The tsunami killed more than twenty thousand people and caused multiple nuclear meltdowns, a disastrous toll for everyone except sellers of supplements, who pivoted to prey on the baseless fears of Americans living thousands of miles away from the radiation. The earthquake and resultant tsunami also wreaked havoc on human systems-transportation systems, energy systems, water systems, telecommunication systems, and that most important of all human systems, the biological system that allows us to slobber, reproduce, and contemplate the irrationality of high baby-formula prices (usually in that order). (only by 1.8 microseconds a day, but still-your days are now just a tiny bit shorter. It was so big it sped up the rotation of the planet It was so big it shifted the Earth six inches on its axis. The magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake was so big it shunted Japan eight feet to the east. But that March, it became news in the biggest possible way, when a chunk of the underlying plate suddenly gave way, causing the seafloor to pop up by about 15 feet and the plate holding parts of Japan to suddenly drop by about three feet.

It had been happening at a rate of three inches a year since long before humans had invented the concept of news.

The year 2011, a tipping point for alternative healing, was important for another reason.ĭeep beneath the Pacific Ocean, the edge of one tectonic plate was being jammed beneath the tectonic plate that held Japan.

The tipping point audio book