Let's Talk About All the Ways People Didn't Die in That Massive Taiwan Earthquake

PJ Media ^ | 04/04/2024 | Stephen Green

[SeekAndFind]

It was a terrible quake that struck near Hualien City, Taiwan, just as the workday was beginning on Wednesday. Details aren't yet complete but, so far, nine people have been reported killed, over a thousand more injured, and 152 trapped in damaged buildings, quarries, and other places.

At 7.4 on Richter Scale, the Hualien shifter was three times more powerful and released 5.6 times more energy than the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that dropped part of San Francisco's elevated Embarcadaro freeway, killed 63 people, and injured 3,757 more.

“It was pretty scary,” a visiting American told NBC News. “In all the years that I’ve lived here and in Southern California before that, I’ve felt a lot of earthquakes, but this was by far the strongest and the most frightening.”

The disruptions to the global economy are still being sorted out, but quickly. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) says they're "still assessing" its chip fabrication plants but "expects to resume production overnight." That's good news, since TSMC is the world's most advanced chipmaker, serving as the foundry for the highest-end chips used by Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and others.

Similarly, tech manufacturing giant Foxconn is already resuming normal operations just hours after the quake.

That isn't the only good news, however. Despite the power of the quake and the devastation you've already seen, the real story is that the quake isn't a bigger story. While the casualty list will surely grow in coming days, it shouldn't be anything like the last huge quake in 1998. That 7.6 tremor killed around 2,400.

"If it bleeds, it leads," they always say in new business, and thankfully, there's been remarkably little blood in Taiwan. There's a lesson in this, but I promise to keep it brief and to show you all the cool stuff first.

[SeekAndFind]

The author’s favorite story might be the bit of architectural genius hidden inside the capital city’s massive Taipei 101 skyscraper, one of the tallest in the world.

The building — currently the 11th tallest in the world — soars nearly 1,700 feet (508 French yards) straight up, sits just 660 feet away from a Pacific Rim fault line, and, yes, the people who built it understood just how dangerous that location could be.

That’s why inside Taipei 101 hangs a massive pendulum — technically, a tuned mass damper — between the 88th and 92nd floors. The 728-ton steel sphere translates motion caused by high winds and earthquakes into steadying countermotions as it is rocked back and forth. It’s the largest and most expensive ($4 million) tuned mass damper in the world.

In the photo atop this report, you can see a much smaller building that didn’t survive the quake. But what it didn’t do was collapse and kill everyone inside. Instead, the structure remained mostly intact, allowing rescue workers to pull people out using what looks much like a fire engine ladder.

[al baby]

They faired very well

[Erik Latranyi]

I have been to the top of Taipei 101 several times. It is an amazing feat of engineering and technology.....and architecture.

Taiwan is an amazing nation with amazing people. I dread the day it is handed over to the Chinese.

[PGR88]

Taiwan has small earthquakes all the time. Stay there for 6 months and you will feel the ground shake a few times. Taiwan’s east coast abuts several “ring of fire” tectonic plates.

As they have become wealthy, developed, and democratic, they put more and more resources into earthquake protection

[yelostar]

This event happened on the anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion (April 3, 33 AD).

[yelostar]

Article detailing how they arrive at April 3 as Jesus’ crucifixion date.

https://cbs.mbts.edu/2020/04/08/april-3-ad-33-why-we-believe-we-can-know-the-exact-date-jesus-died/

Interesting Gematria decode of the Taiwan earthquake by Joachim Bartoll.

https://bartoll.se/2024/04/taiwan-74-earthquake/

[married21]

Thanks for your post. Very informative.

[Rinnwald]

Took me a moment to figure out “French yards”.

The French Academy of Sciences would not be amused.

[JohnBovenmyer]

>This event happened on the anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion (April 3, 33 AD).

That definition of "anniversary" is imprecise. A proper one requires dealing with some anachronisms. The recorded bible events in the context of Judaism give the Hebrew month and day of month, the year is inferred by biblical context. Now, the Hebrew date and year implied, Nissan 14 3793, is precise as that calendar has been in use over the entire time spanned. But as the Hebrew calendar is lunar, it doesn't fit with the modern definitions of anniversary, which not only means an integer number of "years" but defines "year" as at "tropical" aka "solar" year of, roughly, 365.2422 days.

A century before the crucifixion "solar" calendars were way off on their definition of "year." Julius Caesar improved things and 'his' definition of "year" would have been the one used at the crucifixion. Although then the year wouldn't have been named and numbered under the "AD" category devised in HIS memory a few hundred years later, even though the month and day would have followed the Julian calendar. By the Julian calendar, when years are numbered by the BC/AD convention, April 3, 33 AD specifies the same day as Nissan 14 3793.

But Julius didn't get the year quite right with his calendar, it drifts relative to the starry reality. Thus the later adoption of the current Gregorian calendar, which tracks the stars much better. So April 3 2024AD Julian is several days apart from April 3 2024AD Gregorian, the modern date for the Taiwan quake. So it really isn't the 1991st "Julian anniversary" of the crucifixion.

We, by default, refer to Gregorian years these days, so for "Gregorian year length anniversaries" of the crucifixion you need to redact the Gregorian calendar scheme onto pre-Gregorian historical dates. It turns out that crucifixion on April 3 33AD Julian would have been April 1 33 AD "Gregorian." With HIS death about 3pm local Jerusalem solar time. And the first Easter was April 5 33AD Julian = April 3 33AD Gregorian. So the precise, 2000 Gregorian years anniversary of the crucifixion will arrive in 2033 Gregorian, ironically on April Fools Day.

[yelostar]

Really informative. Thank you.

…you need to redact the Gregorian calendar scheme onto pre-Gregorian historical dates.

It would be interesting to know how historical dates are conveyed in modern times - and to what degree they account for configurations of calendars used prior to adoption of the Gregorian calendar.

[JohnBovenmyer]

Tracking and predicting yearly calendar cycles has been the subject of a lot of thought and effort (eg. Stonehenge) going back further than recorded history. Pretty impressive what our mostly short lived ancestors were able to work out just by watching skies and using instruments so archaic we wouldn't recognize them as tools today. But they had many different "solutions" for the topic and they would often become intertwined with local politics and religion. Which they still do: "climate change and computer models regarding it" follow in a long line of bad examples with cult imposed consequences and and cult recommended prayers and sacrifices to try to improve the results.

Caesar deserves credit not for recognizing the status quo was broken — everyone knew that, nor for figuring out a better solution — lots of isolated brilliant individuals had figured out the approximate year length and other cultures had calendars that worked better, but for having the political power and will to impose his fix one other greatest empire of the day. Even so, although he'd proposed simple rules for running a better calendar, they were not applied uniformly for the first few decades after his mandate. Which years had or didn't have a leap day were semi arbitrary for Julius and Augustus Caesars, and a while thereafter. Which makes calculating equivalent Julian and Gregorian dates difficult in the early Julian era. But then applying the Gregorian calendar fix, even though by its time everyone knew the Julian version was broken, took a few hundred years for general adoption. So knowledge of when that change occurred locally is needed for events like Geo Washington's birthday and the Russian Revolution.

[SunkenCiv]

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[BenLurkin]

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