Comparing tsunami deaths to the World Trade Center collapse

December 31, 2004 1:19 PM

Compare the death count from the tsunami to the deaths at the World Trade Center using graphs. Rob Cockerham took a break from his victimless pranks to help put things in perspective. Those without a giant monitor will have to do some horizontal scrolling.
posted by fleener (114 comments total)

I expect the FPP Brigade will launch an assault on this submission because they’re tired of hearing about the tsunami, think this page belittles the WTC deaths, or because it doesn’t spur a meaningful discussion. Well, I just thought the graphs were an interesting way for some people to relate to so many deaths that occurred half a world away. End of story.
posted by fleener at 1:19 PM on December 31, 2004

Interesting.
posted by LMB at 1:24 PM on December 31, 2004

I'm uncomfortable with the comparison--one was an act of terrorism, and one was a natural disaster.
posted by whatnot at 1:31 PM on December 31, 2004

I'm also uncomfortable with this. There are millions of deaths from AIDS every year but that doesnt mean we should throw them up on this graph or that it should form any kind of remark on the impact of the WTC deaths.

Maybe Cockerham should go back to counting fruit labels or whatever...
posted by vacapinta at 1:35 PM on December 31, 2004

I like this because it's uncomfortable.
posted by mosch at 1:36 PM on December 31, 2004

i don't really need graphics to know that 120,000 is a higher number than 3,000. what exactly am i supposed to walk away from this with? less sadness about 911? more sadness about indonesia? seriously.

why are we even comparing the two? they are so very fucking different.
posted by glenwood at 1:37 PM on December 31, 2004

Precisely, whatnot. The horror of the tsunami is of course indescribable and epochal, but it is rather different from somebody hijacking a plane and running it into a huge building with the express intent of killing as many people as possible (and terrorizing as many as possible afterwards with the looming threat of more and worse acts of terror.) One is a horrendous act of nature, probably utterly unavoidable given the nature of plate tectonics, the other an horrendous act of man, which we must try to avoid and squash and eliminate.

fleener, no, I'm not tired of hearing about the tsunami, and I wonder what you mean by that. But I don't understand your point of the graphs being an "interesting way" for "some people" (and who might that be, huh?) to relate (and what do you mean by that?) to so many deaths a half world away.

End of story? You think?
posted by 1016 at 1:39 PM on December 31, 2004

Nice post fleener. I think the grounds for comparison is to put some perspective on these big numbers. For many U.S. residents, 9/11 was a huge event and some people use that as a yardstick for disasters, whether natural or man-made. I have no problem with the comparison.
posted by marxchivist at 1:42 PM on December 31, 2004

I consider all deaths with equal gravity. I care not whether they are from terrorism, natural disaster or slips in the tub. I would like to see a similar graph using other data, such as AIDS deaths and vehicle accidents. I don't think anything is diminished when we consider the gravity of a situation.
posted by fleener at 1:44 PM on December 31, 2004

I'm uncomfortable with the comparison--one was an act of terrorism, and one was a natural disaster.

Me too. I suspect that this post was meant to suggest that the world (or at least Americans) should "care" more about the tsunami than 9/11.

The massive loss of life in both, however, might have been prevented if governments had the foresight to take appropriate preventative steps...and that they take action in the future to prevent similar loss of life. That's about the only comparison I see. Both the events were incredibly tragic...
posted by Durwood at 1:46 PM on December 31, 2004

"I would like to see a similar graph using other data".

And what would that tell you? That fewer people die from slips in the tub than from AIDS? Seriously, what do you gain from this spurious attempt at scientific method?

I don't need a supercilious graph to appraise the horror of over 100,000 (and maybe far more) dead in a natural disaster.

And I certainly appreciate the gravity of the situation. No graph required.
posted by 1016 at 1:48 PM on December 31, 2004

I think it's a useful metric. 9/11 has become the modern metric for great tragedy. This measures that.

The only other thing the graphic should do is offer a relative, rather than absolute, metric. Thus make the measuring stick the proportion of people killed out of the whole population. 3,000 deaths is a much bigger deal in a community of 10,000 than it is in a community of 1 billion.

This kind of thing is basically apolitical, I think. It's a metric. A number like 114,000 dead is so abstract as to be completely meaningless -- it is very difficult for our minds to put concrete meaning to very large numbers. Things like this are a valid attempt to give one an understanding of the tragedy.
posted by teece at 1:51 PM on December 31, 2004

As much as 9/11 was a terrorist act and no doubt more tragic to us (no taking that away), the sheer magnitude of death to innocents trumps all. I didn't get a political statement or position from it. Personally I hope it helps us to give more, and thereby reinforce the great good we are capable of. I plunked my contribution in.
Give!
posted by nj_subgenius at 1:55 PM on December 31, 2004

Personally, I think both death-toll numbers are difficult to comprehend... the tsunami moreso, of course. I have to admit, while discussing these recent events with a co-worker the other day, I did make comment similar to, "that's like x-number of World Trade Centers". But that's when the death estimates were a couple tens of thousands. I guess it was an effort to put things into SOME kind of personal perspective... I dunno. But now, my god, it's just nightmarish. There's no comparison that will help me understand the pain and suffering these people are going through. I can't even wrap my brain around any aspect of it what's happening over there. The footage available at waveofdestruction.org is just...
posted by Witty at 1:56 PM on December 31, 2004

Just curious, has anyone in the past few days not done this little comparison in their head every time they hear the latest count from the tsunami? I certainly have, and I'm not trying to preach any politics here – it's just the kind of approximation I was doing. I.e., "wow, that's... thats like eight 9/11's..."
posted by odinsdream at 1:59 PM on December 31, 2004

where's the graph of innocents killed on 9/11 next to innocents killed in Iraq?

Or Iraq to Tsunami?

Or Money Spent on Iraq vs. Money on Tsunami?

Where is the comparison on total human suffering and terror related sad feelies?

