I was listening to the radio this morning & the death toll has risen to over 60,000. It is really difficult to wrap my mind around that huge of a number.
People don't realize just how big these numbers really are... You're absolutely right. You can't "wrap your mind around" something like this. You hear the number, but it doesn't quite register.
I was recently working at one of the largest coal fired powerplants in the US, and when I was walking near a "pulverizer," I noticed a display that was alternating between 61 and 62. It indicated that the pulverizer was processing between 61 and 62 tons of coal an hour. When I asked if that supplied one or both furnaces, the fuel operator started laughing... Each furnace has 7 pulverizers feeding it, and they use approximately 10,000 tons of coal every 24 hours! While I could understand 1 ton, or 65 tons, or even the 135 or so tons that a single coal carrier holds, looking at a 1 ton pile of coal, and then associating that with the number 10,000 is one damn big pile of rock!
The thought of 60,000 (and far more) dead people, each one with a life, a story, and with people who love them, being lost in an instant is a sobering thought.
Mark