Japan: huge earthquake, tsunamis, Asia-Pacific repercussions

[Toedancer]

Jeebus New 6.5 shaker hits Japan with tsunami warning

Awful.

[sparqui]

Awful news. I had no idea that the death toll has already reached 10,000  with the last tsunami. Let's hope the magnitude is much less.

[Croghan27]

TOKYO - A tsunami warning issued after a 6.5 magnitude earthquake hit northern Japan has been lifted, with no reports of damage.

 
Something that has always puzzled me in statements like this:

Japanese officials and international nuclear experts have generally said the levels away from the plant are not dangerous for humans, who anyway face comparable radiation doses on a daily basis from natural substances, X-rays or plane flights.

 
This may be true - but what it means, upon thought, is that this 'safe level' of radiation is in addition to what is received on a daily basis. Do two 'safes = one unsafe?

[skdadl]

Yeah -- none of it is "safe." It is "low risk," which is a statistical term that doesn't mean the risk is low. It has meaning only in context of numbers or frequency. Low risk actually means that a lot of people will get sick and a significant number will die. Ask your dentist.

[Holly Stick]

I think I read somewhere that background radiation itself might cause cancer in some cases; but that not everyone who gets a higher dose of radiation will develop cancer either.
 
And there are different kinds of radiation that last different lengths of time: like the iodine one dissipates in a few days, I think, so the Canadians and Americans who are buying up iodine pills are wasting their money.

[brebis noire]

I know someone who just bought a hyperbaric chamber to help counter radiation levels in her kids (she bought it for other reasons as well, but the Japan disaster was her tipping point - or her selling point, since I assume she will be encouraging other people to come and use it for $$).
My view is that radiation causes cancer, yes, and that plus increased longevity will mean that more people will get cancer. Which ones and where, remain to be seen. The reports from Chernobyl state that anywhere between 10K and 50K people (or more?) died as a result of radiation.

[skdadl]

As Donald Rumsfeld would say, there are the known knowns, and then ... never mind. The thing is, there are a lot of variables. People are differently susceptible, although we don't usually know who is until they get sick, and I think beyond a certain level anyone will be killed -- the heroes who actually grasp [something radioactive?} to stop an explosion die within days, I believe. (Someone did that at Los Alamos -- I forget what it was that he grasped.)

I'm sure the rape-a-scans at airports are not safe. The obvious difference between them and medical uses is that there are good reasons to get X-rays, and people submit to them with informed consent. At airports people are bullied into something unnecessary (unless you consider enriching Michael Chertoff to be necessary). I don't know why there isn't more resistance.

[Toedancer]

Japan Hit Again, tsunami warning

 

The aftershock was initially recorded at magnitude 7.4, but the U.S. Geological Survey later downgraded the jolt to magnitude 7.1

And over @ USGS downgraded to 4.6   (nope wrong quake sorry) 7.1

I know, I bitch about this every time, but I never seem to getting around to finding out why the usgs does this. Somebody must know, but I gotta go.

Localised tsunami called off
Phew@

[Antonia]

http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2011/04/ancient-stone-markers-warned-of.html

Modern sea walls failed to protect coastal towns from Japan's destructive tsunami last month. But in the hamlet of Aneyoshi, a single centuries-old tablet saved the day.
"High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants," the stone slab reads. "Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point."

It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along Japan's northeastern shore.

Hundreds of such markers dot the coastline, some more than 600 years old. Collectively they form a crude warning system for Japan, whose long coasts along major fault lines have made it a repeated target of earthquakes and tsunamis over the centuries.

[Toedancer]

Great link, thanks Antonia.

Japan debris the size of all Ontario floating to U.S. west coast, graphs/pics/vid  A 6 year ocean current cycle will take it back to Japan.
Can u imagine being out in the Pacific and seeing an intact house or building floating by 

[skdadl]

An underwater recording of the Honshu earthquake made off the Aleutian islands

Stay to the end.

via Josh Marshall of TPM on Twitter.

[Herr Magoo]

When you said "stay to the end" I sort of expected to be rickrolled.   

[skdadl]

Men!

[Toedancer]

This is bizarre.


Food or drink products in Japan may contain 1,999 Bq/kg of iodine-131 as well as 499 Bq/ of cesium, for a  total of 2,498 Bq/kg of radioactivity — and that is only accounting for those two isotopes.
That’s about 150 times higher radioactivity levels than are reported to be in the nuclear waste that was involved in today’s explosion in France.
http://enenews.com/strange-nuclear-waste-being-processed-during-explosion-in-france-had-radioactivity-of-17-becquerelskg-30-times-less-contaminated-than-what-japan-considers-safe-to-eat-500-bqkg
Japan says in case of another huge earthquake they will re-locate gov't from Tokyo to Osaka, yet some people complain Tokyo itself is becoming radiation intolerable.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-09/japan-govt-could-flee-tokyo/2830410
What I don't get is why doesn't Japan have an emergency plan in place to evacuate the entire island 'somewhere' when they get the, if they get the, precursor trembler that tells them this is a big one?
Great article in the Guardian on Fukushima disaster.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/09/fukushima-japan-nuclear-disaster-aftermath
Updates @ Fukushima
http://fairewinds.com/
Some say any radiation amount is too much once it is in the body, and it is in our food/water/milk, so I guess buying organic is stupid now. I dunno.

[Mandos]

Some say any radiation amount is too much once it is in the body,

That is kind of absurd.  There was never a time in the existence of the universe where you could avoid radiation or radioactive isotopes.

and it is in our food/water/milk, so I guess buying organic is stupid now. I dunno.

I was always skeptical of organic food.  My "translation" of the term is "food that goes bad faster."