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Natural Disasters - Blog Posts
For those who have been looking, I hope you find this.
For everyone else, I don't argue on the internet. Talk to the wall 🧱
My country is experiencing a traumatic natural disaster.
I made a comic to make it more digestible.
Shares appreciated, I'm just trying to bring awareness here
This weird little guy keeps causing mischief and refuses to tell me her name...
Any suggestions on what we can call her until she reveals her name are greatly appreciated B)
Geology of Natural Disasters and How to write them into your fictional universe.
So, you want to write about a natural disaster to advance your plot and torture your players/characters even more? Let me tell you how, accurately.
I feel like unless it is a volcano, natural disasters are a pretty slept on plot drivers, and some of them are really cool and unique! Today, I will talk to you about land slides, earthquakes (And earthquake related disasters), and volcanoes.
Landslides: Probably one I see the least in stories, but one that would be incredibly interesting to write into a plot where they believe in curses. Landslides can happen along ocean bluffs, slightly hilly areas, and highly mountainous areas, this means it is something that can happen in most landscapes. But what can trigger a landslide? Mostly all you need to trigger a landslide could be just abnormally large amounts of rain, excessive deforestation (with a little bit of rain), or an earthquake. If you don't want to use deforestation or an earthquake as a catalyst, a really cool indicator that the land is slipping and may be prone to a collapse is J hooked trees.
This indicates that there is soil creeping slowly over time, and it may lead to a major landslide.
2. Earthquakes: Probably one of the easiest things to write, earthquakes can happen anywhere, but they are most common in places that are tectonically active areas. There are about three types of environments you can expect earthquakes to be common. The first is just rugged mountains, if your landscape looks like this, you should write in earthquakes. Associated hazards could be landslides, avalanches, and large falling rocks.
The next landscape could be a thin mountain range, next to the ocean, very scenic, but very dangerous. Essentially, I am describing a subduction zone environment.
Earthquakes in these areas could equal a couple different associated disasters. Scenario one: A very large earthquake happens, and the ocean begins to recede. This is a tsunami, enough said. If you are writing a tsunami though, please, please, do not write it as a large wave, thank you. Also, a common way people are hurt by tsunami's are from them going into the ocean because they don't understand a tsunami is going to happen.
Scenario two: A large earthquake happens, your characters are in a valley and suddenly the ground begins to liquify as the ground shakes, once the shaking stops, the ground becomes solid like nothing ever happened, except everything has suddenly sunk into the now hard ground. This is called liquefaction and it typically happens in areas that have loose dirt or lots of saturated soil.
Scenario three: There are a lot of small earthquakes, they do not cause a lot of damage, but you begin to notice that one of the isolated mountains has a plume rising. Earthquakes can indicate lava moving underground and the filling of magma chambers.
The next environment that can host lots of earthquakes would be regions that have a lot of really deep valleys and small mountain ranges (not cone volcanoes), but overall seems pretty flat.
This indicates a transform fault like the San Andreas. If you want to hint at there being earthquakes in the area, you can show fence posts that are suddenly several feet out of line at a dilapidated farm or something similar.
(These earthquakes are different because they are cased from sideways movement, not an up-and-down movement this hint can only be used for this environment). Volcanoes would not be found here, but liquefaction and landslides could still occur here.
4. Volcanoes: If you thought earthquakes had a lot of information, volcanoes do too. First you have to ask yourself, what kind of volcano you want to have, what kind of eruption style? So lets break down the kind of eruptions you can have and what their landscapes look like. Hawaiian Shield volcano: This will produce a smooth fast lava, the landscape typically is pretty flat, but there will be small cones and the rocks can have a ropey or jagged texture and the rocks will be almost exclusively black to dark red.
Stratovolcanoes: These will be solitary mountains, typically, that look like perfect cones (Picture shown in earthquake section). These will have large ash cloud eruptions and pyroclastic flows, they may have some lava, but typically most damage is done from the pyroclastic flows (think Pompeii). Some hints of these, other than describing the cone features (which can be hidden by other mountains), would be to talk about petrified wood! Trees can get fossilized in the ash and I imagine it would be very strange to find this rock that clearly looks to be a piece of wood, but its a rock. Subcategory- Calderas: Used to be a large stratovolcano, but they erupt so explosively that the entire cone collapses and creates a basin.
