Hey, Alarmy, check out Alarmist on Patreon for ad-free episodes and bonus content. There is a world in which they just stood there and they're like, don't, you know, it's like, don't move. Like, you know, they're like dinosaurs looking at you. And they'll just keep going. And then it's not, then what's his name, Chris Coldplay, Coldplay wouldn't have been like oh either they're

shy or they're having an affair he just would like oh look at that couple yeah you know yeah

let's put Chris Coldplay up on the board though too because I think that he's definitely he's a huge

he's a huge factor go to patreon.com slash the alarmist and subscribe today.

I was born with a special gift.

The ability to mentally transform any situation into the worst case scenario in my own brain. My therapist calls my gift catastrophizing. And that's why I'm

uniquely qualified to scrutinize and analyze history's greatest disasters and find out who's to blame.

They say history repeats itself.

Not on my watch.

My name is Rebecca Delgado-Smith, and I am The Alarmist.

Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning into The Alarmist, a comedy podcast where we talk about history's greatest tragedies and figure out who's to blame.

Today we're discussing the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

Here's what you need to know. On the morning of December 26, 2004,

at 758 a.m. local time, one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history struck beneath

the Indian Ocean just off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia.

The quake measured between 9.1 and 9.3 in magnitude and lasted nearly 10 minutes, an unusually

long duration for an earthquake. The rupture extended roughly 800 miles, about the length

of California, and it was felt as far away as

Alaska. It occurred along the Sunda megathrust, where the Indian tectonic plate is slowly being

forced beneath the Burma plate. The force was so intense, it shifted the earth's axis slightly,

and shortened the length of the day by a few

microseconds. This sudden vertical shift of the seafloor displaced a massive volume of water,

...