As mentioned, this graph does little but point out that Tsunami's are deadlier than terrorists, and environmental factors of both a social, political, and...uh...environmental bent should be factored in when one decides how best to combat the suffering of life, be it caused by men or nature.
posted by wah at 2:06 PM on December 31, 2004

The comparison to 9/11 does not diminish that atrocity, rather it helps me better understand the scope of this new tragedy.

As somebody who lives within tsunami range of the pacific ocean, it also makes me wonder if it would be advisable to spend a few million dollars to create a detection system. After all, fifty million dollars seems like a bargain if it could help prevent even one 9/11, let alone 30 or 40 of them.
posted by mosch at 2:06 PM on December 31, 2004

I already linked to this in the earlier thread about dueling aid packages, but I'm reposting it here as another example of graphics-as-argument.

I'd like to suggest a different way of viewing the 9/11 analogy. Be wary of naturalizing these deaths. A different approach to foreign aid and developement might have insured that povery-striken areas and India and Indonesia had more buildings that were strong enough not to be washed away from the sea, adequate public health programs, and communication infrastructure to allow warnings and other information to be diffused rapidly.

Since 9/11, I've made a concerted effort to think of the faces and lives beyond my own borders, and to combat the isolationism that- like racism- is a part of American identity. It takes repeated intrusions into one's cultural insularity to appreciate the scale of the disaster, and I think this graphic is provocative in the best possible way.

And finally, needless to say, unlike the mass deaths of 9/11, this is a case of human suffering that we can do something about. Many of the deaths that will come from this disaster will occur in the coming weeks due to starvation and the spread of disease. Will they, too, be deemed "natural"?
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 2:12 PM on December 31, 2004

I don't think of 2,405 as some magical "tragedy unit" because that was the death toll of the September 11, 2001 terrorism. Does anyone really do so?

I am with mosch that the world needs to learn from this and invest in detection and evacuation systems, which will be financially sounder--let alone the tragic cost of human lives--in the long run.
posted by Sidhedevil at 2:13 PM on December 31, 2004

The point is not that the causes are comparable, but that too many Americans think 911 was the Worst. Thing. Ever. A little perspective is a good thing.
posted by rushmc at 2:14 PM on December 31, 2004

foxy_hedgehog, I think that isolationism and racism are part of every "national identity"--to suggest that they are uniquely American is just childish.
posted by Sidhedevil at 2:14 PM on December 31, 2004

I think it's a useful metric. 9/11 has become the modern metric for great tragedy. This measures that.

This assumes that the only element of a "tragedy" that matters is the gross body count.
posted by obfusciatrist at 2:15 PM on December 31, 2004

You guys have me musing about Antietam and 9/11 again.
posted by alumshubby at 2:18 PM on December 31, 2004

Sure, it has a place. There are people who think of 9/11 as the Worst. Thing. Ever. and perspective could help them. But as several others have eloquently stated, the usefulness is limited because it's a prety shallow comparison. There is more to tragedy than death count - but the death count in this natural disaster is fairly mind boggling.
posted by raedyn at 2:19 PM on December 31, 2004

It's an interesting graph and thought provoking as well. But it made me wonder what the graph of smoking deaths and other willfully dangerous behaviours look like in comparison.

How many people die every single day from smoking? WHO just raised their annual total to 4.9 million.

The tsunami was a natural disaster (that could have been alot better dealt with by local authorities) and the death toll is shockingly high. A simple warning system would have saved many, many lives.

All of that said, I'm not really quite sure what the overall point of using WTC towers to represent the dead. Its an interesting project but I don't really see the payoff.

obfusciatrist, an excellent point that I've not seen made anywhere else yet. Thanks for making it.
posted by fenriq at 2:20 PM on December 31, 2004

It was officials in the area of the tragedy who first called it "Our Ground Zero". I had a hard time with this, too, since it wasn't a terrorist act. Now, however, I can see the events as related in this way: A large number of civilians (not people engaged in a police or military activity) were killed, very unexpectedly, in a very short time frame. Using ONLY that criteria, the events are exactly the same.

Measured in terms of Acts of God vs. Acts of Evil, we might possibly lay claim to being more heavily victimized. (It's a remnant of all the 9/11 NYC-centric rhetoric, of course, that we have to be the greatest victims and that we might resent anyone usurping that title. It's often difficult to recognize jingoism for what it is, when one is living right in the middle of it. A senseless tragedy is a senseless tragedy is a senseless tragedy. Let's try to stop making sense of these things.)

Measured in terms of sheer numbers, and percentage of local population, this tragedy dwarfs 9/11. That's where the graphic makes sense - if we were grief-stricken over 9/11, how badly are these people hurting? If local officials, in the days after 9/11, had no words to describe the tragedy, how far beyond words is this?

That's my take anyway. Now, um, would someone tell me what an FPP Brigade is?
posted by humannature at 2:21 PM on December 31, 2004

Oops, should note that the WHO link is from October 2002. Not as recent as the headline had led me to believe. Still shocking, especially since it's probably higher now.
posted by fenriq at 2:21 PM on December 31, 2004

I suspect that this post was meant to suggest that the world (or at least Americans) should "care" more about the tsunami than 9/11.

Shouldn't we?

I sure do.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 2:22 PM on December 31, 2004

From the same individuals who think a loaded question is nothing more than a simple inquisition of opinion?
posted by sled at 2:25 PM on December 31, 2004

Oh I missed this. There is another way in which 9/11 and this event are related. Apparently, the loss of life in both instances might have been mitigated with better methods of communication. That's something to think about, I guess.
posted by humannature at 2:27 PM on December 31, 2004

This was a front page story on CNN for most of yesterday. It seems as if CNN is among those who want to compare the tsunami to 9/11.
posted by trey at 2:27 PM on December 31, 2004

The phrase "Ground Zero" referred to other centers of tragedy before it referred to the World Trade Center, humannature. Doesn't anyone read any history anymore?
posted by Sidhedevil at 2:28 PM on December 31, 2004

I'm aware that 'Ground Zero' is a phrase with a history longer than 3 years. In this case, an official was making a plea for aid by drawing a comparison with a recent, well-publicized event. In this case, the phrase 'Ground Zero' was deliberately invoked to mean the 9/11 tragedy.
posted by humannature at 2:32 PM on December 31, 2004

humannature:
> Now, um, would someone tell me what an FPP Brigade is?

