# Magnitude 8.9 Hits Northern Japan



## TheFuhrer02 (Mar 11, 2011)

A massive 8.9-magnitude quake rocked Northern Japan just a few minutes ago this afternoon (GMT +8.) According to BBC, the death toll has reached almost 20 in just the first 15 minutes.

The quake created a tsunami that also plunged Japan into flood-filled streets. A nuclear power plant was destroyed by this event.

The waves rose up to thirteen feet.

Tsunami warnings have already been raised in Taiwan, the Philippines, China and the rest of southeast Asia, and the warning had stretched as far as Hawaii and the coasts of Alaska and Mexico.

As of the time this was written, BBC said Taiwan could be hit by the same tsunami in just half an hour.

Watching these all unfold, I cannot help but be reminded by this text:

"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places." - Matt. 24:7 (NIV)

What is the world coming to?

Link to source: Major tsunami damage in N Japan after 8.9 quake - Yahoo! News


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## Mistique (Mar 11, 2011)

Yes, I have seen this in the news too. I was utterly shocked. All those people.


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## The Backward OX (Mar 11, 2011)

Perhaps I should move my chooks onto higher ground.


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## Farror (Mar 11, 2011)

YouTube - AlJazeeraEnglish's Channel

Live streaming, including a lot of good footage.


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## Dudester (Mar 11, 2011)

Just awful. A reminder, because Asia has now had two such disasters (12-24-04 & today) that the US is overdue for a disasster of epic proportions.


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## Custard (Mar 11, 2011)

The only good part is that people in Japan are used to earthquakes so that there are not as many casualties than there should have been. The bad news, there were still casualties  .


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## KangTheMad (Mar 11, 2011)

TheFuhrer02 said:


> A nuclear power plant was destroyed by this event.




Holy jumping jesus. That can't be good at all.


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## Farror (Mar 11, 2011)

Actually, they all shut down automatically, but currently there is one that is having some issues with its cooling system. There's no trace of radioactive leakage, but they're on alert.


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## terrib (Mar 11, 2011)

My husband's son lives in Hawaii and emailed they have been up most of the night...his cell phone service was out at the time...he said they were on alert to move to higher ground at any time. I have to agree with you, Fuhrer...these are prophetic times.


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## I-FLUX (Mar 11, 2011)

I'm in Tokyo right now, and I am fine although that was a huge Earthquake.

North Eastern part of Japan is facing seriously terribly devastating disaster right now, both with Earthquake, Fire, and Tsunami. Over 400 people are likely to be dead and over 300 is confirmed.


There is a huge ocean of fire where the oil refinery was, and the fire isn't going out any soon. Two nuclear power plant was hit. One of them, which had 4 reactors automatically shut down and is safe as of now. Another one of them, which had 3 reactors shutdown, but one of the reactors is facing coolant failure. If it continues, it'll be a disaster.


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## Custard (Mar 11, 2011)

One of my friends was in Japan, I have been trying to get into contact with him..... he was in Osaka the last time we talked anyone know if Osaka was hit?


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## KangTheMad (Mar 11, 2011)

I'd have to debate the prophetic times thing. War, earthquakes and famine are no strangers to the world.


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## terrib (Mar 11, 2011)

You would, Clayton!...lol  But seriously...look at all the mess going on in the middle east...the drug use..every channel I turn to has the world going down the toilet...don't ya think?


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## Foxee (Mar 11, 2011)

Re: the nuclear power plant in question apparently the safety cut in during the quake and shut down the cooling system. They're planning to vent small amounts of radioactive vapor which supposedly will be safe. It just doesn't sound nice.

I saw some video of this, an aerial shot of the tsunami, just horrific. See Footage of the Moment the 8.9 Quake hit Japan | The Blaze


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## KangTheMad (Mar 11, 2011)

terrib said:


> You would, Clayton!...lol  But seriously...look at all the mess going on in the middle east...the drug use..every channel I turn to has the world going down the toilet...don't ya think?


 
Well, the media focuses on bad news more often than not. People will listen to disaster and stuff more often than a man who opens up a drug rehabilitation center after his wife gets strung up on drugs and kills herself.

Also, the Middle East/Europe/Asia has always been a hotbed for war.

In no particular order:

Byzantine Empire
Ottoman Empire
Holy Crusades (First through Fourth)
Holy Roman Empire
Phoenician Empire
Mongolian Empire (Genghis Khan, later on, Kublai Khan)
British Empire

Earthquakes happened too, though most people thought they were the wrath of God, or demons before modern equipment and theories proved otherwise. Same with recording them. We record 50-60 earthquakes a year (I think), most of them tiny. Its happened forever. the New Madrid fault shook up Central USA pretty badly several times with earthquakes estimated at 7.0+ during the 1800's

I digress.

