Wrecking Ball Analogy

Imagine that right outside your house hangs an enormous wrecking ball.  And when I say enormous, I mean REALLY big.  Like far bigger than your house.  The chain from which it hangs extends out of sight into the clouds, and for the purpose of this analogy, there are always clouds, so you don't worry too much about what the other end of that chain connects to.  It has always been there, since long before your house was built.  It just hangs there, a few inches off the ground. It usually doesn't move, or at most it sways a few inches either way if the wind gets really heavy.  But your house is about a foot away from it, so no problem.  Then, one day, there's an earthquake.  The shaking stops in less than a minute, but you go outside, and notice that the wrecking ball is now slowly swinging away from your house... Five, ten, twenty feet, and it's actually speeding up as it moves away.  What would you do?

I would hope, when you read the situation as I've described it, that you instantly realize that the wrecking ball swinging away from your house is enormously dangerous.  This is the start of a catastrophe that will destroy your house, because the ball will soon come back, with its unstoppable mass, and you need to get anyone in the house out immediately. You would not, I hope, take the time to explore the spot uncovered by the wrecking ball moving back, or follow the wrecking ball away to see exactly how far it goes. You have only minutes, possibly only seconds, to take life saving action.

You may have already guessed where I'm going with this.  Replace "wrecking ball" with "ocean" and the situation I'm describing is the start of a tsunami - a "tidal wave." Interestingly, the physics of the situation are pretty comparable.  Often the first indication of an impending tsunami, other than the earthquake itself, is the ocean "rolling out," "receding" or "dropping." Often people are intrigued and follow the water out.  This is not a good idea.  If you ever see the ocean dropping quickly, you should get away from it and seek higher ground.  And take as many people as you can quickly convince to join you.  Because that ocean, like the swinging wrecking ball, is going to come back  And when it does, it is probably going to destroy everything near the coast.

If you think in terms of possible outcomes, seeking high ground on even the possibility of a tsunami is the winning strategy. If you run away, and nothing happens, you might look a little silly. But if you don't run away, and the water comes in, you may well end up dead. It seems like an easy decision to me. So if you see the ocean suddenly dropping, get away, seek high ground, and warn everyone around you to do the same immediately.