By Angus M. Gunn
Disasters can strike at any time. From the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius to storm Katrina, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and different typical mess ups have triggered super demise, human pain, and environmental disaster. The complicated technological and social adjustments of the previous few centuries haven't purely intensified the effect of such usual mess ups, yet have further new brought new purposes to be anxious - aircraft crashes, bombings, commercial injuries, genocides. Calling a few mess ups ordinary and others man-made downplays the $64000 interrelationship among the development and human activities. Human activities - or inactions - can catapult a average phenomenon right into a lethal disaster. Likewise, nature could be extraordinarily disrupted by way of occasions which are created by means of humans.
Encyclopedia of mess ups covers over one hundred eighty of crucial failures in historical past. prepared chronologically, the encyclopedia contains entries on these failures that experience had the best old, environmental, and cultural effect: The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, which destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum; the London fireplace of 1666, which flattened a lot of London and allowed the rebuilding of the town; the influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed hundreds of thousands; the 1964 Prince William Sound earthquake in Alaska, which brought on loss of life and destruction as distant as Hawaii; the worst nuclear strength plant coincidence in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1964, that has rendered the encircling panorama uninhabitable; and the 2004 earthquake that created a tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands in Sumatra. each one access features a checklist of readings for added study, and the encyclopedia is illustrated with a variety of images and line illustrations that convey the destruction and depression because of those disasters.
Read or Download Encyclopedia of Disasters [Two Volumes]: Environmental Catastrophes and Human Tragedies PDF
Similar encyclopedias books
The Evolution Wars: A Guide to the Debates
The Evolution Wars attracts on background, technological know-how, and philosophy to check the advance of evolutionary proposal during the earlier and a part centuries. It makes a speciality of the debates that experience engaged, divided, and finally provoked scientists to give some thought to the origins of life--including humankind--paying regard to the nineteenth-century conflict over the character of class and debates concerning the fossil list, genetics, and human nature.
Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece
The traditional Greeks confirmed modes of and attitudes approximately struggle that profoundly encouraged later ecu and European-based peoples. certainly, the triumph of Western civilization from Greco-Roman instances to the current owes an incalculable debt to the Greeks. In interesting aspect, this quantity covers Greek guns, armor, conflict formations and strategies, and naval struggle, supported by means of a number of eyewitness bills of battles and different pivotal occasions.
Publication via
- Encyclopedia of Modern China, 1st Edition
- Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures 2 Volume Set
- Encyclopedia of Food Science and Technology
- The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 14: Folklife
- The Renaissance- An Encyclopedia for Students, 1st Edition
- Design and Evaluation of Physical Protection Systems, Second Edition
Extra resources for Encyclopedia of Disasters [Two Volumes]: Environmental Catastrophes and Human Tragedies
Example text
No one can claim certainty about the future, yet scientists are always at work seeking to gain as much predictability as possible. Occasionally a successful forecast occurs and then efforts are redoubled to capitalize on the event. In China, in 1969 on a particular morning, zookeepers noticed unusual animal behavior—swans avoided water, pandas screamed, and snakes refused to go into their holes. 4 magnitude earthquake struck the city. Ever since then, and especially now in the light of Ikeye’s 2004 report, scientists take careful note of any relevant animal behavior.
PREDICTING EARTHQUAKES In spite of the fact that we know now exactly what causes earthquakes, their sudden, repetative appearance is as disturbing as the former ignorance of causes, so the quest to be able to predict their arrival has become a central interest of geologists. In fact, from earliest times, alongside the fanciful reasons for the occurrence of earthquakes, there were theories that pointed in the direction of predictions. Aristotle, for example, tried to explain the existence of earthquakes by theorizing that air was trapped in cavities below the surface of the earth and the rumbling of earthquakes was the result of that as the blocked cavities sought to free themselves.
It has been the scene of eruptions for more than two million years. The three largest of these eruptions sent out ash that was so hot that it welded into sheets of rock. Each of the three produced a crater-like depression, a caldera, tens of miles wide, formed by the collapse of the ground surface into the partly emptied magma chamber beneath. Faults within the present caldera are small and they produce small earthquakes from time to time that reflect strains in the earth’s crust. The active hydrothermal system of Yellowstone is one of the largest on earth and, although accidents involving hot water occasionally injure visitors, these can be avoided if park regulations are followed.
