S Waves News Today

Put in place. >> reporter: scientists on the west coast are so encouraged how the technology worked in the major test of the japanese early warning system they are more encouraged than ever they will eventually get the system and follow japans lead. millions of people were alerted by cell phone text mess and before the shaking actually started. for those closest to the epicenter the warning was 10 seconds. but people in tokyo had a fill minute to prepare. sensors detected the primary waves. they...

The "p" waves come first. they come much, much faster. when the sensors start detecting this, they know the "s" waves are going to follow. they do the wavy thing and that does all of the damage. thats how they know. theyve got sensors all over the place, like seismographs, similar to what we have in the u.s. and they have dart system on the ocean floor so you can start to detect some of that as well. as soon as a warning is issued theyre alerted by television, radio, smartphone, if they have an ...

Many, many different ways. first of all, its automated so that really helps. it helps give advance warning. this kind of situation, we cant really predict earthquakes or tsunamis until after the earthquake happenses, ingshappe one of the best systems, one of the top if not the top. this is the parliament from tokyo and this box here shows you the warning, that the earthquake is coming. take notice. see these guys looking up? its literally within a couple of seconds that they had between the time...

Prevent any additional breaking or anything like that going on. and bullet trains are literally stopped in their tracks. where they are. whether out in the open country or maybe even a tunnel. they will stop those bullet trains, because they think that will be a safer situation if that thing kept on going. how does it work? basically theres millions and thousands of little sensors all over the place in japan. and theyre also on ocean floor and they detect any kind of movement in the earths crust...

Warning. there is always the ability to have some short-term warning, because there are p waves and s waves. so, the primary waves would go out from the earthquake at a faster speed. in fact, they travel about twice as fast as the s waves, which create the great damage. and therefore, if you are at a distance away from where the epicenter of the earthquake is, you will get several seconds to maybe up to a minute warning because the p waves will be ahead of the s waves by that amount of time. in ...

Collision and it just goes very fast. and you know this wreck is coming. you can feel that. it will be the first wave that you feel. but it will be only maybe one jolt. then s-waves that come through the crust itself and it will be a little bit more rolling. then there will be waves that have side to side, up and down all at the same time. when the buildings shake like that, those buildings dont have a chance. >> all right. unfortunately, more to come because we are learning that these aftershoc...

Now, you can say that if you were standing in the middle of a farm field in an 8.8 earthquake, you would be alive right now. earthquakes dont kill people, technically. buildings kill people. things that we put on this earth kill people because they fall down on to people. so if youre out there all by yourself and you can get to a safe area, even after these aftershocks where youre not in the way of a bidding or any glass falling out of a building, you are in a safe position. its the problem wher...