This is a building collapsing in Turkey hours after a series of earthquakes and aftershocks on February 6th. First the bottom floor crumbled, then the rest of the building came down on top of it in what's known as a pancake collapse. Thousands of buildings near the epicenter in Southern Turkey and Northern Syria tumbled straight down in a similar way. The intensity of the earthquakes alone carried the potential for Destruction, But it's the pancake collapses that have made this one of the deadliest disasters in the region.

Even a very well designed and well executed building would have suffered. This doesn't rule out that the buildings was free of defects, how well buildings protected, residents played a significant role in lives saved and lost. Clearly, a lot of these buildings were not up to standard. The death toll continues to climb as many victims are still stuck under the weight of the buildings.

So what is it about these buildings that has made this earthquake even more devastating? That's insane. First, let's look at the larger region that's prone to severe earthquakes Because of these two fault lines. They sit along tectonic plates that meet one another and cause friction. When the friction builds up, a powerful earthquake is eventually released.

What is the Uh Earthquake zone? What in California What the right? I Don't think it gets that big of earthquakes, does it That intensity? Usually pretty small. Over the years, over the decades it's been pretty small earthquakes, right? like a like like twos and ones and whatnot. right. Over the last century, Turkey has seen major earthquakes along both fault lines.

the most recent one happened here. This is the seismic impact that shows the epicenter. When you take a closer look at the most impacted areas, they were densely populated with Syrian refugees who ended up living in buildings that were haphazardly built and largely neglected and across the border in Syria Buildings in these areas were already weakened by the prolonged Civil War. But what really complicates This Disaster is that Turkey was aware of the buildings that were the most high risk.

They're called Soft story structures. A soft story building is typically a large structure with multiple floors and an open plan on the bottom. That bottom floor can sometimes be a parking garage space for small businesses or extra homes. These buildings are very common throughout the world, especially in countries like India Pakistan and Turkey because I develop their solution to overcrowding and densely populated areas, but they historically do a poor job of withstanding medium to powerful earthquakes.

Here's why: these columns here are usually made of wood and the stories on top might be made of heavier materials like concrete so they give up. Sometimes the bottom floor has fewer walls than the ones above, but sides that may be left open or columns that aren't connected by walls. This means that a soft story is the weakest floor and cannot fully support the heavier ones above it. So when an earthquake hits the structure May shake until that bottom floor collapses during powerful earthquakes like Turkey and Syria's the remainder of the building may follow.

This kind of collapse traps people under heavy construction materials, making rescue missions even more difficult. Funny I Can't see him Jesus Christ I Can't see him. This is worse than more, but this is a challenge Turkey has faced before. A comparable 7.6 earthquake hit is met in 1999 and caused over 17 000 deaths.

It became clear that poor building design and soft stories which made up nearly 90 percent of building collapses exacerbated the death toll in this disaster. Man, stop saying no. It's like guys, these people have suffered loss. Men let him let him process however they want and said their man actually water is much more devastating.

Juarez Yo shut up I Don't want to hear that bath. Push the Turkish government to reintroduce building codes with an emphasis on earthquake safety, but they weren't enforced due to corruption and many buildings in Turkey were built to well before 1999, which meant those buildings could only be strengthened retroactively foreign. There is a way to keep soft story buildings intact in the event of an earthquake retrofitting them with materials that can support the weight of the structure. In an ideal scenario, these wooden columns can be replaced or reinforced with steel frames.

These open walls can be reinforced too, and extra bolts and braces can be drilled into the foundation. So if the structure shakes their support from that bottom floor. A solution like this seems simple, but it's extremely expensive to execute. According to the World Bank, around 6.7 million residential buildings in Turkey need retrofitting or reconstruction at a cost of 465 billion dollars.

As of 2021, only about four percent of those buildings were transformed. In fact, retrofitting is an expensive undertaking and nearly impossible even in countries like the US. Here is every remaining soft story building in San Francisco that needs reinforcements that would cost billions. But another problem in Turkey is that construction companies have been cutting corners and ignoring building codes for decades, and the Turkish government has let their violation slide.

According to the BBC, this post advertised a building that complied with Turkey's latest earthquake safety regulations, which emphasizes the use of strong materials. but the way that same building collapsed suggests it was a soft story structure. Turkey is cracking down on contractors that are allegedly responsible for these collapses. The scale of This Disaster is a result of complex factors like geography, neighborhoods still reeling from war, and weak buildings.

But what makes this moment particularly harrowing is that while earthquakes along fault lines are inevitable, many of these deaths didn't have to be. Turkey, along with other countries near fault lines, are all prone to intense earthquakes, but they won't have to be this deadly if cities enforce codes and treat safe housing as a human, right bro. I Saw a video dude and the road was like bouncing up and down like four meters or something that was absolutely busted. Looked like the most absolutely disastrous thing out.

Dude: have you seen it in that video? I Don't know if it's if I was even by Twitter Like not to play videos of videos from like another earthquake or something like that I I Don't know if it's related. it was like bang bang. It's like insane. It's insane.

Have you seen that before or not? You ourselves, you know the muscles. Watch out the video this watching the video This: This: it's good. On August 1st 2022, this small mining town of Soledad in Ukraine had Apartments buildings houses. Fast forward to January 10 2023 and it had turned to Rubble.

That same afternoon, a statement on the app telegram surfaced claiming Wagner took control of this entire territory of Soledad but even though the Russian army has been fighting across Ukraine for months, this message didn't come from them. It came from Yevgeny Pregosian, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He started out as a Kremlin caterer where he got the nickname Putin chef but in 2014 he became the head of the Wagner group, a covert Russian network with mining companies, political influence operations, and a brutal private military force. Until recently, the Wagner group was a secret operation and claiming a public Victory like this was rare.

