00:00On September 16th of 2023, without warning, the Earth began to hum.
00:10A low, strange vibration reverberated through the crust.
00:15This set off seismic alarms all across the globe.
00:18For nine days straight, the planet was pulsing with this horrifying rhythm, and scientists
00:23had no idea what was going on.
00:26Meanwhile, the total disaster was happening in Greenland.
00:33It wasn't an earthquake.
00:35They knew that much.
00:36They could tell it by the rhythm.
00:38Since we all live on giant tectonic plates, they constantly move and slide on magma like
00:44icebergs on water.
00:46Sometimes as they move, they can rub against each other or collide or break.
00:50In any case, all this causes an incredible release of energy that sends shockwaves through
00:55the ground.
00:56That's when we feel the ground literally shaking, and it's what we call an earthquake.
01:01These vibrations we feel are called seismic waves.
01:05Seismometers pick them up as pings or rumbles.
01:08In a typical earthquake, they create a bunch of different frequencies.
01:12It's a crazy chaotic mix of low and high frequencies, like smashing every piano key.
01:19What was weird about the Greenland event is that the signals weren't like that at all.
01:24It was a steady, single-frequency vibration, as if some ancient machine was stirring beneath
01:29the earth.
01:30It's like one piano key being struck over and over, creating a doom-like, repetitive
01:36sound.
01:39Turns out, what they were hearing wasn't the noise of tectonic plates going wild.
01:44It was a phenomenon seismologists had never seen before.
01:50The days passed, and the mysterious noise just kept going.
01:54The vibrations repeated every 90 seconds, echoing around the world.
01:59The hunt for answers was growing more desperate.
02:02Seismologists had no idea what they were dealing with.
02:05They had to gather a huge international team of 68 people from 15 countries.
02:11All these scientists were gathering seismic data, satellite images, and doing some advanced
02:16math for several days, until they finally realized who the culprit was.
02:23Water.
02:24It all happened in a remote, desolate region of East Greenland.
02:28This place is full of fjords, narrow inlets of the sea between high cliffs, kinda like
02:33deep water-filled valleys surrounded by towering rocky sides.
02:38In this area, surrounded by jagged peaks and icy waters, the air was still, the landscape
02:44seemingly frozen in time.
02:47Nothing here changed much for years.
02:49Until one day.
02:53A colossal landslide has unfolded in the Dixon Fjord.
02:58One of those steep mountainsides towering over the fjord at almost 4,000 feet high collapsed
03:03in a massive landslide.
03:05Picture a huge chunk of this mountain crumbling and crashing down into the fjord below.
03:12This sent a deluge of rock and ice crashing into the water.
03:16The impact was just apocalyptic, 882 million cubic feet of debris.
03:23That's enough ice and rock to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, or 10 Great
03:29Pyramids of Giza.
03:31And all this nightmare hurled into the water with such force that it kick-started a tsunami
03:36about 360 feet high, taller than the Statue of Liberty, into the air.
03:43What's crazy is that this incredibly powerful wave was trapped in the fjord by narrow cliffs,
03:48unable to escape.
03:50It's like water sloshing in a closed bathtub.
03:53For nine days, the mega-tsunami continued to churn through it.
03:57That's why we heard this endless hum.
04:00It was a rhythmic back and forth of the water slamming against the walls.
04:04The shock waves were rippling deep into Earth's crust, vibrations so strong that they were
04:09picked up by seismometers around the globe.
04:13This was a phenomenon so rare, so unprecedented, that it left scientists stunned.
04:19It turned out to be a perfect storm of elements.
04:21A glacier, weakened by years of warming, could no longer bear the weight of the mountain
04:27above.
04:30This collapse was inevitable, and the chaos literally shook the Earth to its core.
04:35And people often hang out in this area with cruise ships passing by.
04:39We're lucky that no lives were lost in the disaster.
04:43It was a close call though.
04:45A tourist ship stranded in the area just two days before narrowly escaped the tsunami's
04:50reach by pure luck.
04:52But it doesn't mean there were no losses.
04:54The waves destroyed a nearby Inuit site, which was there untouched for over 200 years.
05:02They also swept away the huts at a research station that were about 43 miles away.
05:07The vibrations traveled from Greenland to the South Pole in less than an hour.
05:13That just shows how dangerous events like this can be.
05:18And this isn't the only place where such catastrophes are happening.
05:22In the beautiful California community of Rancho Palos Verdes, the ground is shifting
05:27so quickly that it's tearing homes apart.
05:30The land there has always been kinda unstable.
05:34It has some unique geology.
05:36It's built on soft, clay-rich soil and sits on a geological fault line, which makes it
05:41prone to landslides.
05:44This means that this land is prone to slow, natural shifting over many years, even when
05:49no crazy weather is happening.
05:51It's been like this for decades, but usually it's slow and pretty manageable.
05:56Like about a foot a year.
05:58Imagine a tree that you played with as a kid moving 20 feet to the left as you grow up.
06:04For decades, residents adapted.
06:06They built their homes on adjustable beams.
06:09This helped the houses to move with the land.
06:11And that strategy worked well, until now.
06:15Recently, things have been getting much worse in the community.
06:21Now the land is moving by a foot in a single week.
06:24That would be like if the same tree moved almost 960 feet since you were a child.
06:30The past two years have also caused some heavy rains, and the weather has been getting worse.
06:36This increased water content in the soil.
06:39The land became heavier and more prone to rapid movement.
06:43Now this once idyllic seaside escape turned into a disaster zone.
06:48Tracks have appeared in closets, gardens and roads, growing larger with each passing day.
06:54Streets that were once smooth are now buckled and twisted, with roads turning into a crazy
06:59theme park.
07:00Houses that once stood firm are being ripped from their foundations, some of them split
07:05in half.
07:07One of the houses had its front door 8 feet off the ground.
07:11Entire neighborhoods have been plunged into chaos.
07:14Utility companies had to switch off gas and electricity indefinitely to prevent potential
07:19disasters.
07:22The hardest hit is the coastal neighborhood of Portuguese Bend, where residents are living
07:27on the edge, literally.
07:29It always had amazing ocean views and cool sea breezes, with horses and peacocks still
07:35wandering the tree-lined streets.
07:37But now it's like an earthquake hit, only this time the earth isn't stopping.
07:43For many, this place feels like paradise, if only the land would stop shifting beneath
07:48their feet.
07:49So the locals don't give up.
07:51Some of them had to leave, but many are determined to stay and fight, despite the destruction.
07:56But they still have to pour in hundreds of thousands of dollars to save their properties.
08:01People have installed generators to keep the lights on and set up sewer systems and pumps
08:05to drain the groundwater causing the landslides.
08:09Some say that the only way for these neighborhoods to survive might be to go completely off-grid,
08:15installing power walls to store energy and stuff like that.
08:18People are trying their best to run the sewer system off generators.
08:22They hope that they could get rid of this water in the soil that's causing these hellish
08:25landslides in the first place.
08:28They're determined to fight, but they will need help and support from the government
08:31to fight this disaster.
08:36Landslides are actually more common across the US than many might think, and new maps
08:40and data show that tons of people in the country might be in danger.
08:45Scientists managed to create the first very detailed, very cool map that shows where these
08:50landslides might happen, county by county.
08:54It's based on a lot of data and the history of 1 million previous landslides.
08:59They say that nearly 40% of the United States is at risk of experiencing landslide activity,
09:05which could lead to some insane catastrophes in certain areas.
09:09Luckily, now both residents and engineers can keep this in mind.
09:13But all this shows how vulnerable we are to natural disasters, and how we should always
09:18stay alerted.
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