Tsunamis are one of the most destructive forces nature can bring to bear, but what if you live below the waves? Here’s how a submarine would fare.
If you’ve ever wondered what the safest place is to be during a tsunami, your first thought is most likely high on a mountaintop somewhere. But what about the depths of the ocean, in the fortified walls of a submarine? At first glance it makes perfect sense — it’s a steel fortress built to withstand the greatest pressures on Earth and travel inconspicuously below the chaos of the surface. But the truth is a little more complicated.
In the vast depths of the deep ocean, tsunamis are not the towering walls of water most people think they are. Out in the deep, it’s a long, low pulse in the ocean, often less than a meter high, rendering it almost unnoticeable to ships as it slides underneath them. Submarines cruising hundreds of meters below are even less aware of them. The danger comes when all that energy runs into shallow coastal waters, causing the waves to slow down and grow into the destructive forces most people know.
Regardless of how deep military submarines can go, all modern submarines are capable of patrolling far deeper than the 50–150 meters , where tsunamis are at their most dangerous, meaning a sub will usually ride out the event with little more than a shift in pressure, but not always.
