peoples houses, work places, buisnesses, grocery stores, are destroyed. Now 95% of people in thoses towns are now homeless, have lost their jobs, have a harder time getting food, etc. It's always the afterstorm that kills the most and causes the most despair and suffering than the storm itself. The cyclone left a total of over 1.5 million people suffering from sickness or famine.

    
This is actually the greatest picture I could have ever found and I'm very thankful I found it. This shows a perfect representation of what I said about the 95% of everything was destroyed. As you can see, almost everything in this picture except a house in the top left corner and the blue one in the center top. (the one that looks close to the camera looks like it was made afterwards so I'm not going to count it as one) This is what they had to deal with and even clean up if they wanted to keep living here.

                                Here's a picture of the area it was in. That's it. What? You
                                wanted more? How greedy of you! Well I'd never!

With all the wreckage and damage, there was a total of over 100,000 deaths total. Some of which actually went missing and were never found so they were marked as dead. I just calculated this but around 3% of people of Myanmar was affected and 0.2% of people were killed in the cyclone. Now to some, they may think that's not that much but you have to think, 3% of 50 million is 1.5 million. when i compare it to Canada it's a little different because the population density is lower but for the sake of my example im going to say it's the same. So out of 36 million, 4.2% are dead. Which means 1 out of every 25 people are dead. So that means that one person in our English class is affected. (Hope it's Brousseau) I hope that opens your eyes to the severity of it and you have to remember too, it only affected a certain area so it's not the entire country too so the number is even higher in the area but I won't go into such depth because I believe you guys get the picture.



That's my opinion on why Cyclone Nargis was so deadly. If you want to give your opinion on why you think it's deadly to help me in the future or you would like to leave a comment on what you want me to do for next time feel free. Don't say anything mean, I have a weak heart. I'm fragile. So leave a comment NOW!

Sources:
-http://list25.com/25-worst-natural-disasters-recorded/
-http://www.ifrc.org/en/news-and-media/news-stories/asia-pacific/myanmar/myanmar-cyclone-nargis-2008-facts-and-figures/
-http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080508-AP-the-perfect.html

2010 Haiti Earthquake #8

For the people that are reading this blog, I had a little I guess you could say a contest of sorts at the end of my second blog. The first person to comment a disaster, that disaster I will do a blog segment on and also mention them in the blog. So the winner of this contest is (drum roll please).......... Matthew Bolton! Not a surprise because I was talking to him and told him to read my first post right after I was done, but I do thank him for reading my blog and participating in this game of mine and all the others that participated and are reading (but I'm thanking Matt the most because he's a winner). I was trying to avoid doing two types of the same disaster one after the other but what convinced me to accually go through with it (besides the whole contest thing to be fair) was that this one is souly an earthquake. The past one is both earthquake and tsunami, so I went through with it. 

One more thing before I start with the disaster of Matt's choice of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, I wanted to mention that I have put a game on my blog that is quite fun, you all should play it (link at the bottom of the page). PG-13 because you kill people with disasters. I think everyone is of age. I have also added a voting box where you can vote on what you guys think is the worst disaster between four choices and I will take it into consideration for other posts (No I won't it's my opinion on what is going to be on my blog. Felt powerful didn't ya? This ain't no democracy, this is my monarchy. Anyways, let's start with with the actual disaster shall we?

                                I wanted to start with a picture to give a visual of the damage

                                was caused in this earthquake because it's really important.

So this earthquake had started January 12th, 2010, in places such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic and others in the area. The reason I think it's mostly reffered as the Haiti earthquake is that Haiti was the most effected by the whole thing. The initial magnitude was 7.0 which is pretty high and had multiple aftershocks at magnitudes of around 5.9. What I've learned reading up on earthquakes and just humain stupidity with the logic we have. It's not the initial earthquake that kills the most of the people, it's the aftershocks that kill more because we constantly underestimate stuff like this. We get a 7.0 and we think that that's it for the disaster, we don't think of aftershocks. People are unready for the multiple aftershocks and they just die. Well, aftershocks and starvation after the destruction of fields and stores that the people go through. 

