Remember Y2K? Remember how it was supposed to be the end of modern civilization?
Those of us who actually wrote code for Big Computer Systems were laughing our asses off about the panic.
I don’t believe that any bona-fide nuke operators or objective physics jocks are laughing here, but they’re not running around in circles, yelling “Repent, the end is near!” either.
Cleaning up this mess will be a long, slow, expensive slog... but it will get done.
And the death toll still stands at about: The nuke plant? Three (from physical deaths due to the disaster, not “atomic” deaths), and over 20K from the tsunami.
The hysterics continue to point a quavering finger at the reactors... while ignoring a pile of bodies the size of a pretty good sized town causes by the flooding. I fail to understand the illogic of this, to this day.
I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords.
It’s the not knowing... the dead that died that day are dead. You can count’em, bury’em, whatever, they’re done. But the terror associated with radiation poisoning, and not knowing what’s going to happen this week or next is ripe for creating irrational fears and phobias. Add to it that it happens in a culture that has already experienced the big one, TWICE, and I can understand.