[Year's_End]

before/after images. so depressing.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/ja...eforeafter.htm

[FStop7]

This is just... wow.

[Verbiage]

..holy shit.

[skinnycow]

View Tsunami in Japan from satellites

[OC Guy]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,7521768.story

Japan fears a nuclear disaster after reactor breach

Officials warn of health risks, telling people in a 20-mile area to stay indoors as dangerous levels of radiation leak into the air after a third explosion and fire at the Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) plant.


Reporting from Tokyo and Los Angeles — Dangerous levels of radiation escaped a quake-stricken nuclear power plant after one reactor's steel containment structure was apparently breached by an explosion, and a different reactor building in the same complex caught fire after another explosion, Japan's leaders told a frightened population. Authorities warned that people within 20 miles of the crippled reactors should stay indoors to avoid being sickened by radiation.

The fast-moving developments at the Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) plant, 150 miles north of Tokyo, catapulted the 4-day-old nuclear crisis to an entirely new level, threatening to overshadow even the massive damage and loss of life spawned by a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Prime Minister Naoko Kan, in a nationwide address to the Japanese people, called for calm even as he acknowledged the radiation peril. Dressed in industrial-style blue coveralls, he offered solemn assurances that authorities were doing "everything we can" to contain the leakage.

Photos: Scenes of earthquake destruction

"There is a danger of even higher radiation levels," he said — chilling words to a nation where the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the waning days of World War II are known to every schoolchild. Slightly elevated radiation was detected in Tokyo, but not at health-affecting levels, officials said.

Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, speaking shortly afterward, said radiation levels around the plant's six reactors had climbed to the extent that "without a doubt would affect a person's health." But he insisted that outside the existing 12-mile evacuation zone, there was little or no health danger.

But people anywhere close to the plant were told to turn off ventilators drawing air from outdoors and not to hang laundry in the open air in order to avoid contamination.

The announcements, more than 12 hours after the situation at the Unit 2 reactor at the Fukushima plant began to deteriorate with the exposure of its fuel rods to air, heightening the threat of meltdown, generated anger and fear in the earthquake-affected area and beyond. Many Japanese do not believe that either the government or the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., have been forthcoming about the extent of the danger amid a series of malfunctions at Fukushima.

The mayor of a small city that falls partly within the evacuation zone offered an unusually harsh public critique of the utility and Kan's administration.

"The government and Tokyo Electric Power have neglected to update residents with accurate information," Kazunobu Sakurai, the mayor of Minamisoma, told the public broadcaster NHK. "We need the government to keep us informed, to send emergency supplies and to help move residents who are inside the evacuation zone."

Survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings in World War II have been criticizing the nuclear power company's handling of the crisis.

"Nuclear power generation has been said to be safe but it was proved that it's very fragile," Hirotami Yamada, 79, bureau chief of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council, told Kyodo.

The explosion followed an early morning acknowledgment from Tokyo Electric Power that, because of human error, the fuel rods inside the Unit 2 reactor had been at least partly exposed to air for more than two hours during two separate incidents the previous evening, allowing them to heat up and causing a buildup of explosive hydrogen gas. Independent experts said it was a grave development that heightened the risk of an uncontrolled release of radiation into the environment.

Authorities also disclosed that a fire broke out at the complex's Unit 4 after a blast left two gaping holes in an outer wall. The fire was later reported to have been extinguished, though it was unclear what caused it.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Japanese officials told them that the explosion and subsequent fire were located at the unit's spent-fuel storage pond and that radioactivity was being released directly into the atmosphere.

By Tuesday afternoon, Kyodo was reporting that the pond was boiling because the water level was too low. Workers were struggling into the evening to pump more water into the pond.

Authorities also reported that the only two reactors where explosions have not occurred — Units 5 and 6 — were registering rising temperatures.

The U.S. government mobilized emergency resources to help Japan grapple with the developing nuclear crisis, dispatching a team of Nuclear Regulatory Commission experts late Monday, activating an atmospheric radioactivity monitoring center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area and rushing additional Navy ships to the region.

In the best-case scenario, the situation at the damaged reactors will take weeks, if not months, to stabilize, U.S. nuclear experts said.