"oldtimers" on MeFi who believe they have "earned" the right to spawn a fruitful and interesting discussion by pointing out why they believe a Front Page Post should not have been posted in this way or that way. Good for them.
posted by nostrada at 2:32 PM on December 31, 2004

Thank you, Nostrada. I now feel slightly less ignorant, and that's a good thing.
posted by humannature at 2:36 PM on December 31, 2004

...but that too many Americans think 911 was the Worst. Thing. Ever.

This is the kind of thing that pisses me off about people like you rushmc. To many Americans 9-11 WAS the worst thing ever... and rightfully so. To many Russians, the schoolhouse hostage/murder crisis was the Worst. Thing. Evar. What is so wrong with that? You're trying to paint people with this opinion as being stupid, ignorant, and heartless when it comes to other people from around the world. People are allowed to have personal feelings about things... especially when it IS personal. I don't understand what the point of your comment is.

I cried the day (and several days afterwards) of the terror attacks in the U.S., for many reasons. One of which was fear for my father's safety, working in the Pentagon. I have yet to shed a full-blown tear (choked-up, watery eyes, yes) over this tsunami. Why not? Because I can't comprehend it. I have no personal connection (that I know of) with the countries or the people in them. But that doesn't mean I take this any less seriously or that I'm not filled with sadness or grief. But so far, in my life, September 11th was the Worst. Day. Evar. If it isn't for you, fantastic.

What are you trying to say when you make comments like that? Seriously. Because I read shit like that as some sort of hip way of saying, "I'm in touch with just how much Americans suck, and I'm American, and I'm cool for knowing the truth". It's bullshit rushmc. Give it a rest.

If I've misunderstood your meaning, I apologize.
posted by Witty at 2:42 PM on December 31, 2004

"I think it's a useful metric. 9/11 has become the modern metric for great tragedy. This measures that."

This assumes that the only element of a "tragedy" that matters is the gross body count.

Nah, not at all. Saying the Kelvin is the metric for the temperature of an object makes no assumptions about the object's mass.

I don't think 9/11 even remotely compares to the horror of this event, and that sentence of mine that you quoted is badly worded for what I wanted to say.

Rather, exercises like this are not a distraction, they are not even just a nicety, they are a necessity. People can not judge what it means without a reference. Currently, rightly or wrongly, 9/11 is the reference.

But the horror that was unleashed by this tsunami is astoundingly beyond that. I read somewhere that, in the final tally, just the number of dead American tourists will be on par with the number of 9/11 victims.

We need the perspective.
posted by teece at 2:45 PM on December 31, 2004

Personally, I think that comparing different situations in which people die is tacky. Death is horrible. More people dying doesn't make it suck more, it means that there are more people who are directly affected. You could compare how many people have died as a result of this tsunami to how many of my grandmothers died as a result of lung failure, but it would be a meaningless comparison.
posted by 23skidoo at 2:48 PM on December 31, 2004

Durwood , interesting point. If you want to couch it in those terms, then yes, as an American, I do care more about the loss of 120,000 people than 3,000 people. The only sway in the other direction is that fear of my own death is not a factor in this natural disaster.
posted by fleener at 2:50 PM on December 31, 2004

I consider all deaths with equal gravity. I care not whether they are from terrorism, natural disaster or slips in the tub.

This sounds so pretentious.
posted by BradNelson at 3:00 PM on December 31, 2004

Sri Lanka - 375,000.
Indonesia - 105,000.
Thailand - 13,000.

- Deaths so far expressed in terms of the population of the USA (roughly).

Humannature and others are right, in terms of raw deaths and direct economic impact, this tragedy dwarfs 9/11 in these countries. However the full effect of 9/11 on the planet has not yet been felt. The tsunami is to the earthquake that caused it as Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the connected future events that have not yet occurred are to 9/11, if you catch my meaning. To put only the victims in the WTC on the same hypothetical balance sheet as the victims of the tsunami is to ignore the full scale of and continuing impact of what happened in NYC. It also discounts what has followed and the victims in the years since as being a direct result of 9/11. That is to say, if this discussion is about the overall global impact of the two events. To family members and friends, and especially for Sri Lankans, the metrics will never matter anyways. Geopolitically however, and ultimately in terms of lives and economics, 9/11 is still likely the more significant event. For whatever it's worth.
posted by loquax at 3:02 PM on December 31, 2004

Aside from the huge numbers of dead civilians, these events are not related whatsoever. Was there a man flying those planes? Was there a man driving that tsunami? Nature didn't make a conscious decision to drown a tenth of a million people. Some man DID make a decision to fly a plane into a crowded building in the middle of a city, and that is what scares me, that a man was responsible for the events of 9/11 while nature is something that you can come to terms with.
posted by StrangerInAStrainedLand at 3:07 PM on December 31, 2004

That's worth something, Loquax. Both 9/11 AND this event will have 'aftershocks' as it were, that will be felt for years. One might even say they are turning points in human history, but we have no way of measuring these turns as we are still too close to the events. Our grandchildren, probably, will wrestle with that task.
posted by humannature at 3:08 PM on December 31, 2004

Just curious, has anyone in the past few days not done this little comparison in their head every time they hear the latest count from the tsunami?

exactly. Having been through 9/11 made this much more realistic and immediate to me than I expect it would have been otherwise. It reminded me of feelings of vulnerability and despair I directly experienced, making me feel I had a slightly greater awareness as to what this disaster must be like. It has been hard for me not to think, wow, if I was so broken over maybe 2% as many deaths, what kind of indescribable horror must the people of southeast asia be experiencing?

This is the kind of thing that pisses me off about people like you rushmc. To many Americans 9-11 WAS the worst thing ever... and rightfully so.

I think the point is that we are perhaps capable of greater empathy having been through something difficult ourselves. EXperiencing sudden, massive, and traumatic deaths in your direct region, even when no one close to you was actually killed is much more difficult than we might abstractly expect. No one I knew directly was killed in the WTC, and yet I burst into tears when I looked at the skyline for weeks afterward.

