Japan hit by 8.9 quake and following tsunami

[Crazy_Ivan80]

In Korea witch doctors (shamans, traditional healers, whatever) used to fly reverse swastika flags.

It has been a Buddhist symbol for hundreds, if not thousands of years.  Hitler stole it 

swastika is older than buddhism. Uness of course the early settled people in the Levant were Buddhists :p

[grumbler]

From what I've seen, tsunamis appear to act neither as instantaneous nor continuous events, but rather as something inbetween - they appear to last an appreciable time, sort of like a temporary shift in sealevel that lasts a half-hour or so. The wave when in hits shore may have a wavelength of 20 km or so, at least according to wiki:

While everyday wind waves have a wavelength (from crest to crest) of about 100 metres (330 ft) and a height of roughly 2 metres (6.6 ft), a tsunami in the deep ocean has a wavelength of about 200 kilometres (120 mi). Such a wave travels at well over 800 kilometres per hour (500 mph), but owing to the enormous wavelength the wave oscillation at any given point takes 20 or 30 minutes to complete a cycle and has an amplitude of only about 1 metre (3.3 ft).[19] This makes tsunamis difficult to detect over deep water. Ships rarely notice their passage.

As the tsunami approaches the coast and the waters become shallow, wave shoaling compresses the wave and its velocity slows below 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph). Its wavelength diminishes to less than 20 kilometres (12 mi) and its amplitude grows enormously. Since the wave still has the same very long period, the tsunami may take minutes to reach full height. Except for the very largest tsunamis, the approaching wave does not break (like a surf break), but rather appears like a fast moving tidal bore.[20] Open bays and coastlines adjacent to very deep water may shape the tsunami further into a step-like wave with a steep-breaking front.

I would note that wavelength isn't "about 20 km or so," it is "less than 20 km."  This is, of course, an enormous wavelength, but the sea wall shortens it while increasing amplitude (and robbing it of some energy).

Thus, when the wave hits a sea-wall that is lower than the wave, it floods over it and this flood moves inland - the presure of water crushing/pushing everything in its path. 

I don't really know whether having a sea-wall lower than the wave helps. The Japanese cities mostly had sea-walls, and got flattened anyway, but what is unknown (to me) is whether the damage would have been worse if they didn't have sea walls at all.

The sea wall shortens wavelength and robs the wave of some of its energy.  If the sea wall is higher or "lower" than the nominal wave height isn't all that material, given that the wave will increase more in amplitude with a taller wall, until it overtops it or runs out of power. 

[grumbler]

Americans have no conception of how to deal with a nuclear incident, other than to panic and start looting.  It would be wise to take the advice of the US government with a grain of salt.

  You're not even trying any more.

[jimmy olsen]

You tell 'em Grandma

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42128739/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

TOKYO — Kazuko Yamashita was five when the atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, destroying her home in a second and leaving her with a lifelong fear that every time she becomes ill, this time it is finally cancer.

Now, 66 years later, she wears a dark pink sweater, her dyed hair in a neat bob, and waits out Japan's current nuclear crisis in her daughter's Tokyo home, a two-story house she also shares with her two granddaughters who play on a sofa behind her.

"I may be a bit too callous about this due to the fact that I was really heavily exposed to radiation, but I don't think this is anything to turn pale over," she told Reuters.

"People seem to be much too sensitive, though of course it's not really for me to say, and heavy radiation exposure is a serious thing. But I was 3.6 km (2.2 miles) from the bomb, and they've evacuated for 20 km (around the stricken nuclear plant). I really don't understand this kind of feeling."

Almost a week since massive earthquake and tsunami triggered the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, 150 miles north of Tokyo, many foreigners and tourists have fled the country and rolling blackouts and radiation fears have gripped the capital.

Worries about grandchildren
Yamashita said she was not taking the situation lightly, even if she laments conflicting, overly alarmist news coverage.

"I can't say I'm not concerned, but I can't say I'm all that nervous," she said. "What I really worry about is my grandchildren. They're still so young."

Yamashita suffers from diabetes, thyroid issues and osteoporosis, which she attributes to the atom bomb that fell on her native city at the end of World War Two.

"Radiation is something you only see the results of years down the road, so in that sense it's quite frightening," she said.

On that hot summer day in 1945, Yamashita was shielded from the worst of the destruction by a heavy quilt thrown over her as the bomb exploded.

"I didn't see a thing, but the noise was incredible — the sound of glass flying around, and so many other things. Then when I got up a few minutes later, everything had changed. There was nothing left of the house but the supporting pillars, and the world around us was red," she said.

"Now everybody's making such a fuss about the reactors in Fukushima. But it's nothing like that," she added.

Perhaps due to her mother's influence, her daughter, Shigeko Hara, is also quite stoic — even though she too suffers from a thyroid disorder typical of the children of atom bomb survivors.

"How safe is it really? That depends on the wind and what happens, and since I have children it is pretty scary," the 39-year old said as she sipped green tea in her living room.

"But it's also really scary that the location of strong earthquakes seems to be changing. So many places are being hit, you have no idea where's next," she added.

"I wear athletic shoes everywhere these days, even to work, because I never know what will happen and want to be ready for anything," Hara said.

Disaster backpack
Like many Tokyo residents, she has a backpack at hand for disasters filled with work gloves, socks, shoes heavy enough to walk over glass, as well as aspirin and sticking plasters.

But she also confessed that her emergency food was far past its expiry dates. A carton of mineral water and bag filled with cup noodles and snacks stood close by, ready to be added.

