Debka, an Israeli publication, published the following in their weekly intelligence report, available here:
*Israeli intelligence has reported that Tehran could destroy a large part of the most densely populated areas of Central Israel with a primitive nuclear device like the one Pakistan detonated in its first nuclear test in May 1998 - even without a sophisticated bomb or ballistic missile for its delivery. **According to this report, Iran could load such a “nuclear device” - unbeknownst to Israeli or Western intelligence - aboard an Iran Airways civilian airliner or an Iranian merchant ship bound for Europe or a Middle East destination - and detonate it in mid-Mediterranean opposite the Greater Tel Aviv coast and many miles outside its territorial waters.**The resulting explosion would be powerful enough to set off a nuclear tsunami to swamp and contaminate central Israel’s coastal and lowland cities and drown most of their inhabitants. It might engulf a large coastal conurbation encompassing Greater Tel Aviv, Netanya, Rishon LeZion and Herzliya as well as Israel’s international airport. The disastrous nuclear floods would only be stopped by the rising slopes of the inland Judean Hills leading up to Jerusalem - but not before leaving hundreds of thousands dead and injured in their wake. *
Is Iran Air allowed to overfly Israel? Do they have any routes which would put their aircraft within a reasonable distance of Israel?
They have the same reciprocal rights that El Al has to overfly Iran. (none)
I imagine that Iran Air has rights to Amman, Cairo, Damascus and Beirut but I don’t know if they use them. I’ve never seen them in Beirut, can’t say about the other three.
A tsunami, contrary to what may be popular belief, does not need to be created by an earthquake. Anything that would displace a large amount of water, such as a landslide (either above or below water) or a large explosion just above the water, can cause a tsunami.
Displacement has to happen below the water (ocean floor) or a large meteorite hitting the ocean surface are the only two instances I read that that meats a true definition of a tsunami. I honestly cannot fathom anything that large of an explosion on the surface to cause a tsunami.
The nuclear air bursts at Bikini and other island test sites all created large tsunamis. In many instances the shockwave was sufficient to, in effect, instantaneously dewater the lagoon completely and form a large pressure wave. The overpressure pulse from the explosion resulted in two tsunami events, one from the initial explosion and one a “rebound” event from the ocean rushing in to fill the void left by the initial explosion.
All that is necessary to form a tsunami is displacement of water, such displacement need not occur below the water surface.
See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads (I hate using Wiki as a sole source but that’s what’s written there) under sequence of blast events below the pictures. (easier to search for word tsunami for the exact verbiage)
I really thought a tsunami is strictly caused by an underground event under water (never knew about meteorites until today though) such as underwater landslides or earthquakes displacing the ocean floor.
Care to enumerate the differences? There aren’t any. A tsunami is a wave event, regardless of how it’s generated.
Wikipedia actually has it correct when it describes the generation of tsunamis: “Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions (detonations of nuclear devices at sea), landslides and other mass movements, bolide impacts, and other disturbances above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami.”
I agree a Tsunami is a wave event, just like a tidal wave is a wave event.
Point of origin of disturbance would be the difference in description.
Tsunami wave from earthquake under the ocean floor,
Tsunami like wave generated from the from explosions not originating from the floor of the ocean or meteorite.
The way I see it, Tsunami description is misused like a cyclone is misused in description of storms.
No matter what we call it, and no matter what our points of view may be, the devastation is still the same.
If you’ve got a wall of water 15 feet high comin’ at you, are you gonna worry about differentiating between tsunami and tsunami-like. I think not. I doubt many scientists are gonna go back-n-forth arguing over the point after the fact either.
JHEM is right. All you need is to move water from its equilibrium flat state, or even just generate a collective motion of few cubic km of water, even if it’s just back-and-forth. It generates a wave that contains a lot of energy.
The reason earthquakes are always in the description is that it’s one of the most likely ways for a tsunami to be generated; nuclear tsunamis are rare, thank goodness. That doesn’t mean it makes any sense to exclude the other methods, like a nuclear blast.
The Boxing Day Tsunami in Indonesia (2004) was created by an undersea quake that displaced about 30 cubic km of water. This generated a wave only about 2 ft high in deep water, but thousands of miles long and a mile or so across. It traveled at 300-600 mph in deep water. Approaching the coast of nearby Aceh, the waves slowed and rose to as much as 30m above normal sea level. This “amplification” going from deep water to shallow is what led to the huge disastrous damage. The energy in the waves was estimated to be 26 megatons.
The Crossroads Baker test at Bikini emptied the water out of a 0.004 cubic km volume, much smaller than the Boxing Day event, but still within a factor 1000. The water rushing back into that volume created another exciting cataclysm after the blast. The two Crossroads weapons were 23 kilotons each.
So the tsunamis from the two events can be compared sensibly, and lead to similar effects on very different scales.