I think this kind of comparison is natural and can help us to better understand and attempt to help those going through something so devastating.

The difficulty of the smokers/drivers/etc comparisons is that the emotional trauma of a large scale event extends outwards in a way which cannot be said of multiple but individual deaths. If every single person killed at the world trade center had died of alternate causes over a period of a couple years, their direct families would have undergone similar grief, but there would not be a community of stunned and horrified survivors and witnesses, suffering through nightmares and emotional pain.

It may not be completely logical, but we have an easier time with death if we are allowed to take it slowly, one at a time, with room to adjust to the new scenario. When thousands are killed instantly, it can be extremely difficult to make sense of things again.
posted by mdn at 3:12 PM on December 31, 2004

Just curious, has anyone in the past few days not done this little comparison in their head every time they hear the latest count from the tsunami? I certainly have, and I'm not trying to preach any politics here – it's just the kind of approximation I was doing. I.e., "wow, that's... thats like eight 9/11's..."

odinsdream, I was doing the same thing in my head shortly after I heard about it. I wasn't trying to be morbid. I was just trying to put the numbers in some sort of perspective. Sadly, the numbers grew so large that now I use the population of my city to do comparisons in my head. At the moment, the number of dead is roughly equal to four times the population of my hometown. I just can't wrap my head around it.
posted by LeeJay at 3:13 PM on December 31, 2004

I'm aware that 'Ground Zero' is a phrase with a history longer than 3 years. In this case, an official was making a plea for aid by drawing a comparison with a recent, well-publicized event. In this case, the phrase 'Ground Zero' was deliberately invoked to mean the 9/11 tragedy.

Do you have a link for the particular statement to which you're referring? Was it made in English?

I would think, for example, that Indonesian officials might well have used the phrase "Ground Zero" to invoke in the Japanese people a memory of the 200,000+ death toll of Ground Zero Hiroshima.
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:14 PM on December 31, 2004

foxy_hedgehog, I think that isolationism and racism are part of every "national identity"--to suggest that they are uniquely American is just childish.

I didn't say they were unique, or uniquely American; those are your words and not mine. Uniqueness only comes into play when considering the particular forms isolationism and racism take in any national or cultural context.

And your ad feminem is also rather childish.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 3:15 PM on December 31, 2004

Do the Japanese refer to the Hiroshima epicentre as "ground zero"? Just curious.
posted by Rumple at 3:20 PM on December 31, 2004

Why is every incident where people die now ranked on some kind of horror scale? Each tragedy (natural or man-made) and each death is unique and horrible in its own way. What is the fascination with ranking everything? Disgusting.
posted by AspectRatio at 3:21 PM on December 31, 2004

It is weird and arrogant, in my opinion, to suggest that 2,405 should somehow become--or already is--an international metric for tragedy. It might be a US metric for tragedy, but I can't believe that citizens of other countries think of it as a metric for tragedy.
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:23 PM on December 31, 2004

The earthquake was a terrorist?
posted by TwelveTwo at 3:25 PM on December 31, 2004

foxy_hedgehog, you wrote:

the isolationism that- like racism- is a part of American identity.

I did not say that you said they were uniquely American--I said that you suggested they were uniquely American. I believe that the syntactic structure of that sentence does, indeed, suggest that isolation and racism are parts of the American identity in particular.

Which, I believe, is a childish point of view. Describing a point of view as "childish" is not an ad feminam attack, foxy_hedgehog.
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:26 PM on December 31, 2004

Some man DID make a decision to fly a plane into a crowded building in the middle of a city, and that is what scares me, that a man was responsible for the events of 9/11 while nature is something that you can come to terms with.

it's at least as easy to put this the other way around: after 9/11, we could 'take charge' again by going after afghanistan, or starting the 'war on terror.' This can never really be made sense of. It's just complete and utter horror.

Ultimately, I wouldn't want to claim that either intentional or natural disasters were worse; the thing is, the devastation trumps all rational calculations of how one 'ought' to feel. If the WTC had fallen in because of an earthquake instead of a manned aircraft, I have no doubt we would have suffered just as much. The difference would have been in our response, but the pain of the immediate aftermath wouldn't have been reduced.

Additionally, as foxy_hedgehog points out above, there are ways in which this tragedy would have been quite different in the developed world, so global social justice should be a primary issue in response to this event.
posted by mdn at 3:34 PM on December 31, 2004

The concept has been around for a while and it does not seem to be going away.
posted by mss at 3:36 PM on December 31, 2004

Sorry, haven't read all the above comments, but speaking personally, I find this comparison to be quite irrelevant if not a little disrespectful. The WTC attacks and the recent tsunamis have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and I completely fail to see how comparing them is helpful to anyone. The pic of the WTC he uses for the graphs is also distasteful IMHO.
posted by Malachi Constant at 3:36 PM on December 31, 2004

I can understand the resistance to comparing "worstness," but I've found it a helpful way to try and understand the Tsunami, which I believe is the only truly global event to happen in my lifetime.

Yesterday after reading that Sweden was regarding this as one of the worst tragedies to befall the country and I thought, Sweden? And then I did some math and understood:

USA 9/11 loss: 2,948 souls = 0.00099 % of the population lost

Sweden Tsunami loss: 1,500 souls = 0.017% of the population lost
posted by donovan at 3:37 PM on December 31, 2004

well, i guess if i knock off tomorrow, someone can make a web page comparing the world trade center with an outhouse

23skidoo ... you're right ... this IS tacky
posted by pyramid termite at 3:40 PM on December 31, 2004

At least 200 of the people killed in the September 11 attacks were citizens of countries other than the US, donovan.
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:41 PM on December 31, 2004

This is the kind of thing that pisses me off about people like you rushmc.

Witty, simmer down. You're really getting tedious.
posted by 327.ca at 3:42 PM on December 31, 2004

Then skip my comments.
posted by Witty at 3:44 PM on December 31, 2004

Spot on:

"I think the grounds for comparison is to put some perspective on these big numbers. For many U.S. residents, 9/11 was a huge event and some people use that as a yardstick for disasters, whether natural or man-made. I have no problem with the comparison." [Marxchivist]

"The comparison to 9/11 does not diminish that atrocity, rather it helps me better understand the scope of this new tragedy." [mosch].