"They do not have the situation under control," said Robert Alvarez, a nuclear expert at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former Energy Department official.

The company's acknowledgement that a "suppression pool" at the bottom of Unit 2, designed to serve as a last line of defense against a meltdown, was believed to have been breached could represent a major escalation of the crisis, said Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"If that is true, then there is a path to the control room, the workers and the outside environment," he said.

The cooling problems at Unit 2 represent the most serious development yet in the crisis at the plant, said nuclear specialist Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

When the fuel rods get too hot and react with water, they produce hydrogen gas that vents from the reactor into the containment building. When enough hydrogen accumulates, it becomes explosive. Containment buildings around two other reactors at the Fukushima complex already suffered explosions, on Saturday and Monday.

Engineers had begun using fire hoses to pump seawater into the Unit 2 reactor — the third at the plant to receive the last-ditch treatment — after the emergency cooling system failed. Company officials said workers were not paying sufficient attention to the process, however, and let the pump stall, allowing the fuel rods to become partially exposed to the air.

Once the pump was restarted and water flow was restored, another worker inadvertently closed a valve that was designed to vent steam from the containment vessel. As pressure built up inside the vessel, the pumps could no longer force water into it and the fuel rods were once again exposed.

Four officials from Tokyo Electric Power in dark suits and looking somber began their nationally televised news conference hours after the onset of the problems at the Unit 2 reactor by bowing and apologizing for the worry caused.

In something of a contradiction, officials at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that, even in a worst-case scenario, the three troubled reactors at Fukushima had been depressurized by the release of radioactive steam, which would decrease the destructiveness of any breach, according to Kyodo News.

But other nuclear experts said it remained possible that an overheated uranium core in any of these reactors could melt down and breach its containment vessel, exposing the environment to a radioactive plume.

The seriousness of the situation was further underscored Monday when the French Embassy in Tokyo advised its citizens to move away from Japan's capital to protect themselves against possible radiation exposure.

A flight ban was imposed within 20 miles of the Fukushima plant because of the radiation danger. Air China and two Taiwanese carriers, Eva Airlines and China Airlines, canceled flights to Japan over radiation fears.

The U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet also said Monday that it had ordered the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan away from Fukushima after detecting low-level contamination when it was about 100 miles northeast.

Nearly 200,000 Japanese had already been evacuated from a 12-mile zone surrounding the plant, and the company said it had moved 750 workers away from the plant, leaving 50 to deal with the crisis.

In the U.S., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday that it had received a formal request from Japan for assistance and was sending 10 people with expertise in boiling-water reactors. Agency spokesman Scott Burnell said the experts knew that they might have to "undergo radiation doses larger than normal."

Another serious risk involves the more than 200 tons of spent nuclear fuel that is stored in pools adjacent to the reactors, Alvarez said. Those cooling pools depend on continually circulating water to keep the fuel rods from catching fire. Without power to circulate the water, it heats up and potentially boils away, leaving the fuel rods exposed to air.

An aerial image of the Fukushima plant shows the loss of high-capacity cranes needed to move equipment to service the reactor. The photo also appears to show that the spent fuel pool is steaming hot, which may indicate the water is boiling off, Alvarez said.

U.S. nuclear experts said they were particularly concerned about the Unit 3 reactor because it is fueled in part with plutonium, an element used in hydrogen bombs that can be more difficult to control than the enriched uranium normally used to fuel nuclear power plants.

The U.S. Department of Energy activated the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center at Livermore to create sophisticated computer models of how the radioactive releases from Fukushima No. 1 would disburse into the atmosphere. The center, which was created to deal with contamination in the event of a nuclear war, played a key role in predicting contamination patterns during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear crisis.

Even before the admission of how serious the problems at the Fukushima complex had become, there were signs that the legendary patience and politeness of Japanese in the face of such adversity was wearing thin. In Natori, north of Tokyo, the top floor of the City Hall was repurposed into a disaster-relief center. There, in an oft-repeated scene, a woman in red pants and a brown coat berated government workers for sitting comfortably in their offices with heat, 24-hour power and water while the rest of the prefecture lacked basic services.

Voice cracking, she said the government had been far too slow in restoring the electricity and repairing roads and basic infrastructure.

"She's complaining that our operation doesn't work so well," said Chizuko Nakajima, a government worker in the senior citizen department, who was helping distribute food as an emergency volunteer. "Actually, it's true. We're so overwhelmed."

Adding to the sense of anxiety, strong aftershocks have rippled across a wide area since Friday's quake, with fresh jolts shaking Tokyo on Tuesday. Japan's Meteorological Agency said Saturday there was a 70% probability of another powerful temblor in the coming three days.

Photos: Scenes of earthquake destruction

ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com

laura.king@latimes.com

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

King reported from Tokyo and Vartabedian and Maugh from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Barbara Demick in Sendai, Mark Magnier in Natori and David Pierson in Beijing contributed to this report. Special correspondents Kenji Hall and Yuriko Nagano contributed from Tokyo.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

[Sniz]

such terrible news......again

thoughts are with that entire country.

[Blake]

i think the biggest heroes that are going to arise out of this are the people that have stayed behind at the plant because they're surely facing certain death exposed to that much radiation, but the entire world is depending on them. i know the government will, but i sure do hope they take excellent care of their families because their outlook is pretty grim.

[Pseudo Nim]

Absolute craziness. I am actually going there in 2 weeks or so, heh. I think I'll donate some blood.

[Pseudo Nim]

Originally Posted by Blake

i think the biggest heroes that are going to arise out of this are the people that have stayed behind at the plant because they're surely facing certain death exposed to that much radiation, but the entire world is depending on them. i know the government will, but i sure do hope they take excellent care of their families because their outlook is pretty grim.

Based on a guy on Reddit who seems to be a worker in a comparable plant in the US, the radiation level in the plant is still not high enough to cause certain death as long as you rotate shifts - he was saying that, based on currently posted readings, you'd have to be there for about a week with 12 hour shifts to suffer terminal radiation poisoning.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by Pseudo Nim

Based on a guy on Reddit who seems to be a worker in a comparable plant in the US, the radiation level in the plant is still not high enough to cause certain death as long as you rotate shifts - he was saying that, based on currently posted readings, you'd have to be there for about a week with 12 hour shifts to suffer terminal radiation poisoning.

but the thing is, it seems like some of those guys have been there 24/7 since this occurred, according to some reports. someone has to put out the fires and have hands-on when a new big problem occurs. seeing as a lot of the employees left after reactor 2 suffered the explosion, they said that the essential personnel only stayed behind. especially now that everything points to a meltdown in reactor 4 and uncontrolled leakage of radiation, i can't see how anyone near the site isn't going to suffer some adverse health effects.

[OC Guy]

Originally Posted by Blake

but the thing is, it seems like some of those guys have been there 24/7 since this occurred, according to some reports. someone has to put out the fires and have hands-on when a new big problem occurs. seeing as a lot of the employees left after reactor 2 suffered the explosion, they said that the essential personnel only stayed behind. especially now that everything points to a meltdown in reactor 4 and uncontrolled leakage of radiation, i can't see how anyone near the site isn't going to suffer some adverse health effects.

Not an expert but they ARE shielded and take anti-radiation drugs vs. those who are on the outside, don't.

[Pseudo Nim]

Originally Posted by Blake

but the thing is, it seems like some of those guys have been there 24/7 since this occurred, according to some reports. someone has to put out the fires and have hands-on when a new big problem occurs. seeing as a lot of the employees left after reactor 2 suffered the explosion, they said that the essential personnel only stayed behind. especially now that everything points to a meltdown in reactor 4 and uncontrolled leakage of radiation, i can't see how anyone near the site isn't going to suffer some adverse health effects.

Good point too.