There are a lot of kinds of volcanoes out there, so forgive me for just putting an infographic and then talking to you about these really rare types of eruptions that I feel like people should know about.
Okay lets talk about blue lava (kind of) and black lava
You will notice the lava is still red in the middle of this image, during the day these would look like a normal eruption, but at night the burning sulfur would make it appear blue. Some cool features other than this, would be that any water in the area would become very acidic and burn the skin due to sulfuric acid. This would again be really cool if you are trying to describe a 'cursed' land.
Black lava: This happens only in the east African rift I believe, but it is a carbonatite lava, but if you are writing in a rift valley (where the continent is tearing apart to form a new ocean) this might be a cool feature. The lava will cool white and will quickly erode, it makes for a very alien landscape!
Anyway as always, this is supposed to be an introductive guide for the basics of writing geology to create cool landscapes/features into dnd or fictional universes, if you are a geologist please understand my oversimplification of tectonics, I didn't want people to run away.
I knew that the eruption/explosion of Krakatoa was the loudest sound in recorded history, but I couldn’t quite grasp how loud until I got a couple details of perspective. This was in 1883.
The shock wave ruptured the eardrums of sailors 40 miles away.
The explosion was heard more than 3,000 miles away, and recorded all over the world.
It made tsunamis nearly 100 feet high.
Now picture this happening in modern times, with modern communications. Not only would there be uncountable videos and whatnot, but the timing is what really gets me. Imagine you’re going about your day, scrolling social media, and posts start pouring in about an apocalyptic volcano on the other side of the continent. The news are full of it. You spend ages glued to the screen; this isn’t remotely close to you, but it’s a big deal, and you know people who live closer to it.
Three hours later, something explodes outside. Propane tank? Car fire? Some jackass with illegal firecrackers?
Nope. That was the sound wave, finally reaching you.
PSA
The entire city of Richmond, VA (where I live) and some surrounding areas are currently having a water crisis after the city'ss water treatment plant failed.
~300,000 people are without safe drinking water. About half of that are without water at ALL. People can't shower, wash their hands, or flush the toilet. We have three major hospitals all without running water.
No estimates for when water will be restored exist. The city is not communicating with us at all. The governor, WHO LIVES IN THE CITY, hasn't said a word about it. National Guard, FEMA, nobody has been mobilized to support us. It's not getting any media coverage outside of our local news.
If you can, please share the word so there's more attention to this. There's so many people in danger here, especially those in vulnerable condition like patients or the elderly who are at risk of death, and we need some noise to be made about this.
Please share and thank you if you can <3 Also, if you are around Richmond or know anyone in Richmond, please see what you can do to offer water to those in need in the city, or reach out to your Richmond friends to see if there's anything you can do for them. We're having like three hours long water distribution in two locations every day and it's not enough.
EDIT Jan 8, 2025: UPDATE!
The neighboring county (henrico county) had their systems contaminated with our water, so now ~600,000 people are without clean and safe drinking water. Potable water trucks have been deployed to hospitals and water distribution centers have been set up, but everything is still scant.
It has been 3 days. This is still going.
PLEASE KEEP SHARING, MAKING NOISE, CHECKING ON YOUR FRIENDS! AND DONATE TO ANY VALID RELIEF FUNDS YOU SEE!
At first I thought this was a photofake! Prayers for those affected.Â
Mount Taal in the Philippines, suddenly erupting this afternoon, Jan 12th 2020.
It is now in the Alert 4 with possible hazardous eruptions within days. Several neighboring provinces are experiencing red haze and ashfall. Its last eruption is 1977.
With what's going on in the world, please pray for the Philippines too.
(I don't own the photos, credits to the owners)
đź“· | Arden Pimentel Photography, De Qui
How Flood-Resistant Buildings Work
How Flood-Resistant Buildings Work
Picture this: you’ve just moved to a nice little cottage by the sea. You’ve got some beautiful views, and you’re literally steps away from the beach. It’s almost like a dream. And then a hurricane hits, and suddenly you’ve woken up from your dream as your little cottage is destroyed by a devastating cocktail of wind, rain, and flood.  Instead of moving somewhere a bit further away from the coast,…
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YOU
It hasn’t even been two weeks into the year, and you throw a wildfire into my state?!
This your way of saying “expect more of this to come?” because I’m barely tolerating it now.