Daniel Stone 

National Geographic News

October 31, 2012

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121031-alps-tsunami-geneva-nature-geoscience-science/

This article is about researchers discovering that a Tsunami destroyed Geneva, Switzerland 1,500 years ago. There had long been stories of a giant wave destroying the town in texts from that time, but now after studying a soil deposit in the Rhone River that spurred a tsunami wave to hit Geneva which at this point was already a trading hub in the region. The soil deposit was determined to have originated from above where the lake's surface used to be and had fallen into the eastern corner of the lake. The wave that was created by the landslide was somewhere between 9 and 26 feet, the size depending on the speed of the landslide which the scientists could not measure. The scariest part of the researcher's findings was that multiple Swiss cities are in danger of similar disasters with Geneva being the most at risk. With its 200,000 residents and many international and local businesses the danger is very real. Also many of those residents live in low elevation areas. Researchers have also said that the the likelihood of another tsunami hitting Geneva is low but if it did happen it would be catastrophic. I think that this is a very interesting article because while having learned a few things about tsunamis I have never heard of one happening in a lake, and especially this far from an ocean. Although I don't think that Geneva or Switzerland needs to take any serious action to ready themselves for this unlikely event it is another interesting example of danger appearing in an unexpected place. Much like the volcano in Iceland that erupted in 2010. It was a very unlikely place for a global travel cirsis to arise from but none the less it did create a significant problem in our modern society.