Also, update on that reactor, radiation surges have forced Japan to widen the evac zone. Troops are being sent there incase of a meltdown.


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## KangTheMad (Mar 11, 2011)

If we do wish to debate this, I'd suggest starting something in Debate, so we don't clutter this thread. Good luck, Japan.


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## Foxee (Mar 11, 2011)

Seeing pictures of the destruction, where do you even start to put all this back together? Thousands of people dead or missing and civilization has been turned into just so much junk. It hurts to see it and I sure would like to get there and help somehow. I imagine there will be relief efforts to contribute to, money's pretty hard to find right now, though.


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## TheFuhrer02 (Mar 13, 2011)

Regardless of whether these are prophetic times or not, we can agree that these are perilous times. That's what, four strong earthquakes in less than a year? If the trend continues, then the world better know how to drop, duck and cover quickly.


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## Foxee (Mar 13, 2011)

Here's an article with a few links for *how to help*.


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## Ditch (Mar 13, 2011)

*Look at the devastation in Japan.*

Slide your cursor across the pictures for before and after. All of the homes just gone, washed away.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm

I edited this post, the first link was bad.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm


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## caelum (Mar 13, 2011)

Nice find, Ditch, really puts the damage into reference.  The latest conspiracy theory is that the earthquake was man-made by a shady American organization called Haarp.  They've got some kind of microwave emitter in Alaska which, the theorists claim, did it somehow.  How exactly they aimed such a thing at precisely Japan is beyond my mortal ken.


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## garza (Mar 13, 2011)

A lady friend of mine in Cayo, not that one but another one, does not believe anything happens the way it's reported, so I'm sure by now she's picked up on any conspiracy theory. 

In looking at the pictures from Japan, I could not help but try to compare them with the pictures my son sent me from the Gulf Coast after Katrina, and what I saw and filmed during and after Camile in '69. There is no comparison. The damage to the Gulf Coast and to New Orleans was insignificant compared to what happened in Japan. 

The worst may not be over. Nuclear reactors are threatening to poison the air, and that could eventually affect us all. There are, without doubt, tens of thousands of dead bodies under all that rubble, so you are looking at disease. The clean-up, infrastructure repair, private, commercial, and industrial rebuilding, will take many years and that part of Japan will never be the same.


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## Hawke (Mar 13, 2011)

The whole thing is very sad. 

Using seawater is (according to Robert Alvarez) a desperate measure; a "Hail Mary Pass," meaning they are out of options and literally hoping for the best. By the way and for those who don't know, seawater means the reactor can never be used again, so you can kinda figure how desperate things are if they're using it. And also just to add, so far the media is calling it a possible "melting" and not "meltdown." There is a vast difference. 

Earlier, I heard that in all there were six reactors having trouble keeping cool. Later, that three reactors are effected, with four more on the emergency list. Has anyone heard differently?

Nuclear blast in Japan | Japan earthquake | Tsunami in Japan
In Japan plant, frantic efforts to avoid meltdown - Yahoo! News


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## garza (Mar 13, 2011)

Six in danger is the best information I've been able to get. The reactors were already damaged beyond repair, as I understand it, so flooding them with seawater was not desperate from the standpoint of trying to salvage them for reuse. It was desperate because of the breakdown of water into hydrogen and oxygen leading to an explosion as they got back together. That has happened once with one of the reactors but the claim is that the shield was not damaged. Or was not seriously compromised. Or so they say. 

Has anyone here read _On the Beach_ recently? If all six of those reactors were to melt through the bottoms of their containment shields much of the Northern Hemisphere could be facing high atmospheric radiation levels. It's not likely to happen, but it's possible if the cores are not cooled soon.


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## Hawke (Mar 13, 2011)

Thank you for the correction, garza. I heard that the shield held, too, although I'm not sure if that's just what they're saying or if it's the truth. Either way, it's pretty scary stuff—no doubt about it.


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## TheFuhrer02 (Mar 14, 2011)

But the Japanese government assured the world that there is no nuclear leak, right?


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## Guy Faukes (Mar 14, 2011)

garza said:


> The reactors were already damaged beyond repair, as I understand it, so flooding them with seawater was not desperate from the standpoint of trying to salvage them for reuse.


 
I heard that saltwater isn't used inside the reactor because it corrodes the steel interior. It doesn't look like they'll be savaging them.