                                Here are the areas that were affected by the earthquake that I

                                had found quite interesting. (It's big because I wanted to make

                                sure that the names are clearly visable)

Another big factor that makes disasters in this type of region is the living conditions. Have you seen the houses in the first picture? How they're all really close to eachother? That makes a disaster even worse because there is a higher density of population in the area. The population density in Haiti is 374 people per square kilometer. Now let's use Canada as example, it's population density is 4. No if this happened in let's say a square kilometer. In Haiti, 374 are affected by this earthquake, in Canada only 4 people are. With that logic, I'd rather this had happened in Canada instead. Back on track, that population doesn't only mean more people get affected, with all the houses, it makes it harder to escape from debris and such, it also makes it harder to evacuate people, reach people and help injured people. With over 3,500,000 people affected by the earthquake, 300,00 injured and 220.000 estimated dead, this was definetly a very affecting disaster and I definetly think it's in the right spot in the countdown to #1.

I want to thank all the readers and all of you that are commenting to help me improve my blog it's been a real help. Thanks to Matt again for picking a fitting #8. Keep reading everyone, remember it just keeps getting better and more interesting as we go along. Sorry I didn't put a video on this time. It was late and I really enjoy sleep.

Till next time!  

Sources:

-http://www.britannica.com/event/Haiti-earthquake-of-2010 

-http://www.dec.org.uk/articles/haiti-earthquake-facts-and-figures

-https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1JUFK_enCA506CA510&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=haiti%27s+population+density

2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami #9

I just wanted to say a few things before I start the next blog post, and I have a good one for you guys. Last post, I had put a lot of information regarding Hurricane Katrina which is really good but as we were told in class, it has to be 90% opinion bassed. don't get me wrong there's going to be some information, there's just not going to be as much as last time. If you guys want to know more about the next disaster, I will post a link under this paragraph to direct you to a good site where I got some of my information and you guys can always look at the sources that I post at the end of the post. Thank you guys for reading my blog and I really hope to keep you guys as viewers.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1227_041226_tsunami_2.html

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for... this disaster will be (if you haven't read the title which is unlikely but i do this for anticipation...) the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami. Let me tell you guys and girlds, from what i can see already, this is going to be a good one trust me.

We all know what tsunamis are, but if you don't I will try and explain in my own words what it is. So they're basically giant waves caused by earthquakes kinda like the ones you see at the beach or that surfers surf on in the movies but think about them if they are at least 4 times bigger and wider and has the capability to kill people, damage/bury cities and topple buildings. Scary right? I think so, heck I'd be terrified if one came coming at me.

Here's a random tsunami that I found on google images. This 

image honestly made me shiver, but it's the reality of what 

tsunamis are and the capabilities of destruction on a city. 

This tsunami happened December 26, 2004 in the Indian ocean. Ummmmm, i actually cried when i saw this so i'm going to share it. Apprently this earthquake had "released the energy of 23,000 atomic bombs like the type dropped on Hiroshima". That is absolutely insane! That alone makes this one of the worst natural disasters in my books, but we are far from done my friends. It had a magnitude at the center of the earthquake of 9.0. The highest in the world is I think a 9.5 if i remember correctly, I'll have to watch San Andreas again to be sure. That's .6 away from having the biggest magnitude in the history ever recorded. According to my source, it shot out multiple tsunamis at the speed of a jet airliner. That is a speed on average of  885km/h. Now obviously they slowed down by the time they got to land but still that is pretty quick and that would have caused a lot of damage if it kept up a speed like that by the time it hit land. That would be absolutely devastating on any city, even ones that would have some defence against something like this.

A picture of the Indian ocean to give an idea where this 

happened and what areas were mostly affected by this disaster. 

This tsunami in total had between 14 countries a death toll of around 150,000 people. That is huge but thats not the worst of it because that's just from the tsunami and the tremble of the earthquake. The combined two have now flooded farms and stores where people can get food. Now, they have to worry about starvation because they now have less supplies for people but not dehydration since they have water everywhere! (that was dark my bad) They say at the end, over 200,00 people died. That's a lot more than Katina over 109 times the death in this disaster. just the sheer number of deaths that were caused by this disaster is unsettling to me. Just imagine, pretty much all of windsor, dead. Just like that in the matter of a day or two. And that's just death tolls. Many more were injured in this either by the water or falling buildings. Honestly, I really don't think they're could've been much avoiding this. It happened in a short period of time. To me, they're would've been no time to escape unless you're not near the water. All they could've done was prey.