Comparisons - as well as imagery - allow me to get a mental grasp of the scale and nature of each tragedy. Pictures (at various websites) and video (on CNN) of bodies being bulldozed into mass graves also really "bring it home" for me. Otherwise, events like these can recede to being abstract ... and easy for me to be "emotionally distant" and "removed".
posted by ericb at 3:50 PM on December 31, 2004

"Getting"?
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:50 PM on December 31, 2004

Sidehedevil: You're completely correct. I shouldn't drink Bourbon while doing math.

My point was simply that I was astounded by the high lost of life in Sweden on a per capita basis 'cause I took it as a proxy for how many families and social networks were directly affected by the loss of a loved one. (Of course it doesn't compare by orders of magnitude to Banda Aceh were I've heard they think one out of every four people died.)
posted by donovan at 3:53 PM on December 31, 2004

How much is Al Qaeda giving for disaster relief?
posted by ParisParamus at 3:58 PM on December 31, 2004

Why, oh why, does the Tsunami hate our freedoms?

Look this is silly. I mean we can make WTC graphs all day.

"How many towers would it take to illustrate Highway fatalities?" for instance. Would that spur a War on Traffic Safety you think?

Why was this graph made? So we could all join hands and appreciate the "irony" or get "perspective" or whatever.

So what.

The WTC attack effects were far more than simply a statement of fatalities. No comparisons can really be made.

It was about some shit head cave hermit who had the balls, brains, money and followers to shatter a super-powers mythical belief in it's invulnerability and and same time CONFIRMING that super-powers most base paranoias.

The paradigm shift in that moment cannot be understated.

Think about it like this. For 40 years the US made LOTS of fatal god-damned enemies who were Nation-states. Right? But not ONE of them ever dreamt of attacking us head on (wars of proxy, sure). Even ones we bombed into the stone age.

Why? Because we had this MASSIVE arsenal of nukes. Attacking us meant ending the frigg'n world. It became the unquestioned conventional wisdom.

Then one crazy-assed guy did it. And BLAM: Trillions of defense dollars, geopolitical machinations, alliances, and fundamental assumptions of how the world works went out the frigg'n window.
posted by tkchrist at 3:59 PM on December 31, 2004

ericb makes a good point and cites some good points made by others. I guess whatever makes it easier for people to comprehend the numbers of a loss, whether it's the 2,405-2,972 people killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks (doesn't anyone else find it odd that nobody seems to have an exact number?), or the 2,563 people who lived in my old home town, or the 122,514 population of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or the 117,096 population of Bergamo, Italy (two cities I have visited that are inhabited by the approximate number of people killed in the tsunami).

I just got a hair up my bum at the idea that everyone in the world thought of the September 11 death toll as a metric of tragedy. My guess is that's not the case.
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:01 PM on December 31, 2004

How much is Al Qaeda giving for disaster relief?

PP, meet Witty. Witty, meet ParisParamus. You two have lots in common. Why don't you both go over there in the corner and have a nice, long chat?
posted by 327.ca at 4:01 PM on December 31, 2004

How do you confirm a paranoia?
posted by ParisParamus at 4:02 PM on December 31, 2004

I said that you suggested they were uniquely American. I believe that the syntactic structure of that sentence does, indeed, suggest that isolation and racism are parts of the American identity in particular.

posted by Sidhedevil at 6:26 PM EST on December 31

Perhaps my further clarification was insufficient: As an American, I made an observation about America in reference to itself, on its own terms. Feel free to dispute it, but please don't indict my syntax based only on assertion and interpolation.

Note also that I made this observation with specific reference to my own reflections upon my identity as an American. I experience my relationship to the rest of the world as just that, not as a Swede, or a Frenchmen, or an Indonesian. It is my particular legacy, and I consider it my responsibility to acknowledge the way in which my consciousness is shaped by my country and my culture.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 4:05 PM on December 31, 2004

< i would think, for example, that indonesian officials might well have used the phrase ground zero to invoke in the japanese people a memory of the 200,000+ death toll of ground zero hiroshima.>>

The statement re Ground Zero was made to NPR (American radio, but quite probably it was repeated elsewhere as well, since the area is now aswarm with media). I doubt that the official's point was to remind anyone that Americans nuked Japan at the end of WW2, as part of a message intended to appeal for aid. (The fact that just about everyone seems to be making comparisons with 9/11 and not Hiroshima suggests that the official knew how his comments would be taken). But, if anyone believes he was making reference to Hiroshima, fine with me. It's too tedious a point to pursue any further.
posted by humannature at 4:05 PM on December 31, 2004

How do you confirm a paranoia?
You just did.
posted by tkchrist at 4:05 PM on December 31, 2004

The tsunami hates our freedom?
posted by Arch Stanton at 4:08 PM on December 31, 2004

The tsunami hates our freedom?
Isn't that obvious? It also laughs at our moral certainty and scoffs at our Christian values.

We must attack the tsunami where ever it hides.
Er. No. We cannot wait. We must preemptively bomb the ocean now BEFORE it has a chance to summon the tsunami to attack us.

Get your snorkel and flippers! Invade the ocean before it is too late!
posted by tkchrist at 4:19 PM on December 31, 2004

I think that as far as loaded posts go, this has merits to be in the top 100.
posted by Dean Keaton at 4:33 PM on December 31, 2004

The point is not that the causes are comparable, but that too many Americans think 911 was the Worst. Thing. Ever. A little perspective is a good thing.

Dead on target with that, rush.

While I certainly can appreciate the difference between a natural disaster and deliberate murder raised by others, it probably dosen't make much difference to those suffering.


How much is Al Qaeda giving for disaster relief?

I don't expect any compassion or human decency from Al Qaeda. The rest of us is a different story.
posted by jonmc at 5:59 PM on December 31, 2004

Sweden Tsunami loss: 1,500 souls = 0.017% of the population lost

I was astounded by the high lost of life in Sweden on a per capita basis

[A derail, but the following has me disgusted and fuming..]

