Japan raises nuclear level to 7!!!

[washuguy]

This short article will fill you in; http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/12_05.html But yeah, the situation was a lot worse (And maybe even more so) than we've been told... Very sad. This should be a wake up call to us to stop taking the things we have here in America for granted be it family, time to play video games, be a jerk, your friends, food and water etc. it seems to me things are spiraling out of control on a GLOBAL scale, not just in japan. Food shortages, earthquakes, tsunamis, wars breaking out, people going crazy and getting more arrogant and selfish... I think i read about these things going to happen SOMEWHERE before... >_> But anyway, just somethings we should be paying attention to to serve as reminders to appreciate what we have.

[Wayu]

There already was a topic for this...

But it's true. The Fukushima crisis is now at the same level as Chernobyl.

-Wayu

[Zarode]

Food shortages, earthquakes, tsunamis, wars breaking out, people going crazy and getting more arrogant and selfish... I think i read about these things going to happen SOMEWHERE before... >_>

No, seriously, stop reading/watching the news. This shit happens all the time, the news will do anything to make it sound sensational. ANYTHING to keep you coming back, ANYTHING to keep you watching.

Besides, if it is certainly that time, why are YOU worried? You can warn people, but I wouldn't go that far. Most people have accepted their fates, just like you and me.

[Sinue_v2]

Well, first off, I'd appreciate a source which lists the radiation levels in millisieverts rather than becquerels. Sv and Bq differ in that Bq measures the total amount of radiation as units, while Sv is a diagnostic quantification based on damage it does to the body. It should also be noted that while Fukushima and Chernobyl are both on the same severity level, the crisis at Fukushima has been going on for much longer. To the best of my knowledge, there have been no fatalities yet involving the plant workers who are trying to manage this issue... whereas at Chernobyl, you had helicopter pilots where tasked with dumping concrete and boron mixtures into the core dying mid-flight. You should also take into account that there is a great deal of variation in the numbers of actual cancer and birth defect rates from the surrounding town of Pripyat. Many of those cases seem to have been caused by the eating and drinking of radioactive food, especially milk. This is something that's not happening anywhere close to that scale in Japan where lessons of the past (both Pripyat and the drinking of black rain after Hiroshima/Nagasaki) have lead to quarantines and disposals of many contaminated food sources.

The situation is fucking bad, don't get me wrong, but take the hysteria down a notch and you may get a better perspective of the situation.

it seems to me things are spiraling out of control on a GLOBAL scale, not just in japan. Food shortages, earthquakes, tsunamis, wars breaking out, people going crazy and getting more arrogant and selfish...

Hi, Welcome to Earth. Not sure anybody ever told you this before relocating, but we live on a very geologically and meteorologically active planet in a shooting range of a solar system which has a giant nuclear fusion core. Wake up man. Wars? Holy shit man, do you realize that global levels of violence have decreased exponentially over the last several centuries? That in our modern societies which perpetuate or allow atrocities like Khmer Rouge, Auschwitz, Darfur, etc - and wars on the global scale, that the likelihood of dying by the hand of another person is by far lower than your contemporaries living right now in nomadic tribal societies? How, in any way, is what we're seeing now a comparison to the awesome geological events in this Earth's history? Do you realize there was a time when for a million years, half of Russia (and later China) was buried under a mile of molten shit this planet was belching out like an open sore that wouldn't heal... and the gasses and pollution this volcanic activity released precipitated the greatest mass extinction of life we know about. Nearly 95% of all terrestrial and marine life... gone. It made the extinction of the dinosaurs look like a small population dip. Hell, the very oxygen you're breathing now was responsible for another one of the greatest mass extinctions in Earth's history. It was poisonous, still is under varying conditions, and those organisms that were resilient to it... what do you think happened to them when the iron on the Earth's surface began to oxidize (rust) rapidly, and it's runoff turned the entire ocean in a thick soup of dark-brown sludge.

Can you imagine what it was like living on the Earth back in the Carboniferous period? Yeah, all that oxygen became incorporated into the biochemistry in life at that point, and opened the door for life on land, but it was in much higher concentrations too - even to the point of combustion when denser pockets of it ignited by being struck by lightning - caused by storms which were much more common then due to the higher rotational speed of the Earth and much closer proximity of the Earth to the Moon. Shit, you'd have enough trouble just trying to avoid the tides back then which swept miles inland. It'd be like a Sendai Tsunami on every coastline, every day.

I think i read about these things going to happen SOMEWHERE before...

Yeah, Apocalypse nutters and people who can't see past their bronze age mythologies. There may well be a lot that religion has to offer society and the individuals living within them, but it comes more from a building of one's sense of contentment and compassion than in placing absolute faith in the absurdities and narrow perspectives of ancient cultures.

we should be paying attention to to serve as reminders to appreciate what we have

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. I just feel that it's more enriching and sincere when you know what it is we actually have, and what it is we stand to loose if we let ourselves be blinded to reality by what it is we like to think we have.

[RenzokukenZ]

Arguing against the forces of nature is like yelling at a speeding car that's driving by. It's gonna happen no matter what.

Whether its a massive earthquake, a raging tornado, or a nuclear crisis caused by a tsunami, nature inevitably takes its course. And we as humans have to stop living in the hallucination that these forces can be controlled. As for taking things for granted, well that's human nature.

As for the nuclear crisis in Japan, well, a nuclear fallout was going to happen eventually.

[Wayu]

According to Yahoo! news the amount of total radiation (along with its spreading) warrants a level 7 alert status, but who knows. No numbers so far.

-Wayu

[Zarode]

The Japanese aren't dumb. I'm sure they'll get out of this with minimal casualties. (because, surprise! they don't take this sort of shit lightly)

[Wayu]

They've got US support in the nuclear crisis.

And the French as well, but they might surrender.

-Wayu

[Sinue_v2]

Community Note: If you smoke, don't bitch or freak out over what's going on in Fukushima. That Polonium 210 tainted smoke you're inhaling makes the Uranium, Cesium, and Plutonium being released over the look like they should be making babies pacifiers out of it. At least that shit has a Half-Life of roughly 20,000 years on the low end. Polonium 210 has a half-life of 140 fucking days. While a gram of refined Plutonium 239 will feel warm to the touch in your hand, the same amount of refined Polonium 210 will reach temperatures approaching 1,000f. It is the only carcinogen in tobacco smoke which, when isolated, has been shown to cause cancer.

[Randomness]

They've got US support in the nuclear crisis.

And the French as well, but they might surrender.

-Wayu

I'm not sure we'll be much help. Remember, we spent most of our nuclear research on causing nuclear catastrophe. The French might be a better choice here .


In all seriousness though, the people around have been evacuated and from a human life perspective it's basically contained (probably) and it probably won't make a giant swath of land unfit for habitation the way Chernobyl did.