Tag Archives | tsunami

Japanese Tsunami Survivors Turn To Exorcists To Relieve Haunting By Ghosts

By on March 23, 2013 in News 0

Via Yahoo! News, a sad example of how can ghosts can manifest in even in the most hypermodern society when there is unresolved trauma:

The tsunami that engulfed northeastern Japan two years ago has left some survivors believing they are seeing ghosts. In a society wary of admitting to mental problems, many are turning to exorcists for help.

Tales of spectral figures lined up at shops where now there is only rubble are what psychiatrists say is a reaction to fear after the March 11, 2011, disaster in which nearly 19,000 people were killed.

“The places where people say they see ghosts are largely those areas completely swept away by the tsunami,” said Keizo Hara, a psychiatrist in the city of Ishinomaki. “We think phenomena like ghost sightings are perhaps a mental projection of the terror and worries associated with those places.” Hara said post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) might only now be emerging in many people,

Many people in Japan hold on to ancient superstitions despite its ultra-modern image.

… Read the rest

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The United States And New Zealand Secretly Tested ‘Tsunami Bombs’ Designed To Destroy Cities By Flooding

By on January 3, 2013 in News 7

Via the Daily Mail, this likely will trigger conspiracy theories regarding natural disasters past and future:

The U.S. and New Zealand collaborated on a top-secret plan to develop a ‘tsunami bomb’ capable of devastating coastal cities, it has emerged. The countries carried out covert tests of the potential weapon of mass destruction – designed to use underwater explosions to trigger huge tidal waves – in waters around Auckland and the Pacific island of New Caledonia during the Second World War.

Details of the secretive operation, code-named Project Seal, were discovered in military files buried in New Zealand’s national archives by author and film-maker Ray Waru. The files revealed how around 3,700 bombs were exploded during testing, which was launched in June 1944, and indicated that the weapon was feasible.

Mr Waru said: ‘It was absolutely astonishing. First that anyone would come up with the idea of developing a weapon of mass destruction based on a tsunami… and also that New Zealand seems to have successfully developed it to the degree that it might have worked.’ While initial testing was positive, Project Seal was shelved in early 1945.

… Read the rest

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Japan Estimated To Take Five Years To Rebuild

By on March 21, 2011 in News 4
Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo, Japan

The rebuilding of a city has a price and the World Banks has come up with an estimate. New Zealand Herald reports:

Japan may need five years to rebuild from the earthquake and tsunami that has caused up to US$235 billion ($320 billion) of damage, says the World Bank.

The March 11 disaster will likely shave up to 0.5 of a percentage point from the country’s economic growth this year, the bank said in a report. The impact will be concentrated in the first half of the year.

“Damage to housing and infrastructure has been unprecedented,” the World Bank said. “Growth should pick up, though, in subsequent quarters as reconstruction efforts, which could last five years, accelerate.”

The bank cited damage estimates between US$123 billion and US$235 billion, and cost to private insurers of between US$14 billion and US$33 billion. It said the government will spend US$12 billion on reconstruction in the current national budget and “much more” in the next one.

… Read the rest

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Did Aliens From Friendship Island Warn Of The Chile Earthquake?

By on March 18, 2010 in News 30

In January I visited Chile, luckily for me before the earthquakes. While there I was told a story about Friendship Island, a mythical island inhabited by strange beings off the southern coast of Chile (learn more here). Although famous amongst Chilean conspiracy buffs and ufologists, it is seldom discussed outside the region. I would have left it as an amusing piece of local lore, but recently the leading Chilean TV conspiracy theorist, Salfate, went on air in December 2009 claiming that beings from Friendship Island had told him there would be many earthquakes and tsunamis in 2010…

OK, it’s totally nutty stuff, but the natural disasters are hitting as predicted. What does anyone know about Salfate – is he credible or a crank?

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For Tsunami’s Baby 81, Fame Brought Misfortune

By on January 9, 2010 in News 0

By Shihar Aneez for Reuters:

BATTICALOA, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami brought international fame to Baby 81, but the parents of the two-month-old who miraculously survived the deadly wave say it has only brought misfortune.

Found in the debris left by the wave that wrecked swathes of Sri Lanka’s coast and killed 226,000 along the Indian Ocean rim, Abhilash Jeyaraj became a phenomenon after international media reported nine sets of parents had come forward to claim him.

He was brought to the hospital by a villager who found him and, since he had no identification, was named after his hospital admission number: Baby 81.

After his injured parents got out of another hospital two days later and went to claim him, a media storm erupted, which eventually forced Abhilash’s parents to go to the police and courts to get their son back.

They were even arrested when they tried to force their way into the hospital to get their son back and could only bring him home after the father supplied a DNA sample — six weeks after the tsunami.

… Read the rest

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Five Years After Tsunami, Many Still Without Shelter

By on January 9, 2010 in News 0

Amantha Perera at oneworld.net:

KALMUNAI, Sri Lanka, (IPS) – “We have been here for almost five years. So many promises have been made, but very few have been kept,” complains Mohideen Nafia, 22, one of the survivors of the 2004 Asian tsunami still living in a temporary facility in the coastal town of Kalmunai, located 300 kilometres east of the capital, Colombo.

Newly married Nafia would have preferred a house of her own with her husband. But at the moment she has to make do with what amounts to a shelter, a one-room unit in a government-provided disaster camp, which the couple shares with Nafia’s family of five and is located about one kilometre from the beach.

Nafia hails from the Sainathimaruthu village in Kalmunai, a major domestic fishing hub that bore the brunt of what has been touted as one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. Three of its villages facing the sea — Maradamunai, Sainathimaruthu and Karathivu — suffered the heaviest damage at the time of the tsunami.

… Read the rest

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