When the Plume Hits
The Department of Self-Promotion strikes again. From my weekly column in The National, Abu Dhabi's excellent English-language daily:
Last week, walking the dog along Venice Beach for an early morning jog, I noticed a huge crowd gathered by the bike path.
Normally, at that time of the morning, there are only a couple of hardy surfers making their way to the water's edge, boards tucked under their arms, making a purposeful trot across the sand. That day, though, the water was dotted with dozens of surfers, the sand was full of people, and all along the bike path wall there were photographers with expensive rigs, all pointed out to sea.
The surfer dude next to me must have noticed my baffled look.
"Waitin' for the tsunami, boss," he said. "You know? From Japan?"
He and I spend a few moments talking in serious and awestruck tones about the devastation in Japan - at that point, no one knew the extent of the tragedy and despair that was about to unfold, but it's hard to look out at the mighty sea and not say a prayer or two (or three) for the poor souls, an ocean away, who were caught in its thrashing.
"We're lighting candles and praying," he said to me in deadly earnest.
I nodded.
"Can you imagine that? A wall of water? Dude," he said. "Unreal."
I nodded again. And then my surfer pal leapt over the bike path wall, pulled his surfboard over after him, and raced out into the surf.
In Southern California, we really only have two settings when it comes to natural disasters: Mellow and Sheer Panic.
And then I add, just for the panickers among us -- and you know who you are, Mickey Kaus -- a little bit about the Sheer Panic phase:
Having spent the week on Mellow, though, Southern California is now ready for a little Sheer Panic. News reports are forecasting that a radioactive cloud - dispersed from the failing nuclear reactors in tsunami and earthquake struck Japan - is heading out to sea, and should reach Southern California by Sunday.
It's almost certainly overblown. Despite the breathless local headlines - "Radioactive Cloud, Heading Our Way! - the truth is, even if the plume manages to make it to Los Angeles, whatever toxic radioactivity that remains is going to be miniscule.
But that isn't stopping the panic from beginning. At dinner tonight with friends, half of the table was trying to get iodine tablets to protect themselves from the "fallout". Which is, of course, ludicrous. Iodine is for serious and sustained exposure to the chemicals, like strontium and cesium, that are dispersed when a nuclear reactor goes kablooey. Taking iodine pills here, though, makes about as much sense as putting on a raincoat in Los Angeles because it's raining in Munich.
Another tablemate, a screenwriter friend of mine - a man who I know for a fact possesses little or no scientific knowledge; a man who has yet to successfully pair a Bluetooth device to his iPhone - held forth for several nonsensical minutes about thermal currents and plume trajectories, until our eyes glazed over and he snapped us all to attention by citing some (dubious) cancer statistics. The result was that he convinced a huge portion of his audience to head out of town for the weekend. "Until the plume disperses," he said, which is a sentence that contains precisely zero connection to reality.
Having zero connection to reality, in Hollywood, is not a bug. It's a feature.
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Comments :
Sep '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
Rob, did you think hysteria over scary radiation is unique to Hollywood? Hardly. They're freaking out everywhere. The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami is on the order of 10k, but everyone is obsessing over the slim chance that a few might be exposed to minute amounts of radiation. Some irresponsible European (I forget who; they are fungible) declares great danger, followed by some other fungible in our own government saying much the same.
No responsible person predicted that the situation in Japan had a significant chance of being as bad as Chernobyl, an accident resulted in fewer than 100 deaths, according to the UN. Specifically, "There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure." Compare less than 100 to more than 10,000.
I was going to post on this a few days ago, but decided not to. You brought it up, Rob. Your iPhone comment made my laugh, by the way.
Oct '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
No words can cay anything more!
Sep '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
Wonderful post. Not surprising, but gives the rest of us a look into the world of the cultural elites. Thanks.
Re: When the Plume Hits
This morning in the gym I was dutifully sweating on the elliptical trainer when the Fox News chryon caught my eye: "Rpt: Japan Radioactive Fallout Reaches California." I plugged in my headphones, turned up the volume and listened to several minutes of fallout worries.