After the quake, she went to buy food and was shocked to see store shelves had been emptied of bread, milk and rice balls.

She was able to buy milk on Wednesday after standing in a long line, but that was the first time in two days her daughters, 7-year-old Akari and 11-year-old Yuka, had any milk to drink.

The family is limiting its electricity use as much as possible, responding to official calls to conserve power, shivering at night under extra sweaters in Tokyo's unseasonable cold.

She would like to dry her washing outside, but concerns about radiation have her hanging it inside instead.

Still, both she and her mother say their problems are small in the face of the hardships in the tsunami-hit areas.

"I called a childhood friend who lives up near the reactor and said to her, 'We went through a lot more than this in the past," Yamashita said.

"Japanese people are strong, and good at enduring."

[jimmy olsen]

So fucked.

http://languish.org/forums/index.php?action=post;topic=4558.225;num_replies=243

Earthquake forecasting has progressed greatly. All large earthquakes have aftershocks, which are smaller earthquakes that relieve the residual stresses that develop in the chaos of the rupturing fault zone and the secondary faults that surround it. Since around 1990, seismologists have noticed that aftershocks tend to cluster in volumes of rock in which shear stresses on faults are predicted to increase rather than decrease. The net stress-change of an earthquake is negative, but typically a cross-like pattern of increased stresses is predicted by theory, with pockets of higher stress projecting beyond the rupture termination, as well as angled perpendicular to the fault. The stress increase is a few bars (one bar approximates atmospheric pressure), which is tiny compared to ambient stress in the rock. That this small increment of stress largely determines the pattern of aftershocks is no comfort: It tells us that a large rock volume was very close to failure before the earthquake.

Aftershock patterns benefitted earthquake forecasting when Ross Stein and his USGS colleagues discovered that the stress increments of past large earthquakes were good predictors of where the next large earthquake would occur. Long after the aftershocks subsided -- months, years, or decades after -- another earthquake of similar size often broke within the next segment of the fault zone, where stresses had been increased only slightly in relative terms. How time-delayed stress-triggering occurs is a mystery, but it has been documented worldwide.

An irregular series of large, damaging earthquakes shook the North Anatolian Fault in the twentieth century from east toward the west across modern-day Turkey, reaching the Sea of Marmara in 1999 with the Izmit earthquake. Stress increments from Izmit have loaded the fault segment next to Istanbul. The 6.6 magnitude San Fernando earthquake in 1971 loaded the nearby fault that caused the 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994. More germane to Japan, the 9.3 Sumatra-Andaman megathrust earthquake in December 2004 loaded the next subduction-zone segment to the south, and this segment generated an 8.6 megathrust event only three months later in March 2005. No prediction can be made today for Japan, but it is safe to forecast a sharply increased probability for a major earthquake on the broad, simple subduction-zone segments both north and south of the Tohoku rupture zone. The segment to the south lies offshore the Tokyo metropolitan area.

[HisMajestyBOB]

People are spreading crazy rumours in Hong Kong and China.  The latest theory is that consuming large quantities of salt helps to combat radiation.  Because salt contains iodine.  And since sea water is being contaminated, salt supply will be affected.  I see people lining up to buy salt in the markets 

That's how it starts.
Then comes blaming the Jews and other minorities. 

[The Brain]

Chinese will be all set when the snail invasion comes.

[Josephus]

What's with the iodine pills? From what I hear they help stave off thryroid cancer, which is but one symptom of radiation exposure.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/954256--explainer-how-iodine-pills-protect-against-radiation

Right...so while it's a good thing it's not a magic pill

Potassium iodine, however, does not protect against other forms of radiation sickness. "All it protects against is the thyroid," Powers said. "It's important people don't think it protects against all the other things that can happen from radiation exposure."

"Potassium iodide can provide important protection for one organ from radiation due to one radionuclide," says the Health Physics Society website.

"It can only provide protection from the thyroid gland from an intake of radioiodine. It doesn't have any value in protecting other organs of the body or in providing protection from radiation from other radioactive nuclides," the site warns.

Another potential radioactive hazard is cesium, which was released at Chernobyl. Cesium is absorbed throughout the body, not just the thyroid, and remains in organs, tissue and the environment much longer. But potassium iodide does not protect against that or other radioactive isotopes.

[DontSayBanana]

Today they had to flush the ship's whole water supply because the water had radiation in it. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but hey. Bottom's up.

I love the smell of deuterium in the morning.

[MadImmortalMan]

Paul Krugman subscribes on a grand scale to the broken window fallacy.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/meltdown-macroeconomics/


Astonishing. Macabre. Disappointing. I can't decide on the right word. Whatever.

[Josquius]

Aww man, this is pretty tearful, poor dogs...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uct9Kzjw9XY&feature=player_embedded

[Ed Anger]

Screw the damn dogs.

[HisMajestyBOB]

The Washington Post has a pretty good graphic/summary of what's going on with the reactors.

[Razgovory]

In Korea witch doctors (shamans, traditional healers, whatever) used to fly reverse swastika flags.

It has been a Buddhist symbol for hundreds, if not thousands of years.  Hitler stole it 

swastika is older than buddhism. Uness of course the early settled people in the Levant were Buddhists :p

I think the connections with India are precisely why it was chosen.  It was a symbol of Aryanism.  Apparently, it was  used by anti-Semites before Hitler as well.

[CountDeMoney]

Screw the damn dogs.

Most of us would save the dog before we saved your Jim-Tressel-cocknibbling ass.