“Thank God for Tsunami & 2,000 dead Swedes!!! How many tsunami-dead Swedes are fags & dykes? vacationing on their fat expendable incomes without kids to bother with and spend money on.” [excerpted from a flier/press release - Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church – famous for godhatesfags.com and godhatesamerica.com) and the picketing of Matthew Shepard's funeral in 1998.
posted by ericb at 6:02 PM on December 31, 2004

on preview ... *famous* should be *infamous*.
posted by ericb at 6:03 PM on December 31, 2004

ericb: your disgust is Phelps' fuel. I expect decency from him about as much as I expect it from Bin Laden. Screw him and let him dissolve like the fart in the wind he is.
posted by jonmc at 6:04 PM on December 31, 2004

400,000 dead in Indonesia alone?

On preview: MeFi summed up.
posted by bwg at 6:08 PM on December 31, 2004

humannature, I sit corrected. Obviously, a statement made to American radio is going to use American points of reference in an attempt to appeal to an American audience. I appreciate the correction.

And, ericb, I'd be delighted to sponsor a steel-cage deathmatch between al-Qaeda and the Westboro Baptist Church. amberglow shared that little piece of bile with us yesterday--contrast it with the response of actual religious organizations like the National Council of Churches, the Islamic Circle of North America and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:11 PM on December 31, 2004

amberglow shared that little piece of bile with us yesterday

Sorry ... I missed it. Thanks for the heads-up.
posted by ericb at 6:13 PM on December 31, 2004

That wasn't a snark at all, ericb; amberglow had a bunch of other links that were interesting as well (though nothing is as horrific as Phelps, ever).

foxy_hedgehog, obviously I read things into your post that were not what you intended. My apologies.
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:27 PM on December 31, 2004

Sidhedevil - No problem. I didn't take your comment as a snark.

BTW - I searched on various terms "Swedes"; "Swedish"; "Phelps"; "Westboro"; "Raw Story" and a portion of the web address for Phelps' flier (westboro_tsunami_statement) ... and came up with no previous mentions on MeFi.

Obviously, I missed amberglow's mention of it.

Still learning the ropes here on MeFi.
posted by ericb at 6:35 PM on December 31, 2004

I just thought the graphs were an interesting way for some people to relate to so many deaths that occurred half a world away.

People don't relate to death with graphs, they do with proximity.

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

- Joseph Stalin
posted by Zemat at 6:41 PM on December 31, 2004

Sidhedevil, accepted

Better news, more promising news.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 6:43 PM on December 31, 2004

I once tried to get across the idea of innumeracy to my sister by using her as an example. I told her that there was an epidemic in Europe a few decades ago where about a hundred-million people died (we live in the US).

She quickly and matter-of-factly said that she thought she had heard about that, but she didn’t seem disturbed about it, only curious.

Maybe I used too high of a number (which was the point) and you can’t expect people to appreciate such abstraction, but at the same time she was visibly disturbed by 9/11.

Now, did 9/11 have more of an impact because it more-or-less hit home, were the numbers easier to grasp, is she conditioned to care only about her “own” people? All three?
posted by freethought at 6:50 PM on December 31, 2004

I did the same thing with SARS and malaria last year, for what it's worth.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:51 PM on December 31, 2004

What's this? Is everyone going to start the new year by getting along in here? we can't have that. Someone say something inflammatory.
posted by humannature at 7:05 PM on December 31, 2004

Attempts at trying to get a sense of the "size" and "scope" of things ...

How Much Is A Million? ... and ...

the recent documentary "Paper Clips" [film trailer]... in which school children in Whitwell, TN sought to understand the number of Jews exterminated during the Holocaust. They ended up collecting 6 million paper clips, representing the 6 million people killed by the Nazis.
posted by ericb at 7:06 PM on December 31, 2004

Actually ... "Whitwell received more than 35,000 letters and more than 32 million paper clips." [USA Today, December 22, 2004]
posted by ericb at 7:08 PM on December 31, 2004

Someone say something inflammatory.
+
. . . more than 32 million paper clips.
-----------------------------------------------------------
= They could use the extras as a start on their Native American project.
posted by freethought at 7:35 PM on December 31, 2004

FYI ... "Paper clips were chosen because Norwegians wore them on clothing during World War II as a silent protest against Nazism and anti-Semitism." [USA Today]
posted by ericb at 8:03 PM on December 31, 2004

To many Americans 9-11 WAS the worst thing ever... and rightfully so.

Quite wrongfully so, actually. Worst thing ever in their lives is quite a different thing from worst thing ever, and anyone who confuses the two should be educated to know better.

It also laughs at our moral certainty and scoffs at our Christian values.

Indeed.
posted by rushmc at 9:04 PM on December 31, 2004

The WTC attacks and the recent tsunamis have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and I completely fail to see how comparing them is helpful to anyone.

No one is saying they have anything to do with each other and the comparision is merely in numbers of dead, not in how they were killed nor who was it that was killed. This is a common technique that simply uses one frame of reference to illustrate the magnitude of another. You are free to compare of course, but I don't believe that comparison is the intention. Could be wrong of course.
posted by juiceCake at 12:19 AM on January 1, 2005

And of course, after looking at it again and reading the word compare or it's derivatives I am completely wrong! Perhaps it's badly worded. Yeah. That's it.
posted by juiceCake at 12:21 AM on January 1, 2005

Because one punch to your ego hurts more than fifty blows to your gut? Or is it because brown people in third world countries are really just closer to dogs than us?

What really eats me is how the world's media was instructed after 9/11 not to display any dead bodies of victims but CNN, a worldwide network, happily broadcasts bodies of dead brown people being bulldozed away in this latest tragedy. Can you imagine what would have happened if images like that were shown after 9/11?
posted by DirtyCreature at 1:35 AM on January 1, 2005

ericb - 40 years ago my whole school counted a million grains of rice. First in little bags of 10 then 10 bags into a larger bag to make a hundred etc. It took weeks and eventually we had a big assembly where they were all emptied out into a massive pile.