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## TheFuhrer02 (Mar 14, 2011)

guy_faukes said:


> I heard that saltwater isn't used inside the reactor because it corrodes the steel interior. It doesn't look like they'll be *salvaging* them.


 
Corrected it for you. 

Sorry, can't fight the urge. No offense meant in any way!


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## Ditch (Mar 14, 2011)

"At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have  seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan  showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about  that much shift of the land mass," said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist  with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Reports from the National  Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the  8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches  (10 centimeters).


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## KangTheMad (Mar 14, 2011)

TheFuhrer02 said:


> But the Japanese government assured the world that there is no nuclear leak, right?



Don't believe everything you read.


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## TheFuhrer02 (Mar 14, 2011)

^ Yeah, good point. After all, the reactor concerned has exploded twice, and that Cesium has been found to have leaked within a small radius, or so reports say.


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## KangTheMad (Mar 14, 2011)

Nuclear fuel rods fully exposed at Japan reactor - Jiji | Reuters



> The report referred to the Fukushima Daiichi complex's No.2 reactor, where levels of water coolant around the reactor core had been reported as falling earlier in the day.
> The Jiji report said a meltdown of the fuel rods could not be ruled out.


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## Guy Faukes (Mar 14, 2011)

TheFuhrer02 said:


> ^ Yeah, good point. After all, the reactor concerned has exploded twice, and that Cesium has been found to have leaked within a small radius, or so reports say.


 
First, thanks for correcting my spelling. One letter can make all the difference hehe

I think it was two different reactor buildings that exploded, 1 and 3. Recently, I think reactor 2 exploded. Primary containment is still holding for all three reactors, and they've been pumping sea water into all three which is helping to stabilize the situation. Checked out a few interviews, it seems that radiation levels around the plants are elevated, but nowhere near the point of radiation sickness outside of the plant. 

Hope Japan gets all the support it needs through this disaster. Their cultural spirit is strong and is helping to carry them through the situation. Still, god save them all.


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## Hawke (Mar 14, 2011)

First an explosion at unit 1 reactor, though it didn’t breach (or so they say). Then unit 3 followed suit. Today came an explosion at number 2, with radiation levels 4 times higher than had been previously. 

I hesitate to throw out the fear words “leak” and “breach“ and “partial meltdown” and even “meltdown,” but they have already been used on CNN. As Anderson Cooper just said, “Concern is growing by the hour.” 

Other recent statements include:
“It is likely that at all three, cores have melted to some extent.” 
“…a series of failures from the beginning.” 
“You have positive statements, and then a reverse right after.” 
“The thing the Japanese government has to hold onto is creditability.” 
“They put a lot of water into the vessel but the water level did not rise. That invites speculation of a leak.”

Breaking News: There is a new fire in reactor number 4.

From the Chicago Sun-Times: 
“Japan’s nuclear safety agency says it suspects an explosion at a nuclear power plant may have damaged a reactor’s container and fears a radiation leak.”
For more on this, see: Japan suspects nuclear reactor damaged, fears radiation leak - Chicago Sun-Times

Additionally, from CNN: 
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/14/new-blast-causes-fresh-trouble-at-japanese-nuclear-plant
and
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/14/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html


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## TheFuhrer02 (Mar 14, 2011)

Damn. Once that leak goes massive, who knows what'll happen.


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## Hawke (Mar 14, 2011)

_If_ it does, Fuhrer. _If_. No need to panic yet. Right now it's still a lot of guessing and such.


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## Mistique (Mar 15, 2011)

This is the news as its being reported in my country:

At Fukushima 1 so far:
- Reactor one: Hydrogenexplosion,
- Reactor two: explosion,
- Reactor three: hydrogenexplosion,
- Reactor four: fire,
- Reactor five: rise in temperature,
- Reactor six: rise in temperature.

People have been evacuated from a 20 mile radius. People outside that, within the 30 mile radious, are being told to stay inside. Several news stations, at least from my country (I don't know about others), and several companies are withdrawing their employee's from Japan. The IAEA has adviced employes from the Fukushima 1 to leave as the work conditions have become too much of a risk to them. If they do so it is going to be increasingly hard to contain this. A dutch man still working in Tokio states that it is getting more and more quiet on the streets as the Japanese are moving their wifes and children away from the city. Radiation levels are 20 times as high in Tokio as normal.

I want to be hopeful as much as the next person, but everytime I do something else happens. I didn't even know there was a reactor five and six and now it seems as though there are concerns about them too. I am very worried.

What got to me the most though was the following on CNN:

"It's like the third atomic bomb attack on Japan," said Keijiro Matsushima, an 82-year-old survivor of the atomic bombing at Hiroshima. "But this time, we made it ourselves."


