It's also quite possible that he has more pressing matters than internet forums at the moment. I know for a fact that if I survived something like that tsunami, I'd be away from computers for quite some time. Events like that reminds you (and how often we forget!) how short and precious life really is. I hope he's alive and unharmed, he was cool enough to participate in that "maths troll" thread...
greg wrote:I tuned into Sean Hannity's stupid show and he was announcing that people in Tokyo are receiving 100 times more radiation than normal, and that's a bunch of crap.
Sean Hannity is a joke, I've yet to see a corroboration of this. Is pulling numbers out of your ass in fashion these days or is this a case of Chinese whispers? The wind isn't even directed at Tokyo at the moment, or at least the last time I checked. That said, there's no survey/mass measurements done over Tokyo, so we can't actually track the spread of the radioactive material let alone make very crude estimates of dosage rates. If they have, they certainly haven't published anything.
greg wrote:Besides, it's not the radiation that's the concern at that amount. It's the contamination, and AFAIK, that won't be a problem in Tokyo.
Not at the moment, but that is subject to change.
greg wrote:Perhaps somebody could correct me, but wouldn't the difference as it is be somewhat comparable to the difference of spending a day on the beach in San Diego vs spending the day outside in Denver?
You know, a lot of these analogies try to focus on the continuous risk people take, and in doing so, psychologically hides the real magnitude and issues of the situation which is multi-faceted. You're correct that contamination is the real problem, not exposure, but let me explain why using an analogy. I normally hate analogies because they "shield" people from real knowledge, but what the hell, I have to put in a good one before the field gets taken over by bananas and
farts.
My lecturer called this the "modified machine gun analogy", though I did obviously modify some part of it for our purposes here:
Let's say you're in Tokyo right now. The radiation is mostly normal, in fact it's much lower than many cities around the world. -- But you're not safe. You're never safe you see, for even your own body is radioactive. But right now, imagine yourself standing still in an open field. There's a guy that doesn't particularly like you very much and he's got an assortment of weapons. He's got knives, he's got slingshots, bb-guns, spearguns, machine guns, high caliber rifles and so on.
Unfortunately for him, he's really, really far away at the moment and he's a little bit crazy so he likes to vary which weapon he fires each time. He's also drunk so he can't really aim too well. But he'll stay there for the rest of your life, firing away and one day he might hit you. If you're lucky though, he'll never kill you (or hit you for that matter, but that takes skill ;D).
Now, let's say you move over to Fukushima around the barrier of the exclusion zone. As you moved closer to the radioactive source in the plant, your malicious friend also crept up a little bit closer. He's still drunk though -- he's always drunk. But he'll be firing random weapons from a shorter distance, so his odds of hitting you are much better. Not that a knife (alpha particle) can do much from that distance, but he'll try anyway, throwing it if he has to.
For whatever reason, let's say you decide to enter the exclusion zone. He'll creep a little bit closer. He's still pretty far away but you'll feel slightly uncomfortable now because more of the shots are hitting near you. Of course, in the unfortunate event that he does strike a hit, it may not go through a vital organ. You may survive! In fact, if a bb-gun hits you, you may not even feel it! It just doesn't have enough energy you see, so it won't penetrate your skin.
Now unfortunately, it turns out you're pretty dumb, you step past the exclusion zone and enter the plant itself. Now, the dude's a kilometer away, still drunk, but now much more dangerous. And it gets worse, now with new found confidence he's able to move around, varying his distance as he pleases.* You of course, are unable to move in that plane, but there's something I haven't told you yet. You see, you're completely blind in that plane and can't feel a thing either. The guy could be standing right next to you with a knife and you wouldn't know it. You'd never know it, until of course, it's starts to take its effect in reality.
Pressing your luck, you ignore the workers pleas for you to get away from the compound, walk right up to the spent fuel rod pool and stare at it. Now he's got you. To him, there's no point moving around like before, he's right next to you. Oh if only he wasn't drunk he'd have killed you for sure! He'll be firing his machine gun into your stomach, into your head, his high caliber rifle will be unloaded all over your body in the time it takes you to get out. Needless to say, you're a dead man.
But let's say you're not that stupid. Let's say you never went to Fukushima. instead, you're still sitting there in Tokyo, with him still being really far away. There's little chance of him ever getting to you from his distance, so you can ignore the situation. Sadly, let's say you're just a really unlucky guy and a Lamborghini Countach LP500S comes his way and he decides to hitch a ride with it. He may be drunk, but the driver is perfectly sober and he drops him off closer to you before driving off. This is his new, permanent station and it's very similar for you to be within the deeper ends of the exclusion zone. You see, we're now discussing the (currently)
extremely extremely unlikely event that you've inhaled several plutonium dust particles that, for whatever reason, have been carried by the wind from the damaged plant (or some where else, for that matter, you're really unlucky, remember). The dude's also liking the knife a lot, but every now and then he'll take potshots with his sniper rifle. Of course, being blind in that plane, you never know about any of this. Of course, until the effects are actualised.
So that's pretty much it. I just realised there I could have used an STG analogy but after typing all that up I'm bored of the subject and thus I'll let someone else take the credit for it. Hope it helped and don't let it scare you at all -- remember, we all have one of these assholes chasing us around. Can't think about it too much or you'll be as blind as you are in the other plane and never enjoy life. At the same time, you can really help yourself out by taking whatever precautions you can. Afterall, if you don't respect radiation, it will definitely kill you.
* This is because there is a heterogeneous distribution of sources, due to the explosions and venting of radioactive material.<RegalSin> It does not matter, which programming language you use, you will be up your neck in math.