For the rest of my life, I have the certain knowledge that a million is a seriously big number.
posted by Cancergiggles at 1:47 AM on January 1, 2005

I have had
posted by Cancergiggles at 1:52 AM on January 1, 2005

I expect the FPP Brigade will launch an assault on this submission because they’re tired of hearing about the tsunami

Instantly defensive, as always, fleener.
posted by scarabic at 3:58 AM on January 1, 2005

Do the Japanese refer to the Hiroshima epicentre as "ground zero"? Just curious.

Yes and no. The term does exist in Japanese with roughly that pronunciation (guraundo zero), but is probably used mainly by historians and the like. Most people would not recognize the term, and instead use "bakushinchi", which means, roughly, "explosion center ground".

On preview: I just asked a coworker (in Japanese), "Do you know the term ground zero?", and his response was, "You mean 9/11?". When I asked "Do you know of any other contexts for ground zero", he said no.

It is weird and arrogant, in my opinion, to suggest that 2,405 should somehow become--or already is--an international metric for tragedy. It might be a US metric for tragedy, but I can't believe that citizens of other countries think of it as a metric for tragedy.

It actually never occurred to me to visualize the death count in terms of 9/11. I always use the population of my high school (around 2,000) to conceptualize large casualty figures. I doubt most of my Japanese coworkers would use 9/11 either, only partly because I doubt they even know how many people died (I remembered it as vaguely 2,000, but with little confidence, and I'm an American)

Why was this graph made? So we could all join hands and appreciate the "irony" or get "perspective" or whatever.

As a long time reader of cockeyed.com, I think you're completely wrong in assuming the goal was "irony", and I suspect that what you mean by "perspective" is not the same type of perspective I see as the goal. I suspect the page is to give perspective about how big the earthquake/tsunami impact is, not to make the WTC seem smaller or less significant.
posted by Bugbread at 4:45 AM on January 1, 2005

< ericb - 40 years ago my whole school counted a million grains of rice. it took weeks... for the rest of my life, i have the certain knowledge that a million is a seriously big number.>

Wow, Cancergiggles, that brings back a memory. About that long ago, one of my grade-school teachers gave us the homework assignment of making one million marks on a sheet of paper. Of course, no one could complete the assignment, and a few parents got pretty angry. (We didn't have any homework from this teacher for a week.)

I don't think this gave us quite the respect for the number that your better-considered assignment did. But it did demonstrate to me, even then, that our teacher (and by extension, most adults) had no understanding of the magnitude of the number. (The lesson I came away with was not how overwhelming a million is, but rather how stupid adults were.)

Graphs and comparisons and little exercises with paper clips and rice can leave a lasting impression. It's important, though, that the exercise be well-thought out (like your rice or the paper clips), because when they're not (as in my teacher's case) they're more annoying than instructive.

Which brings us back to the WTC chart, subject of this post. Was the WTC graphic well done, handled in such a way that we get a sense of scale of the current tragedy, or is it just kind of facile and annoying? There seems to be a prevailing opinion towards the latter here. More people here seem annoyed than feel it is a 'great' chart. Perhaps there is some better realized concept that could be rendered, if we need to get our heads around the scale of this. To be fair to the author of the piece, it would take more time than (s)he's had to seriously do the concept justice (this might be more of a 'first draft'). Perhaps something will be done and wind up posted here.
posted by humannature at 7:53 AM on January 1, 2005

So, some guy with a web site and a weird perspective on things in general can divide and use Photoshop (he's graphed other things before).

I honestly don't think Cockerman has an agenda beyond trying to make the numbers meaningful to people (despite the fact that I disagree with the comparison on any level).

If you really want to give numerical and visual statistical perspectives on the disaster, the New York Times has a very good page with that and the disaster in general.

Shame on fleener for using an innocent page to stir up the metafilter pot on this new year.
posted by hrbrmstr at 7:54 AM on January 1, 2005

The premise is that Americans comprehend the value of only American deaths, so it takes a 9-11 metric to get Americans to sit up, slap their bloated foreheads and say, "Oh! You mean, like, 100,000 dead Asians is kinda the same as 34 World Trade centers?!"

Insulting, simplistic, and partly accurate.
posted by squirrel at 8:12 AM on January 1, 2005

My various thoughts:

1. Count me in as someone who thinks it's not an apt analogy, but it is a useful one, if it helps get anyone to contribute to relief funds. My first thought in hearing the death toll was to realize how bad I had felt about 9/11 and then to realize how much bigger this was to the various countries affected. I then gave money to the Red Cross.

2. As counterbalance to Stalin's comment, was it Bertrand Russell who said something to the effect of 'the mark of a civilized man is that he can weep at a column of statistics'?

3. I became curious to know where this disaster stood relative to others. I found both this and similar pages. Speaking of which...

4. ...Wasn't Candide written partly as a response to a natural disaster that left so many people dead that it got people doubting the existence of God, and so forth? Anybody recall which one?
posted by kimota at 8:25 AM on January 1, 2005

4. ...Wasn't Candide written partly as a response to a natural disaster that left so many people dead that it got people doubting the existence of God, and so forth? Anybody recall which one?
posted by kimota at 11:25 AM EST on January 1


For Kimota and others who might be interested: Candide was written in response to another earthquake, which devastated Lisbon in 1755.

No, Dr. Pangloss, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 8:58 AM on January 1, 2005

Tsunami. Earthquake. Hurricane. Tornado. These are acts of mother nature, fate, environment, whatever you use for the word "GOD" if in fact you use such a word. Chaos theory. The laws of physics. Whatever doesn't piss you off and start you on a religious debate that backhands the truth. My point is, it's not manmade, but rather outside humanity's control; at least until mankind figures out how to play god yet again, by controlling the weather.

The World Trade Center bombing was an act of brutality by a small but disputable number of extremist yet determined assholes. It can also be argued whether or not these assholes are human, but scientifically they would be filed under homo sapien, if just barely.

