Japan

[comrade_general]

[Marcus]

Earthquake and impending nuclear meltdown. At least they can't blame the US this time.

[Jubal]

It's really not looking good out there.

Gadaffi must think Christmas as come early, on the other hand.

"Ooh, look at the big explosions!"
*Runs tanks into Benghazi while nobody's bothering to look*

[comrade_general]

It pains me to see this happen to them, I have a lot of respect for the Japanese.

[Son of the King]

Apparently the first reactor has suffered a meltdown, the scale of which is currently unclear. There is also risk of meltdowns in the other two reactors that were functioning when the quake hit, one of which is a plutonium reactor.

Edit: Government says two reactors have suffered partial meltdowns.

[Jubal]

This is really, really, looking very bad indeed right now.

[debux]

Funny thing is that TW:S2 just came out (I think there is no relation, but I can't help image how would it have been if the earthquake + tsunami had hit in that time)

I had no idea about the meltdowns. I knew of one, but the little coverage I got to see wasn't much, so I assumed not much had happened

[comrade_general]

Still happening. They've set up radition detection equipment on the west coast of the US - which sets a good example of the seriousness of this situation.

[Jubal]

Thank god, apparently they've got a power cable in there so they can start slowly working on getting the standard pumps back into gear.

Realistically all the detection kit on the west coast is gonna pick up is like 1 gamma ray above normal - radiation levels are fine in Tokyo, and Obama was right to reassure people that actually this really isn't going to affect US territory. Even if the reactors overheated hugely the radiation clouds wouldn't be that big. They'd be nasty, but it would still only be a Japanese disaster (unlike Chernobyl, which was a very, very different kettle of fish and killed sheep in Wales despite being on the other side of Europe). The fact is that these reactors aren't going to blow out like that (and as I say, hopefully with power supplies they can start regaining control now).

In fact, one analyst on the BBC pointed out that the casualty figures from Fukushima will be large, but not due to radiation. The lack of such a large power station and electricity supplies to hospitals, clinics, food storage areas, petrol stations, and other vital utilities will probably contribute to far more deaths than the actual radiation.

[comrade_general]

http://www.kontraband.com/videos/5173/Family-Guy-Skywalker-Sandbagging/

Hate to post it here, but still  

Obama kinda pissed me off when this happened 'cause all he said was we would "offer assistance". I was like - that's not good enough! Sent in everything we've got in the area now, don't sit there "offering assistance".