Ballydehob: nuclear proof

Best place to get
hit by a tsunami


Last week saw the release of the latest Central Statistics Figures outlining how we live today, ie if you live in Dublin you're more likely to be ripped off than, say, Leitrim where you're more likely to die of boredom, etc.


The CSO says the average prices of 79 items surveyed were 4.9% higher in Dublin. Of these, booze in pubs is 10% dearer, while orange juice is 18.6% more expensive and back rashers cost 22.3% more.


This means Dublin is the worst place in the country to go on the batter: first you're fleeced in the pub and then you're ripped off trying to cure yourself with a greasy breakfast.


Still there's always a silver lining: a gent's blowdry is almost 45% dearer in Dublin, which means Michael Flatley won't be moving to the capital anytime soon.


These figures came as a backdrop to the talk of recession and our falling out of favour with Europe over the Lisbon treaty.


But cheer up, things could be worse: it's not like there's a tsunami heading this way. Actually, there is.


With this in mind, we present a short collection of trivia concerning the best and worst places to live with regards to getting poisoned, drowned, caught in an earthquake or a nuclear disaster.


Best place to wipe out
Northern Ireland


Silent Valley, Co Down. In 1924, nervous Unionists got the Boundary Commission to shift the entire Mourne Mountain range north of the border because of security fears.


Earlier that year, the people of Newry, in the heart of Mourne country, wrote to the commission requesting it be included in the south. But the town – which was 75% nationalist – was refused as the area is home to the north's biggest reservoir, Silent Valley. The Unionist population argued that if it was left in the hands of the Free Staters, they would poison it in an attempt to kill them all.


Incredibly, the commission bought it.


It also believed the Unionist line about Beleek in Fermanagh posing another watery threat. The predominantly nationalist townfolk there were shocked to wake up one morning on the 'wrong side' on the basis that if Fermanagh went south the IRA would use its lakes to flood the county and drown all the Unionists.


Apparently there was a brisk sale in arks that year.


Best place to survive a
nuclear disaster


Ballydehob, Co Cork? In 1977, a German magazine ran an article claiming Ballydehob's coordinates – 51 33 45 N and 9 28 38 W – rendered it immune to nuclear fallout-carrying winds. Shortly afterwards, hordes of bomb-fearing hippies began descending on the place.


A year later, their safe haven got a bit of a jolt when the government announced it was going to build a nuclear power plant a county away in Wexford.


Deploying their deadliest weapon (the power of song), the lentil munchers joined up with Chrises Moore and de Burgh and organised two protest concerts at Carnsore Point in 1978 and 1979.


The shows were a massive success and the nuclear plans were shelved. In fact, the hippies did such a good job that Carnsore Point ultimately became the site of our first – safe – wind-generating station.


In 2000, singer Robbie Williams announced he was about to make his movie debut – as a hippie called Dylan in a comedy called Far From the Mushroom Cloud. It was set in Ballydehob in 1978 and was about immigrant hippies uniting with the locals to oppose a new nuclear power station.


Williams' career (and the movie), unlike west Cork, has since gone up in smoke.


Best place to survive an earthquake


Anywhere other than Dublin or Wicklow. Reports of tidal waves and earthquakes hitting our east coast date back to October 720AD (in the Annals of Wales). These quakes emanated from the Menai Straits fault zone which runs across the Irish Sea, passing south of Carnsore Point.


The last big quake in this zone happened on 19 July 1984 and measured 5.4 on the Richter scale. It shook houses along Ireland's east coast, making our dad think we'd fallen out of bed (again). Two other recent quakes have occurred in the same area, in 1994 (magnitude 2.9) and 1999 (magnitude 3.2).


More recently, an earthquake measuring 2.8 was recorded in the Irish Sea off Bray Head in December, 2005.


Here's the bad news: it's highly unlikely, but possible, that the east could be hit by a tidal wave again, triggered by a quake in the Irish Sea.


However, the folk there have less to fear in this respect than the people of Munster…


Best place to get hit by
a tsunami


We're all doomed. DOOMED, I TELLS YOU!!!


St Columcille prophesied the following back in the sixth century: "This new Éire shall be Éire the Prosperous; great shall be her renown and her power, and there shall not be on the surface of the wide earth a country found to be equal to this fine country... Seven years before the last day, the sea shall submerge Éire by one inundation."


New Éire? Sound familiar?


In 2006 our politicians announced that they were considering signing up to an early warning system for detecting tsunamis that could potentially flood the country.


It's not a bad idea.


The Canary island of La Palma is sitting on top of a super volcano. When this eventually blows, it will cause a tidal wave 330 feet high to race at 500mph across the ocean and flatten Florida after inundating our south coast.


The part of the wave that will hit us will be smaller, but bigger than anything we've ever experienced and will penetrate at least a mile inland.


And it could happen at any time. Cumbre Vieja volcano is active enough to erupt at least twice a century. The last major event was in 1949.


Therefore the best place to get hit by a tsunami is... Co Cork, specifically in Kinsale.


Why Kinsale? Because it's happened there before.


In 1755 Sir Charles Lyell added this to an account of the worst quake ever recorded in European history (at magnitude nine): "A great wave swept over the coast of Spain, and is said to have been 60 feet at Cadiz... at Kinsale a body of water rushed into the harbour, whirled round several vessels, and poured into the marketplace." The wave continued around the coast and damaged the Spanish Arch in Galway, before it receded.


Seeing as how we started off talking about recession, this seems an appropriate place to wind up this doom-fest.


It might interest you to know where the tidal wave that swamped our coast emanated from. It was Lisbon.


Couldn't we just tell them the No vote was payback?