At the outset, the anchor stressed that the detected radiation level was "one billion" times below the healthy limit. At the end, the reporter live on the scene of some mobile radiation sampling lab admitted that there was absolutely no health risk--even pointing out that the equipment detects higher radiation levels from passerby undergoing cancer treatments. Unfortunately, in between there was an unhealthy slug of of Chernobyl videos and general Death Ray fear-mongering.
Technology is now so advanced that we can detect minuscule, clinically meaningless amounts of radioactivity. Why is this a story at all, especially when tens if not hundreds of thousands of Japanese remain at risk from the non-nuclear sequelae of the recent disaster?
Edited on Mar 18, 2011 at 10:53amAug '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
Do the iodine pills actually help with strontium or cesium? I thought you took the pills to saturate your thyroid with iodine, so that it could not take in any radioactive iodine that you ingested. Iodine is a halogen, strontium is an alkali metal, cesium is an alkaline earth: not chemically very similar.
Saturating your thyroid with iodine doesn't sound like something you should do lightly, either.
Edited on Mar 18, 2011 at 9:36amAug '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
I do like the graphic: Relative levels of Radiation (in arbitrary units). I think I will panic at around 10 arbitrary units, but at 0.01 arbitrary units, I feel quite safe.
May '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
Those with blood pressure issues, kidney disease, and thyroid problems, should not be taking these Iodine tablets without medical supervision. Tell them to take at least one dry martini, and have a little lie down, and call me in the morning.
It should be noted that many of the radioactive products in the plume will unfortunately be taken up and concentrated by marijuana plants due to their remarkable chemistry, thus rendering them not safe for human consumption for the next 100 years.
All those Iodine tablets are going to do is make some of these guys quite sick. They should only be taken when the risk of I131 absorption occurs, as this exposure is of greater risk than that of taking the tablets. The US Surgeon General is an idiot, and seems to recently have endorsed taking KI as a preventative measure.
Radioactive forms of Sr and Ce are not prevented by taking Iodine tablets, as their place in human absorption is not in the thyroid. You can only avoid their effects buy avoiding exposure one way, or another.
Sorry guys, but risk is part of the human condition, we don't get to avoid it; even if we have the technology for a new iPad release every year.
Edited on Mar 18, 2011 at 10:29amMay '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
America's hysteria is causing more misery and death for the Japanese, since it discourages or even prevents US and international help from reaching broken, desperate people who will suffer and die without quick action.
The Japanese have been so brave and stoic; America has been so self-absorbed and wimpy.
Utterly embarrassing. A dark time for us in so many ways.
Oct '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
I'm guessing that surfer dude represents what many people visualize when they hear "tsunami" - a "wall" of water, like the opening scene from the old Hawaii 5-O series. As if it's surfable. Anyone who's seen video of the Indonesian and now Japanese tsunamis understands there's nothing recreational about them. Then there's screenwriters and surfer dudes.
As for nuke plume trajectories and thermal currents...aren't we still waiting for the Loop Current and the Gulf Stream to deposit BP oil on the shores of Daytona Beach?
Feb '11
Re: When the Plume Hits
Rob Long: "Last week, walking the dog along Venice Beach for an early morning jog, I noticed a huge crowd gathered by the bike path."
You were walking and your dog was jogging or you were jogging and the dog was walking? That sentence brought to mind strange visuals. Just asking.
Jun '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
What do you expect from the culture that brought you fast times at Ridgemont High?
Aug '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
"The result was that he convinced a huge portion of his audience to head out of town for the weekend." -- and go where? Chernobyl taught us that the "radioactive cloud" will pretty much hit the entire northern hemisphere. I think people afraid of this plume are completely unaware of how much radiation they are constantly bombarded with on a daily basis.
Chernobyl was much worse and didn't end the world.
Jul '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
Hang On,
"walking the dog"
Rob was playing with His yo-yo while jogging.
Jul '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
Put the iodine tablets down and step away from the table.
And then there was this. Headline: “CSU tells students studying in Japan to come home.” Good lord. These are institutions of higher learning. Of what, we can’t be certain, but it sure seems science ain’t in the curriculum.
Would it not have been better for CSU to suggest to those students that they go to the shelters in the stricken prefectures and volunteer to help in any way they could? Or something else useful there?
Jul '10
Re: When the Plume Hits
Have no idea what happened to the size of the type! Sorry 'bout that.