        A video of the tsunami hitting the beach.

Enjoy...

Enough of this depressing subject. toon in next time kids where if you leave a disaster in the comments, I'm going to do a blog on it. First come, First served so comment now if not, it's probaly going to be as depressing as this one.

sources:
-http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1227_041226_tsunami_2.html             (again)
-The movie: San Andreas
-https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=average%20speed%20of%20jet%20airliner
-http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/12/ten-years-since-the-2004-indian-ocean-tsunami/100878/

Hurricane Katrina #10

I wanted to start off my blog with a very well known natural disaster. As the title says, its Hurricane Katrina. Its said to be one of the deadliest hurricanes to ever hit the United States to date. It was formed about 200 miles from the Bahamas Augest 23, 2005 and was only considered a tropical storm. As it was making its way down to Florida, it stopped over the Gulf of Mexico and gaining a lot of speed. Reaching wind speeds up to 175 mph overseas which is a Category 5 and when it hit land, slowed to 140 mph a Category 3. Hitting alongside the border between Louisiana and Mississippi Augest 29. After reaching around the center of Mississippi it was said to be a Category 1 then after six hours, the horrible storm then was difined as a tropical storm and finally dissipated and was absorbed by a frontal zone.  Causing over 100 billion in U.S. dollars between the winds destroying houses, throwing things and the massive flooding. They say an estimated 1,833 people were killed by the hurricane, mostly by the flooding. The flooding caused by the hurricane when it would destroy the weak levees and drainage cannals was more devistating than the hurricane itself. It caused most of the casualties and the damage which is to me, very surprising. 80% of New Orleans was completely flooded and some of the surounded area. New Orleans is 350 sq miles, 80% of that is 280. 280 sq miles of New Orleans was supmerged in water, to me that's a little scary to think that a storm that started with winds of 40 mph winds could do such a thing. 

Here is a picture of some of the flooding caused 

by Hurricane Katrina.

To me, this is absolutely one of the worst natural disasters that has ever been recorded in history. Its not at all the fact that it has a higher casualtie count, its the amount of damage asnd the potential that this storm could've had. This storm caused the gouverment of the United States over 100 000 000 000 dollars, a 12 digit number, that's huge in my opinion. Seeing the information about this hurricane makes me realise something, it could've been a lot worse then people may think and that scrares me a little. Remember how I had mentioned that Hurricane Katrina had mannaged to become a Cat. 5 hurricane as it stopped over the Gulf of Mexico and that it lowered down before making landfall? Now imagine if it the winds didn't slow down, imagine if it didn't lower to a Cat. 3 and it stayed a Cat. 5 with winds of 175 mph instead of 140 mph. How much deadlier would Hurricane Katrina have become? According to my math, it would've become 1.25X stronger. Thats an extra 25 billion dollars and 438 dead people. That's horrible, but let's be thankful that it did slow down before it hit Louisiana and Mississippi. Im going to be honest, the people of New Orleans and others are very stupid. In the past century between 1915 and 2005, there has been 6 hurricanes that have flooded New Orleans. Now I got to thinking, if that has happened in the past, you'd think that they would have come up with a good mesure to diminish the casualties and the damage. Now i don't doubt that they have, but I think they'd have it down by like the fourth time this has happened. since this is a recurring event, they should be prepared whenever they think a hurricane is about to hit. What's that expression? Ah yes, better safe then sorry. If there is a storm that is amassing somewhere that has the possibility to go up and hit the area, they should prepare to diminish the overall damage. It took the storm around six days to go from the Bahamas to Mississippi and such. I think that;s enough time to prepare for  it don't you think? To conclude, this was definetly one of the worst disasters and most damaging, but i really think it could've been worse but on the other side it could've also been less effecting.   

Here's a time lapse of the path that Hurricane

Katrina took from beginning to end.

Sources:
-http://list25.com/25-worst-natural-disasters-recorded/
-http://www.history.com/topics/hurricane-katrina
-http://www.livescience.com/22522-hurricane-katrina-facts.html
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans