Viral of the bad kind.

There’s something in the air. And its not just love. Something viral. And its not any video, or much shared selfie. Nor is it any of those maths question which divides the internet .Pun unintended. And its also not a picture which fools the eyes.

In that last decade or so, the word ‘viral’ has gone on to take a meaning of entirely its own. People encourage it, creators tried to come up with new ‘viral’ content. So it feels strangely awkward, when the word returns to its true meaning in the common tongue. A new strain of deadly virus strain has emanated out of China, and has now travelled to 24 countries, including India and Australia. The number of people affected, cured and of those who have succumbed to the strain varies depending on which news agency one tunes to. But the general trend is that all three numbers are increasing. Yes, many have been cured, but then ten times more are affected by the next wave.

The new strain has now been named the 2019 Novel Corona virus. But after more than 2 months of the initial infection been reported, little is known about it more than this name. And the fact that ground zero is in China has not helped at all. All the news and reports coming out of China has always been heavily censored. The outside world does not get latest updates. And the attack of fake-news has entered into exactly this vacuum. False, unverified and hoax news about the disease now spreads faster than the strain itself. Along with the 1500 people who already succumbed, the strain affects global economy and supply chain networks due to misinformed fears. Countries and companies are refusing to trade with China; many countries have already placed blockades on flights originating from China. Travellers are warned, and are looked upon with suspicion.

And various places are reporting a growing behaviour of racism towards people from China. Some of the strain related news claimed that the original hosts of the virus were bats, or snakes, or pangolins. People in China are known to trade and eat these kind of game animals. Most of those affected in the first viral wave where workers in Wuhan’s meat market. It is now proven that the virus can spread through human contact, and it does not show symptoms for the first 14 days. This has resulted in people in other countries just avoiding places frequented by Asians, and the people themselves.

This is unprecedented. And all this is fuelled by the simple fact that all of mankind’s medical science have yet failed to identify the source of this strain, and the best ways to prevent its spread and it sure-footed cure.

The common consensus is that it will take he world’s scientists more months to properly identify and create the cure. A possible vaccine. Hopefully, mankind will come together and annihilate this freak of nature. Like how we fought SARS , and nipah. Because otherwise, the future looks bleak for us. Medical science needs to continue to grow and co-operate to fight these strains. 

Because if there is one thing this new virus has proven yet again, it is that we as a species, is more connected than ever before.

PS: Source of the virus or not, IMHO, people should just stop eating bats.

Which country has the most earthquakes?

 

Today I read about the recent earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia. It was caused by the eruption on the younger volcano Anak Krakatau. Also, the country was hit by another tsunami just three month’s prior.

Which got me thinking, why does this country get so many quakes,and tsunamis ? And..how large is this country ? Never thought about it geographically. So I looked around.

Indonesia is one heck of a country, split across five different larger islands, but comprising of upto 18,000 islands ! Managing one landmass is difficult enough, but here they have a political and geographical nightmare to manage, with so many different ethinicities and cultures ! All in the largest sesimically active regions on this planet.

This is what I found on the USGS site.

Which country has the most earthquakes?

The answer to this question is not as straightforward as it may seem. In order to most accurately answer it, we will rephrase the question four different ways:

1. For which country do we locate the most earthquakes? Japan. The whole country is in a very active seismic area, and they have the densest seismic network in the world, so they are able to record many earthquakes.
2. Which country actually has the most earthquakes? Indonesia is in a very active seismic zone, also, but by virtue of its larger size than Japan, it has more total earthquakes.
3. Which country has the most earthquakes per unit area? This would probably be Tonga, Fiji, or Indonesia since they are all in extremely active seismic areas along subduction zones. The sparse seismic instrumentation in those areas doesn't allow us to actually record all the smaller earthquakes.
4. Which country has the most catastrophic earthquakes, or which has had the most damage and fatalities? Both China and Iran are in seismically active areas, have very long historical records, and have had many catastrophic earthquakes. Turkey is also worth mentioning in this category.

 

That is a lot of earthquakes, and a miracle that these places still exist and are able to govern themselves all the while standing on plates floating on molten lava.

 

And this is Indonesia ! The area marked in red. Imagine governing this landmass, when there are average 4 earthquakes per year in the country.

 

 

How the RMS Carpathia saved the survivors

Today I stumbled upon this twitter post, and got lost in history again.

And here are some more stories of awesome human beings.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

More stories from WWI

 

The pas few days have been days of revelation for me. Although I hated history during my school days, I now (surprisingly) enjoy reading about little stories from history. Like India’s contribution during the two World wars, specially the first one.

Like this site, where they have attempted to document all the Sikh soldiers who died fighting in various World War I battles. Each icon depicts a death, and is placed at the martyr’s place of birth. Over one million Indian troops served overseas, of whom 62,000 died and another 67,000 were wounded. In total at least 74,187 Indian soldiers died during the war. In World War I the Indian Army fought against the German Empire in German East Africa and on the Western Front.

 

Elsewhere, I also came across this fantastice new movie aclled ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’. Directed by Peter Jackson (of LOTR fame), the footage is heavily reconstructed footage from WWI, colored my modern software, allowing us to see what life was like during those horrible years.  These audio interviews were conducted by the BBC in the 60s and 70s. The images are from the Imperial War Museum film archive. Although they only used a small part of it, Jackson's crew visually restored all 100 hours of footage the Imperial War Museums sent them for free

And worth adding, some of the footage in this doc was created in 1914-18 as propaganda. So, not all of it is authentic combat stuff; and some was designed to boost morale back home. That moment when the colour kicks in is jaw dropping. Audio dubbing is done with modern actors and shell sounds, so if you see a WW1 soldier speaking that is an actor overdubbing. Lip-readers were used to ensure dialogue accuracy. This film has covered the 4 years of the war in a single dramatic arc - obviously there were many terrible battles after The Somme. The Russians left the war in 1917 but in came America. This led to a huge German offensive which failed to stick.

Stats are hard, but estimates says 20 million people died in the First World War. It changed the world, empires fell, society changed; art, music, literature, poetry, film, gender roles. The Russians became communists. Middle East redrawn by Brits & French.

Reads like fiction : The oracle executive who changed his identity to escape law.

 

I had the habit of reading detective fiction, and espionage novels during high school and college. But later the hobby died a gradual death as I got busy with work. Now I just read the news. But gone are the days of simple, straightforward news. Now the crimes being reported are stranger than fiction.

This week I read this bizarre news of this murderer who changed his identity from a Malayali to a Gujarathi to escape law for 15 years. He was finally caughtcaught because he was still in touch with his loving mother, of all people.

On Thursday, Pravin Bhateley, a senior manager working with Oracle Private Limited on Bannerghatta Road in Bengaluru, was arrested by the Ahmedabad police. But strangely, Kiran Chowdhury, the inspector dressed as an employee of the IT company who came to arrest Pravin, said, "Hello Tarun, it's over... Let's go."

 

Read TNM’s excellent coverage of the news.

 

Oracle ! Seems like a right fit for him.