Merged 8.8 quake in Sendai, Japan

[angrysoba]

Why I’m not fleeing Japan

folks in the States clamoring for potassium iodide pills to protect them against atomic particles wafting across the Pacific.

Sound like anyone you know?

A lot of that article rings true for me as well. It really boggles my mind that so many foreigners are freaking out and buggering off. But honestly, if they are that fickle then good riddance to them.

There was some guy on BBC who was ranting about how "the stoopid Japanese rules say people with visas need re-entry permits". While I agree that the re-entry permit thing is silly the BBC shouldn't have put this up on their website without some kind of clarification. They should have contacted immigration and found out if those who did want to leave will be guaranteed re-entry permits at the airport. As it happens if you ever do turn up at the airport without a re-entry permit you can usually get one there even if they get annoyed that you haven't sorted one out earlier. I wrote to the BBC about it and said they shouldn't be broadcasting some random guy with a gripe.

 

[Rolfe]

I was looking at the NASA "before and after" satellite pictures of Rikuzentakata, and it's really horrendous. To the right of the picture, in the "before" version, you can see a valley leading to a smaller bay and a district called Otomo. It appears to be completely built-up, with what appears to be a continuous belt of town and habitation.

The "after" picture seems to show that the tsunami has travelled the entire length of that valley from shore to shore. The middle of the valley is now marked "debris" on the second picture. I just hope people got out of there to the higher ground on either side in time.

Rolfe.

 

[Belz...]

Sound like anyone you know?

A lot of that article rings true for me as well. It really boggles my mind that so many foreigners are freaking out and buggering off.

I'm not. Still planning on visiting Japan some day. I need to go see an Onmyo-Za show, after all.

 

[angrysoba]

I'm not. Still planning on visiting Japan some day. I need to go see an Onmyo-Za show, after all.

I had to look that up. Never heard of them I'm afraid.

Are they Japan's version of Pantera or something?

 

[zooterkin]

Sound like anyone you know?

A lot of that article rings true for me as well. It really boggles my mind that so many foreigners are freaking out and buggering off. But honestly, if they are that fickle then good riddance to them.

I had the impression from the BBC that a lot of them are being told to leave by their employers, this story, for example, although a lot are just relocating staff away from the affected area but still in Japan.

 

[Hindmost]

So radiation is directional? I did not know that. I figured once it was out, it was out.

It not that it is directional, just that the plants are build with a bunch of concrete and rebar which can shield different areas. If there is enough between the spent fuel and where they need to do electrical work, the radiation levels might not be bad. There are other factors such as how far contamination has spread in and around the plant.

glenn

 

[Flo]

Why I’m not fleeing Japan

I totally agree with:

All the more imperative, then, that perspective be kept. If foreigners recoil at Japanese vacations, job postings, products or people because of irrational fears about radiation, they will deepen and prolong the trauma that nature has inflicted. In a few months, Japan should be its recognizable self, maybe even brimming with vitality stemming from a renewed sense of national purpose. The trains will once again be astonishingly punctual; the food will be delectable and plentiful. Once that happens, foreigners will hopefully recognize that Japan — with its Great Buddha and so many other wonders — remains an extraordinarily safe place.

I'm due to visit my friends in Tokyo at the end of April. They tell me that right now is not a good time but that much may happen in one month, so I would be welcome but they wouldn't be offended if I changed my plans. I'm taking that for "we'd rather that you reschedule your trip for a better period". As a short term visitor/tourist, I don't want to be a burden at a time when many people will be mourning lost friends, family, or colleagues.

In the same vein, a friend of mine who is a student at Tohoku university in Sendai is temporarily returning home. His rationale is that his presence isn't essential, he's taking valuable ressources from local people in need while he has the option to be taken care of by his own family until things settle down.

Given my Tokyo friends' attitude, there's plenty of reasons to be optimistic about Japan's future ("yes, we're slightly worried, there are few trains and open shops lack lots of goods, I have to walk 3 hours a day to and from work, but it keeps me fit since powercuts make kendo practice impossible at night, but life goes on almost as usual"),

 

[Rolfe]

If I was abroad, and suddenly I was living in a place with power shortages and petrol shortages and food shortages and some panic buying, and I wasn't essential to the recovery effort, I think I'd want to get home too. Even if just to remove one more hungry mouth from the food chain.

But if something like that happened to my home, no, of course I'd stay unless it was completely impossible to stay. So I think a lot of it may simply be psychological. Most of us have somewhere that is "ours", and we'll go there or stay there preferentially in times of crisis.

Rolfe.

 

[Belz...]

I had to look that up. Never heard of them I'm afraid.

And they're from Osaka !

Are they Japan's version of Pantera or something?

No idea, but they happen to me my favourite band, now.

I though maybe they aired their songs on radio, in your neck of the woods.

 

[Puppycow]

As it happens if you ever do turn up at the airport without a re-entry permit you can usually get one there even if they get annoyed that you haven't sorted one out earlier.

Yeah, I did that twice. Just forgot I needed it.

 

[Dan O.]

Apologies if this has already been posted.....

Check out this 2 minute video HERE (BBC). You can really gauge the destructive power and the depth of the oncoming wave as it sweeps in. The light coloured building with the garage and the long brown-roofed warehouse type building and couple of other concrete-type stuctures are the few that stand up to the water. I watched this one or two times before I noticed several doomed people standing on a building that later disappears. Also listen as a whole house is washed past I think people are screaming, trapped in there. **** it's horrible.

