Yes entire cities are leveled weekly and reactors melt down every two years or so.

You know that entire 'it just gets more media coverage' bit only gets you so far. There was media coverage 10 years ago and I don't remember 70 earthquakes hitting in 2 days back then. Back then the Muslims made our disasters for us. Now those were times!

I drive across her replacement 'sturdy gurdy' to get to work three days a week.

Octopus Wrestling

9.0 Earthquakes are not a regular occurrence.

Nuclear plants failing are not a regular occurrence.

You being more ignorant with every post is a regular occurrence.

Oooboy.

Looking back at my friend Mike's status update, this is kind of chilling:

http://www.oddworldforums.net/attach...1&d=1300142501

Apparently he's been trying to stay ahead of everything to the best of his abilities and is now in Indonesia. Crazy stuff for all involved.

I know I'm an idiot but there's no reason to be that harsh to me. :P I was only "ignorant" in one post 'cause I worded it wrong as usual (second time I've done that tonight, I need to get my mind out of the gutter). Lemme try again.

Yes, it's terrible that Japan just got screwed over that and many people are dead, and I feel for these people, they deserve lots of aid and sympathy, but I'd hardly call that the world falling apart - More like a country falling apart, except they'll probably recover from this relatively quickly and they were more prepared for this sort of thing than most countries would have been.

Terrible things seem to happen often. Think about the recent disasters that have happened during the past decade (and I don't just mean natural ones). Has everyone forgotten about Haiti already? That was a bigger disaster (between 90,000-200,000 dead compared to Japan's so far 10,000 estimate, even though it's early days) and I don't remember there being as much hype in the media about it.

And yeah I know I'm sort of going back on what I said earlier, but I also find it silly that the media seem to be concentrating more on the nuclear power plant blowing up than on the other, more serious effects of the earthquake and tsunami, and the continuing rescue effort, especially since we know now that a massive spread of radiation apparently isn't likely. And what, because it's more interesting and scary, even though people have already been evacuated?

I don't even watch TV and I remember a huge amount of hype. It bordered on obnoxious. TV, Radio, billboards, everywhere. So I don't know what the fuck you were doing, or where you were, but that's just stupid.

In the UK I remember it being talked about for about a month, then people stopped talking about it except for the occasional article about how they still weren't getting enough aid. I certainly didn't see any billboards anywhere.

Seems it was different in other countries. I stand corrected, then.
Gief spade, plx! I wanna see how deep I can dig my hole!

Its the difference between:

"Hey guys lets stop this earthquake from happen.....Oh wait"

and

"Lets see if we can prevent a melt down in this nuclear plant"

Okay reactor 3 is now on fire. I demand a meltdown headline tommorow damnit, this has been delayed for long enough!

Uh... it hasn't been a month since the earthquake yet. Hell, the Christchurch earthquake was out of the news within two weeks. So... what's your point?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...-live#block-26

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...-live#block-25

Incidentally, the trace radioactivity is likely Radon, of the noble gases. It comes out of the ground naturally because of all the Uranium there, which is why lost of houses in specific areas have radon detectors in their attics and basements. It is the largest cause of lung cancer after smoking, because of how common it is.

Well.

My poorly-illustrated point was that the world isn't falling apart, bad terrible things happen sometimes, the ones that survived are still here, and we should be aware that the media may hype up things rather than keep things in perspective.

I'm not saying that what's going on isn't important at the moment, though. Obviously a radiation leak ontop of an earthquake is serious business for those involved - But why is the BBC giving its audience lots of info-graphics about how nuclear power plants work and what went wrong with Fukushima? A possible 10,000 people are dead because of the disaster, not because of radiation. Some of you were telling me earlier that it's not comparable to Chernobyl - People are aware of what's happening and are being directed to act accordingly to minimise the risk of being harmed. So what's the worst-case scenario with the power station? Low levels of radioactive material being spread about?

Eh, I'll stop digging my hole now.

The irritating thing is, we've had the tech to build safer fission reactors for years now that cannot have any of the problems Fukushima is having now, such as those that use Thorium fuel, which can't even have a meltdown. As far as I know only India has proposals to build a Thorium reactor.

I have no idea why it's no on the cards anywhere else. Many countries stopped building any fission reactors at all due to the concerns of the old designs. I suspect the rest just want the nuclear by-products of the old designs for their weapons.

Now that's interesting. Apparently, the quake was so great that it made the earth spin faster, and some parts of Japan's coastline have shifted up to 4 meters to the east.

I wonder what the Haiti and NZ quakes did?

Because nuclear energy causes babies with three penises and no lungs and planes will fall out of the sky and and

Public perception of nuclear energy is pretty skewed.

That it is. I blame Joe.

Earth quakes do that. Jumping does that. It makes little difference, the axis gets shifted around in all directions by these things, they pretty much cancel out. As for rotation, loads of things affect that. and overall the Earth's rotation is slowing anyway. Post glacial rebound affects that (the rising of several land masses after being squashed down by the weight of ice, the effect being like spinning in a chair and extending your legs). Tidal acceleration as a result of the moon's gravity slows the Earth's rotation by about 20 millions of a second every year, so the Earthquake's effect will have been cancelled out in a month. 1.8 microseconds isn't all that much an increase, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake sped up rotation by 3 microseconds.

Because everyone already knows that 10,000 people are dead and reporting it more won't change that fact. But the Fukushima is an ongoing disaster that has potential to be catastrophic. Of course they're going to focus their reportage on it.


EDIT: Can you guys please leave the in-principle discussion of nuclear power (as seperate from Fukushima specifically) to the other thread? It's confusing if topics get duplicated.

Now I understand.

An old friend of mine told me that Japan's sole reason to exist is to baffle the world - I'm glad to see it's still living up to that. :)

I like the part where he Pooed

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/815/43416136.png

Oh Japan, you so crazy.