Originally Posted by
Mr Punch
After Sumatra, there were strong aftershocks for a month, so we're expecting the same. Several of them so far have been over 6 on the Richter.
That isn't going to help the reactors.
With the exception of some ****s on Chinese message boards and some christian freaks in the US blaming it on Pearl Harbor karma, and Tokyo's very own Governor Ishihara (the ass) who blamed divine retribution for Japan's sloth and selfishness, the international response has been good. The US army/navy or someone put out the big fire at Daiichi Unit 4 about 3 hours ago. The radiation levels spiked then but have gone down to near enough normal again now. The levels for Fukushima and around the plant aren't available on the disaster prevention site; presumably censored. Ibaraki is a little high. Kanagawa/Yokohama peaked at a still safe level (less than a flight) two hours ago and fell again when the fire was put out and the wind direction changed. Tokyo got to marginally higher than before but nothing worse than a couple of cigarettes and a couple of bananas!
Misc oddities:
On the way home on Fri everything was closing early except the conbinis and... car showrooms! They still all had staff and customers in them, with the doors closed, presumably working hard for sales!
Bikes and running shoes sold out in many parts of Tokyo on Fri evening as people rushed to get home with the trains out.
Panic buying only started yesterday in earnest. Now there are no toilet rolls, rice, batteries, torches, packet foods, instant noodles etc, canned foods, bottles of water, bread products anywhere. The strangest thing you can see is people walking out of shops with armfuls of twenty or so bentos. They'd be pretty **** by the next day even if you put them in the fridge!
We ordered a big torch over Amazon, which was then cancelled by the Japanese govt to be sent to Sendai.
I just had the graduation ceremony at my junior high: everybody was very (absurdly?) calm and happy, with the exception of the mayor who was nearly hysterical in his speech. It was hilarious and quite surreal!
We've got rolling brownouts, first today (a day after scheduled) of three-four hours, excepting central Tokyo which presumably they're trying to keep going for economy's sake. This has caused a huge backlash on the net against pa*****o parlours, conbinis, neon and sex joints for working all night and using ridiculous amounts of power. Quite right too.
With the current state of reactors Japan will lose 20-30% of its power output for up to two months. The brownouts will continue till the end of April.
Apart from a few childish ****s like Bawang, the Chinese response has been lovely, with many people remarking how the Japanese helped in the Szechuan quake. Ditto the US response vs a few Tea-Partyish fundamentalist blow-hards.
Volunteers are of course not wanted near the site.
The 10000 people who were thought to have been swept away from one town were found to have evacuated.
Gotta go: got an outage on the way. Anyone want any direct links to any aspect of what I've been on about, I'll bung some up later.