Compus

Near the end of that video you can see one of the tsunami evacuation platforms that survived. It is easy for a structure to stand up against the force of a tsunami by simply letting the water pass through. Unfortunately, this one is empty.

 

[babycondor]

Yup. What we do see is bad enough, let alone what mainstream news will not show. For instance there were reports of 2000+ bodies washed up on a shore (I think it may have been Sendai) video of such probably exists but who would want to see it? I find that it's very hard for me not to almost feel involved when I watch the video's such as I have just posted. It being so close-up and personal so to say.

The difficulties the Japanese people face in the future, following all this, appear almost insurmountable. But they are a tenacious, resourceful race, they will beat it.

Compassion and courage, humanity's saving graces.

ETA: And optimism.

 

[Bell]

Apologies if this has already been posted.....

Check out this 2 minute video HERE (BBC). You can really gauge the destructive power and the depth of the oncoming wave as it sweeps in. The light coloured building with the garage and the long brown-roofed warehouse type building and couple of other concrete-type stuctures are the few that stand up to the water. I watched this one or two times before I noticed several doomed people standing on a building that later disappears. Also listen as a whole house is washed past I think people are screaming, trapped in there. **** it's horrible.

Compus

*********** hell.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

No one cares about human life. They care about money, and exciting media stories. Why do you think the Japan situation is getting so much more attention than the Haiti Earthquake or Boxing Day Tsunami? (Both of which were an order of magnitude larger in terms of devastation). There's a million people in Haiti that are still homeless, over a year after the quake. A million. Do we care? Of course not. Because Haiti doesn't have the third largest economy in the world.

If anything, the amount of attention and the degree of hyperbole being used to describe the situation in Japan does nothing so much as reveal that the western world are a bunch of rubberneckers, not humanitarians.

Get some rest, gumboot. This post is a sign of stress. The vast majority of humans on the planet care about their fellow humans.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Earthquake proof? No such thing. And the only way to make a house Tsunami proof is to not build it on the coast. We're talking about energy releases in orders of magnitude most of us wouldn't even encounter when talking about data storage.

If we had unlimited resources we could build tsunami proof structures. They might have to be solid concrete and over 5 stories high in some places. But the fact there is a building or two still standing is evidence it can be done.

 

[Rolfe]

*********** hell.

I know. It's as if the sea is just endlessly overflowing on to the land.

Rolfe.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

It not that it is directional, just that the plants are build with a bunch of concrete and rebar which can shield different areas. If there is enough between the spent fuel and where they need to do electrical work, the radiation levels might not be bad. There are other factors such as how far contamination has spread in and around the plant.

glenn

I see. I saw a picture on the NYTimes website of firetrucks gathering to spray water on it. Not sure how far they can shoot, but I guess if they got in behind a concrete/steel wall it might not be as radioactive, as you say.

 

[jimbob]

So radiation is directional? I did not know that. I figured once it was out, it was out.

It not that it is directional, just that the plants are build with a bunch of concrete and rebar which can shield different areas. If there is enough between the spent fuel and where they need to do electrical work, the radiation levels might not be bad. There are other factors such as how far contamination has spread in and around the plant.

glenn

I think there might also be a slight confusion: The radiation comes from radiation sources, which will emit omnidirectionally, I guess that with protective clothing the problems will be gamma radiation and neutrons, which do travel in straight lines (maybe altered by diffraction or reflection) - Alpha and Beta radiation are also affected by electromagnetic fields. Neutron bombardment can transmute elements, and make other materials radioactive.

Fallout will travel with the wind etc, and will mean that there will be many sources of radiation, meaning that in the contaminated area, it might come from all directions. However the most intense sources will probably be the cooling ponds.

IANANE though.

 

[dudalb]

Most Kamikazes weren't given much of a choice in the matter. Their commanders did kindly things like neglecting to teach them how to land, so that if they piked on the mission they'd still die trying to bring their kite home.

I'd recommend reading "Samurai!" the biography of WW2 ace Saburō Sakai. He gives quite a scathing take on the Kamikaze and pretty firmly refutes the notion that these were willing volunteers simply exercising supreme dedication to their duty.

And he should know; on June 5 1944, nearly four months before the first formal Kamikaze attack squadrons were formed, he was ordered to lead a Kamikaze raid against a US Task Force. He declined to follow his orders and led the flight home after a dogfight with US fighters - having to talk some of the younger pilots in because they'd never been taught how to land.

Of course I have read Sakai's "Samaurai", and of course I knew that a lot of the Kamakazes were not really volunteers. But enough were to valdidate my statement that there is a strong strain of the acceptance of certain or almost certain death in the line of duty that you simply do not find to the same extent in other countries.

 

[dudalb]

No one cares about human life. They care about money, and exciting media stories. Why do you think the Japan situation is getting so much more attention than the Haiti Earthquake or Boxing Day Tsunami? (Both of which were an order of magnitude larger in terms of devastation). There's a million people in Haiti that are still homeless, over a year after the quake. A million. Do we care? Of course not. Because Haiti doesn't have the third largest economy in the world.

If anything, the amount of attention and the degree of hyperbole being used to describe the situation in Japan does nothing so much as reveal that the western world are a bunch of rubberneckers, not humanitarians.

Hey, I am considered a cynical bastard by most, buy you are way,way,over the top.
And the Haiti Earthquak and Indonesian Tsunami got the same 24/7 media attention for the first few days..at least in the US . I think the ongoing crisis in the Nuclear plants is what has kept this story alive so long.