7.9 and 8.8 Earthquakes in Japan

Yeah, I don't want to come across like the guy in link way upthread who said "it can't ever get worse than eating a banana", but otoh nobody is saying that this can get to Chernobyl territory. Even just the scrams and the evacuations have already prevented that.

From Australian ABC: "Mr Edano said the figures that have been released to date measuring the level of radiation around the plant have been misquoted as micro sieverts. He said the unit attached to the figures should have been milli sieverts which are 1,000 times stronger and much more damaging to human health."

Meanwhile that US Aircraft carrier yesterday parked just West offshore was like: "uh... we're gonna go about 70 miles south of here, thanks guys"

everything is fine no worries we will just be way the fuck over here

100 mili sieverts are enough to make a human male infertile

100 mili sieverts are enough to make a human male infertile

― mookieproof, Monday, March 14, 2011 11:03 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

find all the gay japanese

Radiation level "briefly nine times normal level" west of Tokyo: Kyodo News

I feel like what is happening in Japan right now is so scary that I'm just not processing it at all.

Yes. I feel similarly.

just a brief blast of radiation let's be cool (and sterile)

They've got the fire out at #4, apptly.

About 40 minutes ago, msn.com reported the Japanese Prime Minister saying that people 12 miles within a power plant should stay indoors.

Now: same exact headline, but 12 has become 19.

Yeah.

no worries yall just some earthquakes followed by a massive flood followed by more earthquakes followed by some exploding nuclear reactors followed by more earthquakes don't worry bout it

I think ice cr?am was asking about this but residents of the hardest hit areas received a 15 minute tsunami warning alert at 14:55, 9 minutes after the earthquake.

The effects of radiation exposure are capricious on an individual basis, but much more predictable on a statistical basis. Some people in Japan will be affected by this, and the questions now are how many and how badly. Even the best experts probably don't have a very clear idea, yet. Events are shifting quickly, it appears.

timeline:
14:46 9.0 quake
14:55 tsunami warning
15:10 tsunami impact

The French embassy in the capital warned in an advisory that a low level of radioactive wind could reach Tokyo -- 240 km (150 miles) south of the plant -- in about 10 hours.

you guys...

"On Monday, various reports from police officials and news agencies said that as many as 2,000 bodies had now washed ashore along the coastline, overwhelming the capacity of local officials to deal with what Prime Minister Naoto Kan described as Japan’s worst crisis since World War II."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15japan.html?_r=1&hp

The French embassy in the capital warned in an advisory that a low level of radioactive wind could reach Tokyo -- 240 km (150 miles) south of the plant -- in about 10 hours.

Some mixed good/bad news is that it's going to rain (snow?) later this afternoon/evening in Northern Honshu.

thanking u steve shasta re timeline

Kyodo news has a good English page for their latest news: http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/
Its latest is that small amounts of radioactive substances have been measured in Toyko.

Thanks for that, stet.

Holy crap is that page crushing. Also, yo-yos.

This is off-topic, but I don't feel bad since on-topic is so awful. Something that came to mind when watching the 15-min video of last Friday: Is there some essay or fiction that explains/describes the Japanese TV aesthetic of having 5 different things happening simultaneously on the screen while also having three audio tracks (in two languages, in this case) overlapping?

multi-tasking

TimeOutTokyo: Nikkei reporting that 9,700 missing people in Minamisanriku have been accounted for. http://s.nikkei.com/iiC9vj At last, some good news!

tj;cr

it doesn't want to load, probably because it's getting hit so hard, but here's a geiger counter in tokyo
http://park18.wakwak.com/~weather/geiger_index.html

Slightly good news: fire's out in the 4th reactor.

no worries yall just some earthquakes followed by a massive flood followed by more earthquakes followed by some exploding nuclear reactors followed by more earthquakes don't worry bout it

― HOOStory is back. Fasten your steenbelts. (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Monday, March 14, 2011 11:23 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

you forgot about the volcanoes

this is informative

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/12/world/asia/the-explosion-at-the-japanese-reactor.html?ref=asia

my man cliff mass on why the west coast doesn't need to worry about radiation
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2011/03/us-west-coast-is-not-at-risk.html

From virtually a point source, the radiation would mix through huge volumes of the atmosphere due to horizontal and vertical mixing. Since it would take days to reach us, there would be time for larger particles to settle out and precipitation would wash some out as well. Even for Chernobyl, where the core exploded while the reactor was powered up and where there was no containment, serious radiation only extended roughly 1000 km away.

Ugh, I just found out that @arclight cant tweet anymore...corporate decree from on high. Dude was light in the darkness for a while there :(

NEWS ADVISORY: Radiation 33 times normal level measured in Utsunomiya, Tochigi

NEWS ADVISORY: Radiation amount in Chiba Pref. twice to 4 times normal level

i wish that they would all use a common set of measurements ...

yeah these measurements are kinda worthless, 33 times the normal level is worthless fearmongering bullshit, give us something we can use

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

okay the banana thing wigs me out

http://i.imgur.com/VtYwR.png

400 mSv measured at the ground zero epicenter of the 30km evacuation radius.

0.01 = "normal"

1Sv (1000 mSv) is about the point where people start showing symptoms of poisoning iirc

As of yesterday there was 1 casualty due to radiation, 1 casualty due to explosion, and 5 hospitalizations due to radiation so make of that what you will. Let me check the jp news to see if there's updates on the health of the first responders.

Still think four days on that the best coverage of this (in terms of info, timeliness, tone and colour) is the WSJ's Japan Realtime blog. Today's is: http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/03/15/live-blog-disaster-in-japan/

w/r/t first responder health: 1 death + 15 admissions as of 2 days ago

guys, if/when the apocalypse really DOES come, it's gonna read like this thread which is hella spooky to me

Well thats if the interwebs still work when that happens. According to Futurama all video got wiped out with the second coming of Jesus :P

(sorry, gallows humour helps me at times like this)

guys, if/when the apocalypse really DOES come, it's gonna read like this thread which is hella spooky to me

― I just want to give a shout-out to Buzzy Beetles (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, March 15, 2011 5:26 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah earlier today i self-rejected posting 'i never thought the apocalypse was gonna start in japan'