[OC Guy]

Here is a link describing exposure:
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ult...Radiation.html

An assortment of typical radiation doses (in mSv)
Used to destroy the bone marrow in preparation for a marrow transplant (given over several days) 10,000
Approximate lethal dose ("LD50") if no treatment and given to the entire body in a short period 4,500
Causes radiation sickness (when absorbed in a short period) >1,000
Increase in lifetime dose to most heavily exposed people living near Chernobyl 430
Average annual dose (excluding natural background) for medical X-ray technicians 3.2
Maximum permissible annual dose (excluding natural background and medical exposure) to general public 1.7
Natural background, Boston, MA, USA (per year)(excluding radon) 1.02
Natural background, Denver, CO, USA (per year)(excluding radon) 1.8
Additional annual dose if you live in a brick rather than a wood house 0.07
Annual dose in some houses in Ramsar, Iran >130
Average dose to person living within 10 miles of Three-Mile Island (TMI) caused by the accident of 28 March 1979 0.08
Most heavily exposed person (a fisherman) near TMI <1.0
Approximate dose received by a person spending 1 year at the fence surrounding a nuclear power station 0.001–0.006
Average dose to each person in the U. S. population from nuclear power plants (per year) 0.00002
Received by the bone marrow during a set of dental x rays* 0.094
Received by the colon during a barium enema 15
Typical chest x ray 0.1
Received by breast during mammogram 0.4
Dose from a single full-body computed tomography (CT) scan 45
When delivered in a single dose, increases the risk of developing cancer by 1% 100
Average airline passenger (10 flights/year) 0.03
Flight crew and cabin attendants (per year) 1.6
Hourly dose to skin holding piece of the original "Fiesta Ware" (a brand of pottery) 2–3
Annual dose to each person in the U. S. population from fallout (former weapons testing plus Chernobyl) 0.0006

Keep in mind that is MILLIsieverts. 1 MILLIsievert = 1,000 MICRO sievert.

The peak level detected in Tokyo? .809 MICRO seiverts.

Aka according to that chart a dental x-ray exposes you to 117 times more radiation than the supposed death cloud that was detected over Tokyo for a brief period of time.

[Pseudo Nim]

The fucking panic that MSM is spreading is driving me nuts. It's far from being a nuclear wasteland, and the stories of "foreigners fleeing Japan" are needless panic inducers to a situation which hardly needs anymore.

I am going to Japan, and fuck all the wussies out there. It's a great country, and if I can spend some money to help prop up the economy, I fucking will.

[Sniz]

Originally Posted by nightfx

Cute even in times like this.

cute enough to eat im' sure

[Pseudo Nim]

Originally Posted by Sniz

cute enough to eat im' sure

cute enough to hump for sure.

[KingOfJericho]

I don't think a bunch of tourists snapping pictures is really helping the situation. It's probably best to just stay out of the way.

[KingOfJericho]

Great, but the bulk of the people you called "wussies" are actually doing the right thing and staying out of the way.

[Pseudo Nim]

Originally Posted by KingOfJericho

Great, but the bulk of the people you called "wussies" are actually doing the right thing and staying out of the way.

The problem isn't that the tourists are running away. The problem is that people who are actively contributing to the economy or the academia otherwise are succumbing to panic and running away.

[OC Guy]

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/japan-v...ry?id=13135355

Japanese, Waiting in Line for Hours, Follow Social Order After Quake
Survivors Value Helping Spirit, But Are Fatalists

By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES and RUSSELL GOLDMAN

SENDAI, Japan, March 15, 2011

Overnight and into the grey, chilly morning, long
lines formed outside small convenience stores and
supermarkets throughout the tsunami-ravaged city of
Sendai.

At one, Daiei, the orderly lines had begun 12
hours before the shop opened and stretched for
blocks.

"I came to get baby food for my 2-week-old
nephew," said Maki Habachi, 23, who had been
patiently standing for four hours and still had an
eight-hour wait to go. "My sister only has one day's
food left."

Without fuel for her car, she had ridden for
two days by bike just to find food. Even bottled drinks
in the ubiquitous corner vending machines were sold
out.

Despite the line's length everyone remained calm
and polite.

As Japanese survivors cope with food and
gasoline shortages amidst the aftershocks and rising
body count, they draw on a sense of social order.
Unlike scenes in natural disasters in Haiti and New
Orleans, there is little anger, no looting.

Neighbors are willing to share with others and cutting back on
energy use to limit the need for rotating blackouts.

Tokyo's Shibuya district -- the Times Square of Tokyo
-- is dark tonight. The flashing neon signs and
constantly cycling digital displays here in the
vibrantly-colored crossroads of Japan have been
turned off voluntarily.

The contrast to popular images
of Shibuya as seen in American films like, "Lost in
Translation," is striking.

Four days after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and
resulting tsunami, "They are doing OK," said Ron
Provost, president of Showa Boston Institute for
Language and Culture, a campus of the
University of Tokyo. "These are tough, strong,
strong people.

"I think they are coping as well as
could be expected or even better, if you imagine us
being in that situation," he said. "That strength and
resilience are rooted in a culture that has historically
relied on social organization."

Some of that
community-minded resilience may come from its
geography and dense population. Japan is only
slightly smaller than the state of California and has a
population of 127 million people.

The public
broadcaster NHK is reporting 1 million Japanese
missing and some have estimated the death toll could
climb into the tens of thousands. An estimated 2.5
million households, or 4 percent of Japan's total
population, are without electricity.

Showa Boston's
Tokyo-based faculty are reporting that commuter
train stations are jammed with sporadic service and
up to four-hour delays, forcing many to stay
overnight in the city.

"People have opened up their
homes to others," he said. "I heard someone say they
had two bottles of water and gave one to someone
else."

On a daily basis -- in tragedy and in good
times -- the Japanese have "come up with a system to
accommodate each other," said Provost.

"They are
kind to the neighbors and look out for their
neighbors," he said. "That's why the crime rate is low.
You see someone doing something and you go to the
local police."

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan
addressed the nation Sunday night and said this is
the most serious crisis to face the nation since World
War II, calling on people to come together deepen the
bonds that unite them -- a phrase, "ittai," that means
to become one body.

Family ties, social hierarchies
and a collective spirit are important to the Japanese,
unlike the culture of individualism that predominates
in the United States.

"There is no question the
Japanese respond well to this kind of catastrophe, but
even if it looks remarkable from the outside, it's not
new," said Carol Gluck, a professor of modern
Japanese history at Columbia University's
Weatherhead East Asian Institute. "It's not cultural or
religious -- it is a historically created social morality
based on a response to the community and social
order."

"It's not that the Japanese are naturally passive

; Their Resilience Could Be Tested With Nuclear Dangers
and obedient," she said. "There is a historically
created social value to it. People uphold it. It works.
Someone leaves something in the subway and they
get it back. When you find something you give it to
the lost and found."

Social Models Like Japan Take
Generations to Evolve

"In this catastrophe, it's striking when compared to
Western countries. We kind of expect looting," Gluck
said. "It happens in good and bad times, probably
from the pay-off from seeing that operate."

Social
models like these take a long time to develop,
according to Gluck, and they are partly rooted in the
economics of cooperative rice agriculture and the
influences of Confucianism, a Chinese philosophy
that emphasizes a social morality and "the way one
treats his fellow man."

Christianity, for example, puts a
far greater emphasis on "transcendental faith" and
man's relation to God.

"It's a piece of the larger
picture if you think of the self in society," she said.

The societal emphasis also carries over into the
Japanese corporate world.

"Westerners often
comment, why is it [Japanese] executives of large
corporations don't live much better or get 100 times
more remuneration than those who work for them?"
Gluck said. "A kind of leveling goes with this."

The
flip side of that sense of order is the discomfort with
those who are not fully Japanese. More ethnically
homogenous than American society, Japan is less
tolerant of outsiders, foreign immigrants and mixed-
race marriages and their children.

"It's based on
values that are very exclusive," she said.

"There is an
in group and an out group and one reason society
works the way it does is the group takes care of one
another and the out group is on the outs," Gluck said.
"It can even be the next village. There is a rejection of
people outside the circle."

Eric Stephanus, an
American who worked as an insurance marketing
manager and lived in Japan for a decade in the 1980s,
said that "conformity is valued above all else."

"Japan
was a feudal society until the 19th century with very
stratified classes and responsibilities, with very strict
consequences if you stepped out of line," he said.

