Remembrance of the Wave

It might have been noticeable that, aside from revealing my fascination for the End Times, I have delved in Apocalyptic themes recently. It happens whenever I'm pissed off enough to rant. I guess, in my helplessness, I resort to the eschatological and seek the ultimate justice. Before everyone gets fed up with this fear-mongering, allow me one last venture into the supernatural, at least for this year.

Last November 13, 2004, I received a forwarded email, the screenshot of which is shown below...


Well, at first glance it looks like one of those dire predictions of the future. By the way, part of that email, which isn't shown anymore, is an article from Phivolcs. This more scientific earthquake projection which coincided with the prediction is what pushed the original author to finally spread the word. What impresses me is that the prediction imposes a deadline: before the year 2004 ends, there will be a great earthquake that will devastate the Philippines, or Luzon to be a bit more precise. Furthermore, there is the claim: the old man has never missed.

I initially surmised that this should be a very strong earthquake, stronger than any other quake before it, to topple down every building in an area and erase an entire town from the map. Anyway, I shrugged, if ever it would happen by the end of the year, I might already be vacationing in Bicol; thus, I would be spared from its full force.

The old man was off by a few thousands of kilometers, and I was more precise with the timing of the event.

I was eating breakfast at our Naga City home when news of a magnitude 9 tremor from CNN Breaking News got my attention. A magnitude 9 earthquake was really strong, the strongest I had heard of in my twenty years on this earth; still, I didn't think this can flatten all buildings within its area. That may be true, but there was something else that I hadn't thought of. Hours later, CNN reported of a tsunami from that quake hitting Thailand and Malaysia, and later still in the afternoon, the same tsunami hit India. Upon the news anchor's query, the scientist at the US Geological Survey related this recent turn-of-events to a Pacific-wide tsunami decades ago. That was the time I had an inkling that this was something big. Later, the waves reached Africa.

The days passed and the kill count grew from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands. Now it was really big. More than a week later, with the kill count pushing a hundred thousand, ground zero was finally reached by rescuers. As shown in before-and-after satellite pictures, the town of Banda Aceh was in complete ruins, erased from the map as the old man had said.

I guess the old man really did see beforehand these visions I saw in the TV screen. It was just he mistook the similar-looking Southeast Asian faces and places to be Filipino.