[Heavyrunner]

WTF? Are you insane?

Just because there have been worse death tolls through various wars and holocausts in history doesn't make this a non-issue or us manipulated by the media.

I'm 34 years old and I cannot remember a time where so many have died at once in my lifetime.

This is in the ballpark of Hiroshima as far as death toll is concerned. I don't know what kind of freaking heartless sociopath one has to be to file this away under media manipulation.

[bitt]

as huge a disaster as this is, the ONE fact to consider is this:

this horrendous loss of life was not brought about by war or malice: it was a natural disaster, not intentional mass murder, like 9/11. Maybe that was what he meant.

Sometimes you just can't see what's coming.

[dfrussell]

I'm 34 years old and I cannot remember a time where so many have died at once in my lifetime.

Each year, 300 to 500 million people develop malaria and 1.5 to 3 million–mostly children–die -- World Health Organization

The tsunami will probably end up killing 150,000 to 200,000 people directly and indirectly from wounds, infections and disease...

(34 * 3,000,000) = 102 million

[TXBSAFH]

By the time the various diseases take their toll, this will surpass both of the Atomic bombs. This is the worst tragedy I can remember.

[BobL]

"WTF? Are you insane?"

I hear you. But Cambodia did happen early in your lifetime (late 1970s), and lots more were killed. But reporters weren't allowed to cover it, and thus it was "no big deal" to the mainstream media - even thought they had a huge hand in causing the massacre, by driving us out of neighboring Vietnam.

I would just like to see the MSM apologize for all of the carnage that they caused, or at least allowed to be caused.

It has angered me so much that I cannot even listen to them without feeling that I'm being manipulated.

[zoobee]

SOmebody in another thread pointed out that the average amount of people that die everyday is 150,000 world wide.

[StevieB]

I'm 34 years old and I cannot remember a time where so many have died at once in my lifetime.

You are too young to remember the November 1970 disaster in Bangladesh, when an Indian ocean typhoon slammed into the low-lying islands off the cost. No one will ever know the actual death toll from this disaster, but the best estimate is that between 300,000 and 500,000 people died in the storm surge.

Bangladesh was hit again in 1991. This typhoon killed over 130,000.

In this part of the world with major populations clustered around the coasts, abnormal conditions in the Indian Ocean will always be deadly.