Reply #279: Let's put some things into perspective here

[Art_from_Ark]

People were going waaay overboard on posting alarmist crap, like saying matter-of-factly that Tokyo was being evacuated, that the whole country was contaminated with high levels of nuclear radiation, and that there was a total meltdown that would result in a huge nuclear explosion and stuff like that. They were also in full panic mode when 25 countries announced that they were closing their embassies temporarily, even though most of them were tiny countries. Speaking as someone who is actually living here in Japan-- between Tokyo and the reactors-- and having access to a wealth of sources of information about this disaster, I could tell that a lot of that was hyperbole. People were telling me to "see the reality" when I was "seeing reality" around me every day.

The company had actually acknowledged a partial meltdown with corium several weeks ago, and just after the initial disaster the Asahi Shimbun newspaper carried a huge headline "MELTDOWN" (in Japanese). It's not like what is being reported in this thread is earth-shattering news here in Japan. And radiation readings taken by a host of different organizations, including the Japanese government, prefectural governments, municipal governments, research institutes, universities, the IAEA, the United States DoE, all indicate that by far the worst of this nuclear mess is concentrated in Fukushima prefecture-- which is bad for people in Fukushima, and I sympathize with them greatly. However, in the rest of the country, radiation readings are still normal, or near normal.