But things are starting to change and the Playbook of this dangerous group is becoming much, much clearer. All right. In 2014, Russian forces annexed Crimea and began fighting in eastern Ukraine's Don Bass region. A year later, soldiers in unmarked green uniforms showed up on the ground to support Russian troops.

They were called Little Green Men But we now know this was likely the first time Wagner soldiers were deployed on the ground. These soldiers have become progressions Frontline agents for Russia's Global strategy. They serve multiple purposes for the Russian government, but Chief among them is to divert attention from activities that the Russian government and the Kremlin in particular doesn't want the world to pay attention to. That's Candace Rondo a journalist who investigates the Wagner group and Russia's strategy for proxy.

Warfare One of the main functions of the Wagon Group serves is to deliver weapons and military services to countries with which Russia has a military technical agreement. Russian Law technically prohibits its citizens from fighting for money in foreign countries, but the opaque nature of the Wagner group has allowed it to recruit tens of thousands of soldiers, mainly from Russia. Generally speaking, these are hardened military veterans at the command level um, and then sort of rank and file level. Those who were not recruited from prisons tend to come from Um, you know, Elite backgrounds.

In the beginning, you couldn't really distinguish them, but today, the Wagon Group brand is completely recognizable by their emblems, their Insignia and their online Brands. These guys now are basically kind of like the McDonald's of the Russian way of War and this new visibility has given us a better look at the three strategies they employ to do Russia's dirty work around the world. The what the Wagner group targets country is experiencing long conflicts or that are weakly governed or corrupt. take Syria which has been under authoritarian rule for more than 50 years and in 2011 saw a civil war breakout between the Syrian government and anti government authoritarian rule groups to fight the rebels.

Syrian dictator Bashar Al-assad turned to his Russian Ally for help. Shortly after Wagner mercenaries appeared in Syria to support the government forces. Since then, all these countries have seen Wagner troops on the ground, most of them while going through periods of instability. This has allowed the Wagner group and by extension, Russia to expand its reach to at least four different continents.

in particular in Africa where at least 18 different countries have seen Wagner forces on the ground in the past decade. Wait, wait, I Still do this right? Let's say a country has like a problem. or they like buy their people right. They like buy the service and they just will pull up right.

They'll land it and they're like mercenaries for their cause. Whatever. Answer them Pretty much in the United States where Wagner is operating, a lot of the work is. that's A problem teaching local militaries how to do kind of reconnaissance and counter-insurgency but often in a very rough way.

The Wagner group generally does this by spearheading brutal military incursions like in Mali another prime target for Wagner. Since 2012, Mali has been fighting a jihadist Insurgency and has experienced three coups in just nine years. Two of the three couples brought Asimi Goita to power, a Russian-backed president that remains in power today for nearly a decade. Mali had military support from France its former colonizer, but in 2021 when France started to withdraw its Army It's widely believed Mali contracted Wagner troops to help them fight against the rebels I don't know I just watched this video Molly denies the deployment of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group, but satellite imagery analyzed by the Center for Strategic And International Studies suggests they arrived quietly in December of 2021 and built a military base and access roads by the airport to facilitate their deployment.

One of the biggest motivations for standing up a ghost Army that nobody can quite describe or Define The main purpose of that is to make sure that the activities that the people do are not seen and cannot be traced and tracked, but that doesn't always work. In April of 2022, a mass grave in the Malian desert was traced back to the Wagner group. They've also been linked to other violent incidents in Mali, including here, where they killed about 350 men in March of 2022. a U.N report shows that since Wagner's arrival in Mali, the number of Civilian deaths has increased by 324 percent and thousands more have been displaced.

Once the Wagner group arrives in a fragile country and intervenes militarily to help local dictators backed by Russia, the big question is what's in it for them Because they're so integral to the military technical agreements, they're also part of a cycle of debts and loans that are incurred I don't know how to feel that Vox as a whole I feel like Vox they're tough and that is about things that that like they're hard to understand or we don't really know about. Vox Overall, sometimes it's kind of like it I Don't know when client states of Russia want to, you know, just improve their armies in exchange for those loans. typically the Wagner through a series. I'm saying overall, a lot of videos seem very biased.

Cell companies will get payment in the form of oil or gold or uranium, even, which is exactly what happened in Sudan. A country that's been under autocratic rule for three decades, went through a series of coups and is now ruled by Sudan's military. Sudan's relationship with the Wagner group began in 2017. at the time, Sudan's then president, Omar al-Bashir built his grip on power flipping and met with Putin to establish a new alliance with Russia Transcripts show he presented Sudan as Russia's key.

Soon after they met. I'm not feeling edgy, it's just because I think a lot of times what I realized from these videos is that some people plan out a problem right? That, like everybody does right, it's like oh wow, these are doing this. What the? It's like everybody does it right and then it's just kind of feels odd, right? Not maybe not in this case. And even overall, Russian Military vehicles like this one spotted on the ground and videos of Wagner troops training Sudanese soldiers surfaced on social media in 2019 when Albashir was overthrown in a military coup.

The arrangement persisted, proving just how enmeshed Wagner troops and the Sudanese Army have become. And that's because the Wagner group has a lot to gain in exchange for providing weapons and training. The Wagner group operates gold plants like this one where they exploit Sudan's natural resources, getting that kind of high value commodity that can be quickly turned into cash through a money laundering. Enterprise is a big part of the website.

Um, okay. chat I want to watch it I forgot what it is I've forgotten yo. this is X x on the video I'm going through my voice as well. that is anyone knows that boy I Don't know.

He's just so sorry. Anyone knows that boy I don't know. He's just so sorry.