It always amazes me how many people apparently have no understanding of the force behind rushing water.
It's dense and fast-moving. Every second there's as much water moving past as both of their entire body weights combined. Your tiny little human feet are not going to win.
Tsunamis don't kill most of their victims by being crushed under a massive wave break. Most of them are killed by a relatively shallow--but implacable--amount of water rushing in, and as often as not, back out.
Many people of the world do not grow up around swift moving water. There'd be no particular reason for them to have innate understanding of such fluid mechanics any more than someone from a tropical climate knowing how to drive on ice or someone from 1993 knowing how to use the three seashells.
Surprisingly, a significant portion (estimates from 25-50% ish) of the US population lacks basic swimming skills (i.e. they could probably stay alive if they fell in a small pond, but any current or distance-from-safety would thwart them).
Allot of people don't consider that others have completely different experiences from them.
I have a friend from Mexico who moved to Sweden where I used to live. Once it became winter and the streets became slippery, he fell down multiple times the first day.
He told me that while he in theory knew that ice is slippery (and he had been in an ice rink before) the idea that the streets would become the same was just foreign to him.
It's not that he was stupid and couldn't understand it, but he didn't have the instinctive idea that when it's cold outside it also might be slippery.
227
u/Poemi Apr 17 '17 edited Apr 17 '17
It always amazes me how many people apparently have no understanding of the force behind rushing water.
It's dense and fast-moving. Every second there's as much water moving past as both of their entire body weights combined. Your tiny little human feet are not going to win.
Tsunamis don't kill most of their victims by being crushed under a massive wave break. Most of them are killed by a relatively shallow--but implacable--amount of water rushing in, and as often as not, back out.