Comparing the two is not only disturbing, insensitive and insulting, it's irrelevant. Like comparing the number of carjackings in one country to the number of drunk driving incidents in another. Perhaps academic masterbation for some mathematician somewhere, but nonetheless worthless and vain.

Both are tragic events. Neither are comparable. Politically, the US gov't has attempted to connect Nine Eleven to the Iraq War, and I find that equally insulting and disturbing. I tire of people reddening oranges to pass them off as apples. My heartstrings don't pull in that direction.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:21 PM on January 1, 2005

Thanks, bugbread! I had a professor of Japanese history in college who talked about "ground zero" Hiroshima in both the English and Japanesed-English-loan-word pronunciation, but if, as you suggest, that locution is confined to historians, that all makes sense.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:18 PM on January 1, 2005

I imagine this is a useful resource for those who have not conquered the long division and have trouble visiualizing things in multiples of a hundred or so (hint - it's how many pennies are in a dollar).

About as many people as died in the tsunami will die today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow... Obviously context defines how an individual reacts to these comparative figures. That there is a qualitative difference between an act of intent perpetrated by individuals and a natural disaster is a fairly trite observation.

The real issue to my mind is not the comparative scale but that of the response. In response to the Tsunami it is clear that unless a great deal of assistance is forthcoming from the global community, a great deal more people will die and a great many others will be cast into circumstances of extreme desperation. In addition, a certain amount of scientific work might be done to help reduce the impact of the next inevitable event of this nature. Practically these are the only worthwhile responses to this catastrophe.

In contrast, the aftermath of the WTC attacks left a relatively (relative, that is, in this context) minor vacuum for pragmatic response. But it left a huge vaccuum for political response because of its nature, however - not simply the reality that it was a religiously and politically motivated act of intentional mass murder by foreign agents within our national borders, but also its nature as a massive media spectacle and the period of intense national fear and uncertainty that followed (obviously there is still a climate of fear and uncertainty, largely being generated and exploited for political gain, but we're past the days for now when many are actively in fear that tomorrow waves of vehicle and suicide bombings might start, or that a biological or chemical agent would be released in the New York subway system).

My opinion is that the political response was predictably for those in power to exploit the emotional nationalistic response of the populace in a naked grab for more power, while less capable (or less ballsy) politicians raced around convering their own political asses and trying to respond to the sole practical issue of response posed by the event, that of what to do about a small but demonstrably dangerous group of individuals united in a common stated goal of killing as many of us as possible and destroying our nation. And frankly, I think the idea that very many people in the U.S.A. are responding to a human tragedy when they talk about the events of 9/11/2001 is utter bullshit, unless they actually lost someone close to them as a result. The anger people feel is nationalism. The most significant political outcome thus far as a result of the exploitation of this nationalism by those in power is the war in Iraq which, I imagine, is working its way reliably towards being responsible for a number of deaths in the same order of magnitude as the tsunami in question. You could maybe represent it as a little wave.
posted by nanojath at 3:45 PM on January 1, 2005

I understand the distinction between an act of terrorism and an act of nature.

However, America was so outraged about 9-11 that we felt we needed to DO something and that something was wage war, not only in Afghanistan (ok ?), but now in Iraq (hu ?).

Strangely, this helped me understand the other side, the people who support the war in Iraq.

Because if I was in the Tsunami wake, I would be so outraged, I would want to go to war, too.

But you can't go to war against the sea.

And I still think, that's what we're doing over there - fighting the sea. It's misguided. An understandable human impulse, but misguided and futile. Fighting a war against the sea.

Not in the sense that terrorists = the sea, but just an act of displaced rage.
posted by rainbaby at 4:46 PM on January 1, 2005

I was astounded by the high lost of life in Sweden on a per capita basis.

"Disaster may be Sweden's Sept. 11 - The tsunami that swept away so many lives in Asia has carried waves of grief to Sweden, with the country confronting what one government official described yesterday as 'Sept. 11 levels of casualties.' .... 'Five days have passed. Fifty-nine Swedes are dead, 3,559 are missing. If the number does not diminish quickly, this will be the most dramatic catastrophe in our country's history,' [Prime Minister Goeran] Persson said. [Boston Globe, January 2, 2005]
posted by ericb at 9:47 AM on January 2, 2005

Ah, the guy just wants to get himself talked about. It seems to be working.

Here's another difference. An unhealthy number of people either celebrated what happened on 9/11 or nodded sagely while claiming that "America" somehow got what it deserved.

No one seems to be cheering this incident, or suggesting that coastal dwellers or vacationers took their chances and got what they deserved.

Not that politics are entirely absent, but it's a step in the right direction....
posted by IndigoJones at 11:30 AM on January 2, 2005

Fred Phelps is cheering this incident--cf. ericb's links above.
posted by Sidhedevil at 2:37 PM on January 2, 2005

Thanks RainBaby. You can't go to war against the sea but you can go to war against your fellow man. Terrorists do not equal the sea. You pretty much proved my point. If you understand the distinction between an act of terrorism and an act of nature, then you couldn't compare the tsunami deaths to the collapse of the World Trade Center, because you understand the distinction. If you don't understand the distinction, then you wouldn't argue in favor of such a comparison.

I'm not arguing that comparing the two is an insult to the survivors and the dead on Nine Eleven. Quite the reverse. It's insulting to those who have died in the face of mother nature's unrelenting lack of mercy to have their tragedy compared to the sufferers from thoughtless acts by a handful of mentally deranged and religiously brainwashed sociopaths.

What? Because an act of nature equals the death toll of twelve towers, we're supposed to behave twelve times as outraged? Should we send twelve times as much financial aid? Anything less would give America's enemies yet another reason to hate us? Is that how we're doing the math, now? This whole exercise is preposterous and futile. This guy should stick to McDonalds pranks and stop comparing world tragedies.
posted by ZachsMind at 10:13 AM on January 3, 2005

scarabic, do you have a point? There are always a ton of wackjobs ready to belittle any FPP for no other reason than it helps occupy their time. Thank you for demonstrating that fact so efficiently. You lodged a snide remark about me without providing useful commentary about the submitted link.
posted by fleener at 10:51 PM on January 4, 2005