On the day after Christmas, the world was shocked by one of the worst natural disasters in recorded human history. This disaster was a tsunami that hit the coastal nations of Asia following a massive undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean that measured over 9.0 on the Richter scale. This earthquake was also the longest-lasting quake to be recorded by technology.
The tsunami was one of the worst natural disasters in modern memory. Hitting the day after Christmas, it all but wiped out coastal settlements in nearly every country with a border on the Ocean. More than 200,000 people were either killed or went missing, and even more than that became homeless as a result of the tsunami. The fact that it hit without warning only served to increase the destruction it wrought.