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## KangTheMad (Mar 15, 2011)

Maybe this is why countries along the ring of fire and have a history of bad quake shouldn't have nuclear power.


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## TheFuhrer02 (Mar 15, 2011)

^ That is true. Unfortunately, the Philippine congress doesn't seem to think so. Apparently, our government wanted to rebuild the already-a-failure Bataan Nuclear Plant.


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## garza (Mar 15, 2011)

That quote from the Hiroshima survivor is priceless, and something I'm sure the Japanese leadership has been thinking about - thinking about a lot.


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## TheFuhrer02 (Mar 15, 2011)

^ I couldn't agree more.


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## I-FLUX (Mar 16, 2011)

Well, we do have semi-meltdown. Not too long until we'll have full-meltdown.


Sucks to live in Japan sometimes. I'll see you guys in hell.


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## Olly Buckle (Mar 16, 2011)

To my mind this is simply speeding up the inevitable. I am not sure when the first reactors were built, in my lifetime, since the second world war. So faar we have had a fairly stable social order among the nations which have them, but there has been Windscale, Long island, Chernobyl and various other more minor leaks, not to mention deliberate discharges into the Irish sea and such, plus all the small events we have not been told about. How long does radiation last? I know it varies according to the element and the isotope, but a half life only means it's only half as radioactive in that time, not clean, and a lot of the breakdown products are also radioactive. Does anyone really believe that all those reactors and their products will be contained for thousands of years when we have so many problems in the first fifty or so? Of course they won't, the earthquake simply speeded things up a bit, we have already destroyed ourselves as a species.


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## TheFuhrer02 (Mar 16, 2011)

And nuclear power, with its immense energy-giving technology, is supposed to be the future of humanity, or at least that was the general thought during the '70s or something.


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## Olly Buckle (Mar 16, 2011)

TheFuhrer02 said:


> And nuclear power, with its immense energy-giving technology, is supposed to be the future of humanity, or at least that was the general thought during the '70s or something.


No, only the propaganda, I, and a good few others, were protesting about it back then, unfortunately we didn't have the clout that the big corporations who got the build contracts had.


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## Guy Faukes (Mar 16, 2011)

^ Gotta love reality and all the gray decisions people have to make.

Anyways, I've been doing some research since I can't bloody stand some  of rhetoric the media outlets have been running with. A lot of coverage  is contradictory, and there are a lot of descriptions being thrown  around without any explanation of what they mean ("worst possible news...  not good news..." I could use some real info, you know?)

Here's an update from a science forum (has ads all over the place...) 





> *UPDATE: 7AM GMT, March 16th: The current situation is extremely  fluid. What can be confirmed is that the workers at Fukushima site one  have returned. The site has not been abandoned. The status of the  spent fuel rods in reactor building #4 is currently the most pressing  issue, and simultaneously the one we have the least information on.  Reactors #1, #2, and #3 appear to be semi-stable as the sea water  pumping process has continued, although there are unconfirmed reports of  coolant leakage at #2 and external steam generation (not leakage) at  #3. Please consider all this information to be extremely tentative.*



It seems like the situation is stabilizing, but not out of the woods yet. 
Rest assured, there won't be a nuclear explosion, this isn't a Chernobyl situation, and there aren't any radioactive clouds of death looming over the horizon... yet...

Technical stuff: 

Meltdown isn't the correct term for this, more like fuel damage. Since cooling has/was been compromised, the fuel rods are getting hotter and hotter, leading to the casings to fail (but not the uranium itself to melt, which is pretty far from vapourizing into a noxious death cloud). As a result, there is hydrogen buildup caused by the fuel rod material (the uranium oxide fuel and zirconium casing) reacting with water. Also, since cooling is compromised, water inside is being converted into steam, leading to pressure build up. Thus, they have been venting steam, which is mildly radioactive, inadvertently releasing hydrogen as well (which can autoignite when at high concentrations with oxygen), which gathered at the top of the buildings and detonated. 

Containment is probably intact. If there was a containment breach in any of the vessels, it would easily be detected by third party instruments. There are a few details that have shaken faith in TESCO's disclosures (e.g. fire at Reactor 4, and fuel rods appearing to be housed there). But, given the circumstances and how "by the book" the Japanese have been dealing with this, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few mis-communication errors. 

Radiation levels are elevated, but not immediately threatening. Evacuations are for proactive safety reasons. 

Here's an excellent BBC Q&A for more info. 

Think of it like an oil spill. It's terrible, and the quicker it's resolved, the better.


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