"Talking socially, that's why there is bullying," said
Stephanus, 60, who now lives in Cape Elizabeth,
Maine. "Children who are not fully Japanese can't go
to schools because they are bullied. They look a little
different."

The Japanese have a great respect and trust
in authority.

"One aspect is to conform to your peers and realize
what place in society you are in," he said. "It's
incomprehensible not to obey an order that someone
above you gave you -- like a policeman or a
bureaucrat. There is no tradition of individual rights
or looking at things critically. You are part of the
herd. ... It absolutely works wonderfully and is
effective for social control."

But the Japanese seem
fatalistic when tragedy strikes.

Stephanus said he was
"stunned" by a photo in Sendai after the earthquake.
"A bus stop was crushed by one of the buildings and
I looked at the people in the street -- they were
shopping and got their purses and were smiling," he
said. "It's not that surprising. The Japanese always
take a morbid fascination in disasters."

He said
people took a "ghoulish interest" in color newspaper
photos when Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashed into
two mountain ridges in 1985. The deadliest single
aircraft accident in history, it killed 505.

Japanese Resilience Could Be
Tested

Stephanus doesn't discount the "real traumas" that
affect Asian societies.

"Every family has a story," he
said. "But they have a strange fatalism. Everyone has a
fate and there is no sense of fighting about it."

Even
though the Japanese are not religious, their belief
system may be anchored in tenets of Buddhism --
souls are recycled from one life to the next.

But as the
threat of a nuclear meltdown increases, the patience
of the Japanese will be tested.

"The resilience of the
Japanese has limits," said William Bodiford, a
specialist in Japanese religions from UCLA, who is
currently on sabbatical in Japan. "If the authorities
cannot respond effectively, then the bonds of trust
that sustain this resiliency could break."

Few places
on earth have suffered the magnitude of death than
Japan. In 1945 during World War II, American pilots
dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The acute affects killed up to 250,000 civilians
combined in both blasts, but many more were maimed
or died slow deaths from burns and radiation
sickness.

"Few other places in the world have had the
accumulation of history as Japan," said Fred Bemak,
professor of psychology at George Mason University
who has experience in cross-cultural counseling in
Asia. He founded the group Counselors Without
Borders, which responds to international disasters.

"When you top that with the earthquake in Kobe, there
has been historical trauma through the generations
and experiences in very severe and dramatic loss and
death," Bemak said. "There's a whole intergenerational
psychology of resilience."

The world had not yet seen
the public face of grief that Bemak said will emerge
when the Japanese have ceremonials for the
thousands of dead.

"Japan is the most prepared
country in the world and that's no accident," he said.
"It's part of the national proof -- we are in shape to
handle this."

Part of the much-described Asian culture
of "saving face" is coping, according to Bemak.


"Expression of grief is culturally driven. Right now
there are no burials going on because there is too
much chaos. It's, how can I find water and I need food
for my mother or my child. It's the survival instinct,"
he said. "The deep pain and grief come after, when
the ceremonial mourning begins."

ABC's Jay Shaylor
contributed to this report from Tokyo.

Note: I am double checking formatting, paragraphs MAY be temporarily out of place.

Might be easier to read in the link.

[skinnycow]

Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear plant meltdowns, now volcano began erupting

Submitted by Anonymous on Monday, March 14, 2011 6:09:00 PM - Source: youtube.com

Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear plant meltdowns -- as if the people of Japan didn't have enough to cope with, a volcano began erupting on Sunday.

Hundreds of people were forced to flee when the Shinmoedake volcano on the southern island of Kyushu began spewing ash and boulders.

The explosion from the eruption could be heard miles away and an ash plume extended two miles into the sky.

Shinmoedake, one of several volcanic peaks in the Kirishima mountain range, is 950 miles from the epicenter of Friday's earthquake and scientists weren't sure if the quake triggered the eruption.

Eruptions and quakes are common in Japan's "ring of fire."

The volcano erupted in January - the first major seismic activity on the mountain in 52 years. Scientists say lava had been building up in recent weeks.

[KingOfJericho]

I'm sorry but with the threat of a nuke meltdown and the fact that there is already radiation in the air and at sea, it's common sense to bounce out of there.