powerful and deadliest forces of nature.

Within recent memory, you may recall both the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the

2011 Japan Tsunami, both of

which in resulted catastrophic damage

and loss of life.

The Indian Ocean Tsunami

happened after a massive earthquake

struck here in the Indian Ocean.

The earthquake itself released more energy than every single explosive detonated in the entire Second World War, including the nuclear bombs.

This enormous amount of energy created a tsunami that reached heights of 30

meters high in some places, or about the

height of 17 people stacked on top of

each other.

The wave smashed into Indonesia, South

Asia, and the east coast of Africa,

punching as deep as two kilometers

inland from the coast in some places.

As you can see from photos like this one,

the damage in these places was often extensive.

The tragedy claimed the lives

of around 250 thousand people, making it the

deadliest tsunami in all of history,

while the 2011 Japan Tsunami was the

costliest in terms of damage.

That tsunami was also generated by an

earthquake that created waves as high as

40.5 meters; just about five

meters shorter than the Statue of

Liberty, that came slamming into the

Japanese east coast traveling up to ten

kilometers inland away from the coast.

As you can see from photos like this that

look like something straight out of a

Hollywood blockbuster, with what used to

be a road stretching out into the

endless ocean, the economic cost of Japan

was enormous: an estimated 300 billion

dollars in damages was done, more than

the entire GDP of South Africa. But these

are what are called "regular" tsunamis and

there is an entire other class of

gigantic waves that are simply called

"megatsunamis".

Unlike a regular tsunami that is created by an earthquake, a megatsunami

is usually created when a

massive amount of material suddenly

falls into water, which displaces that

water into a huge wave.

The most tragic and possibly terrifying instance of this

happening in recent times was back in

1963, here in Italy, just

100 kilometers north of Venice.

The Italian government and a construction

company were building what at the time

was going to be the largest dam on Earth;

the only problem was that they were

building this dam with a huge water

reservoir the size of a large lake, right

next to one of the most unstable

mountains on the planet.

For months leading up to the completion of the

dam, there were several minor landslides and other signs

that there could be a catastrophe coming,

but rather than heed the numerous warning

signs, the Italian government actually

decided to sue the few journalists

reporting on the issue for quote:

"...undermining the social order".

The government and company continued to

ignore all the warning signs until it

was obvious that the mountain was

actually going to collapse directly into

the dam's reservoir.

Tthe engineers calculated the landslide that would

likely occur, lowered the water in the

reservoir to what they believed was a

safe level, and then actually stood on

top of the dam the night that they expected the

landslide to occur to watch it all go down.

The only problem was, the landslide ended up being over 10 times more powerful

than what their calculations had predicted!

This is a view of that mountain today:

this right here used to be the reservoir, and all the land that's

there now came crashing off the mountain

from these areas that are now exposed white rock.

This tremendous amount of earth and rocks fell into the reservoir

in a matter of seconds, completely filled

the entire reservoir and generated a

wave 250 meters high that flew over the

top of the dam, and into the villages below.

The wave was almost the same

height as the TransAmerica building in

San Francisco for some reference, and

caused an impact crater 60 meters deep

and 80 meters wide when it slammed into

the ground on the other side of the dam!

If you were standing from this angle looking up at the dam at the exact

moment that the wave came over it,

the entire sky that you see in this picture

would be completely covered by water!

This photo was taken in the town of

Longarone, which before the megatsunami looked like this,

but afterwards looked like this: completely destroyed.

Around 2,000 people lost their lives in

the accident, but it's not actually the

largest mega tsunami even in recent history.

That distinction would have to go to a megatsunami that happened here

in Lituya Bay, Alaska, back in 1958.

A powerful earthquake caused a massive

landslide to occur here at the back side of the bay.

The huge amount of land

that came crashing into the bay created

a titanic wave 525 meters high that

slammed into this part of the bay,

completely went over it, and smashed into

the other side here, causing huge amounts

of damage to the rest of the bay and

destroying millions of trees.

The height of this wave was over 100 meters higher

than the tip of the Empire State

Building, and just 16

meters short of the recently built

One World Trade Center in New York City, but

even this is tiny in comparison to some

prehistoric megatsunamis. The largest

tsunami generated from a landslide

happened around 1.5 million years ago in

Hawaii.,on the specific island of Molokai.

At some point around that time, about

one-third of the northern portion of the

volcano collapsed into the ocean and

generated a wave 600 meters high, which

would have completely inundated the

entire island of Molokai and wreaked havoc

on the rest of the island chain. This

wave would have been about the height of

four Great Pyramids of Giza stacked on

top of each other... but even that pales in

comparison to the largest ever known

megatsunami, which was caused by an

asteroid. About 66 million years ago, the

same asteroid that likely killed the

dinosaurs also caused possibly the

largest megatsunami in all of Earth's

history when it crashed into the

modern-day Gulf of Mexico. The asteroid

was ten kilometers in diameter and

released an unbelievable 100 TERATONS

of TNT worth of energy. For comparison,

the Tsar Bomba (which is the largest

nuclear bomb ever detonated), released

only 1/2,000,000th of that same amount of

energy. You would need 2 million Tsar

Bombs to release this same amount of

energy, which caused an equally

unbelievable wave of up to 5

KILOMETERS high that would have smashed

into the Gulf Coast states of the

modern-day United States. That's higher

than the Matterhorn in the Alps... by about

500 EXTRA METERS. In fact the height is

higher than all of the mountains in the entire Alpine Mountain Range.

These waves were so big that if they

were to have happened in the Indian Ocean, the entire island of Madagascar would have been

completely submerged underwater for a

time. Imagine being on an island the size

of Madagascar in this scenario, with

absolutely no escape from the clutches

of the ocean's waves no matter how high

on the land that you can get to! It's a

weird thought, but at least it happened

66 million years ago and there's really

no fear something like that ever happening

again, right? Unless the 0.00001 percent

chance of one of the Canary Islands

collapsing into the ocean during your

lifetime happens, which would cause a

tsunami about 1 kilometer high and

would probably wipe out the entire East

Coast of the United States... unless that

happens then no, probably not. But, it's

still fun to think about.

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