For most of the weekend, he did not sleep. He sat in front of his television, watching with increasing sadness the news reports of the devastation taking place. The big wave slowed somewhat as it laid waste the Ryukyu Islands, then it surged across the East China Sea, and slammed into the China coast. The people had no notice. The wave hit about two o’clock in the morning when virtually everyone was asleep. Its height was roughly two hundred feet at landfall. The devastation was unspeakable.

He watched infrared satellite pictures of the walls and roofs of dwellings collapsing. He could imagine people lying in beds or on mats, crushed to death. He could almost hear the screams and cries that would have been quickly silenced by the raging seawaters.

He thought of the biblical story of a night in Egypt when a death angel walked the land and selectively killed every firstborn male child of the Egyptian people. In this night of horror along the seacoast of Asia, there was no selectivity. Everyone died . . . the old, the young, the healthy, the infirm, the rich, the poor, the good, the bad.

The main wave traveled about a hundred miles inland before its fury was spent. A secondary wave, spawned by the first, yet of terrible ferocity, flooded the Yellow Sea in a north/south direction, bringing further devastation to the west coast of Japan, then swamping Pusan and Masan on the Korean coast, pouring into Inchon Harbor and from there into Seoul. It devastated the Tiangsu and Shandong provinces of China and the coastal area of Bo Hai.

Little was left of Shanghai, the great port city of China. The thriving port, which had realized thirty-five billion dollars in annual trade just the year before, was laid waste. The proud shops jammed with Western merchandise and the latest fashions were gone. Row after row of elegant buildings that spoke of the days of European colonialism were demolished. It appeared that the entire population of Shanghai had perished under the wall of water.

As the weekend progressed, it was evident from the reports that John Edwards was receiving that the raging angry waves of the Pacific would show no favorites. Hong Kong and Macau were devastated. There was huge loss of life and property across the low-lying coastal areas of Vietnam. The coasts of Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia were overwhelmed by giant waves.

Water was compressed by the Malacca Straits and gained even greater power.

The island nation of Singapore had achieved its physical growth through vast landfill projects. When the column of water coming through the straits hit, Singapore, for all purposes, ceased to exist. Abnormal tidal action swamped the low-lying areas of Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka.