5 ms·

What is the outcome you're hoping for, though? It's not useful for people to live with vague anxiety. Are there specific solutions we want them to pursue, and t

What is the outcome you're hoping for, though? It's not useful for people to live with vague anxiety. Are there specific solutions we want them to pursue, and that aren't being handled by the government?

shiroiushi 2y ago
He's probably hoping for emergency preparedness, like any sensible person. That would include stronger building codes, evacuation plans and facilities, emergency supplies, etc. Here in Japan, we have all that stuff, and we don't live with "vague anxiety" (certainly nothing like the high anxiety that most Americans live with these days). Big earthquakes are rare, but smaller ones are very common, but everything in society is engineered to handle it well so it rarely causes problems.
- throwup238 2y ago
  > everything in society is engineered to handle it well Except nuclear reactor backup systems </tongue in cheek>
- lupusreal 2y ago
  If the matter rarely being a problem is the bar to meet, then Japan and Seattle have both met that bar. Seattle is less prepared but the quakes of note are also more rare, so both meet the "rarely causes problems" standard. It wouldn't make sense for every place to prepare as much as Japan for things that are less likely there than in Japan. Does Japan have as many tornado shelters as Kansas? Probably not.
- rprospero 2y ago
  Honest question: how often do you do Tornado drills in Japan? A quick look look at the wiki[1] indicates that you do get them, but fairly rarely. I honestly don't know your cultural perspective on them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornadoes_and_tornado_outbreaks_in_Asia#Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornadoes_and_tornado_... I grew up on the edges of the New Madrid fault area and, while earthquakes were never discussed, we did tornado drills about every two months while in school. After I entered the workforce, that got closer to once a year, but you were still expected to have a plan and supplies. It was basic emergency preparedness, like any sensible person. Granted, big F5 tornados are rare, but small ones were common enough to not even be noteworthy. Having left that region as an adult, it was a small culture shock meeting people who never had this kind of training. After all, the places I've visited all experience tornados, though not as often as my old home town. Still, the usual attitude I encounter is "I've never seen a tornado - they don't happen here". It's true that tornados don't happen often, just like my birthplace hasn't seen a serious earthquake in my lifetime, but they do happen. I guess that's why I'm curious about your experiences. I've never been to Japan and I've read enviable reports of your disaster preparedness, but I honestly have no idea how your schools and culture handle tornados.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    I just live here, I didn't grow up here, so I can't tell you much about how kids are trained here. I've never heard of any drills for adults. Also I had never heard of tornadoes here either (though again, I've only lived here a few years), but earthquakes and typhoons are pretty common. Your Wikipedia list is news to me, but looking it over, it seems they're uncommon and relatively minor in size, and greatly overshadowed by the earthquakes and typhoons and tsunami. That said, it is very common and normal for people to keep emergency backpacks that they can grab and take to shelters if there's an evacuation. I have one in the closet next to my front door. The government also periodically gives out free emergency supplies for people to keep. There's publicized evacuation plans and routes, and places seem like they're prepared for big storms: subway stations for instance have huge doors at the entrances to protect against flooding.
lazyasciiart 2y ago
Well, some bridge maintenance would be nice. Additional work to strengthen highway passes, communication infrastructure, government owned buildings...maybe some seismic engineering or reinforcement done on the unreinforced masonry elementary schools, some of which (in Seattle) were last touched in the 1990s. On an individual level, homes built before 1980 should be updated to meet modern earthquake foundation codes. All of these problems are known, but not funded, because who cares? Disaster management nerds? e.g the 2022 cascadia emergency exercise: https://mil.wa.gov/asset/6390e374e0f21 https://mil.wa.gov/asset/6390e374e0f21
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Bridge maintenance is sorely needed across the whole country. Anyway, the reason this stuff doesn't get enough funding is because the process of sorting out public spending priorities is called politics. Everybody has their own idea about what needs money and how much money should be thrown around. There's no objectively correct way to sort it all out, no means by which we can weigh the relative merits of increased library funding against retrofitting single family homes against earthquakes except by asking people which they prefer. And different people have different tolerance for risk, somebody who decided to tolerate the risk of a major earthquake sometime in the next X years because they'd rather fund some other project isn't necessarily wrong. It's not a matter of simply educating people about the risk (and FWIW, the average person in Seattle is definitely aware that the region is geologically risky.)
  - cloudwalk9 2y ago
    > Bridge maintenance is sorely needed across the whole country. Not just that, but also to rethink how we reinforce them in major waterways or even minor but navigable waterways, if any heavy enough boat can just crash into a support column and take the whole thing down... albeit accidentally in that case.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      That is almost as unrealistic as wanting to nuclear bomb proof them

shiroiushi 2y ago

He's probably hoping for emergency preparedness, like any sensible person. That would include stronger building codes, evacuation plans and facilities, emergency supplies, etc. Here in Japan, we have all that stuff, and we don't live with "vague anxiety" (certainly nothing like the high anxiety that most Americans live with these days). Big earthquakes are rare, but smaller ones are very common, but everything in society is engineered to handle it well so it rarely causes problems.

throwup238 2y ago
> everything in society is engineered to handle it well Except nuclear reactor backup systems </tongue in cheek>
lupusreal 2y ago
If the matter rarely being a problem is the bar to meet, then Japan and Seattle have both met that bar. Seattle is less prepared but the quakes of note are also more rare, so both meet the "rarely causes problems" standard. It wouldn't make sense for every place to prepare as much as Japan for things that are less likely there than in Japan. Does Japan have as many tornado shelters as Kansas? Probably not.
rprospero 2y ago
Honest question: how often do you do Tornado drills in Japan? A quick look look at the wiki[1] indicates that you do get them, but fairly rarely. I honestly don't know your cultural perspective on them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornadoes_and_tornado_outbreaks_in_Asia#Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornadoes_and_tornado_... I grew up on the edges of the New Madrid fault area and, while earthquakes were never discussed, we did tornado drills about every two months while in school. After I entered the workforce, that got closer to once a year, but you were still expected to have a plan and supplies. It was basic emergency preparedness, like any sensible person. Granted, big F5 tornados are rare, but small ones were common enough to not even be noteworthy. Having left that region as an adult, it was a small culture shock meeting people who never had this kind of training. After all, the places I've visited all experience tornados, though not as often as my old home town. Still, the usual attitude I encounter is "I've never seen a tornado - they don't happen here". It's true that tornados don't happen often, just like my birthplace hasn't seen a serious earthquake in my lifetime, but they do happen. I guess that's why I'm curious about your experiences. I've never been to Japan and I've read enviable reports of your disaster preparedness, but I honestly have no idea how your schools and culture handle tornados.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  I just live here, I didn't grow up here, so I can't tell you much about how kids are trained here. I've never heard of any drills for adults. Also I had never heard of tornadoes here either (though again, I've only lived here a few years), but earthquakes and typhoons are pretty common. Your Wikipedia list is news to me, but looking it over, it seems they're uncommon and relatively minor in size, and greatly overshadowed by the earthquakes and typhoons and tsunami. That said, it is very common and normal for people to keep emergency backpacks that they can grab and take to shelters if there's an evacuation. I have one in the closet next to my front door. The government also periodically gives out free emergency supplies for people to keep. There's publicized evacuation plans and routes, and places seem like they're prepared for big storms: subway stations for instance have huge doors at the entrances to protect against flooding.

lazyasciiart 2y ago

Well, some bridge maintenance would be nice. Additional work to strengthen highway passes, communication infrastructure, government owned buildings...maybe some seismic engineering or reinforcement done on the unreinforced masonry elementary schools, some of which (in Seattle) were last touched in the 1990s. On an individual level, homes built before 1980 should be updated to meet modern earthquake foundation codes. All of these problems are known, but not funded, because who cares? Disaster management nerds? e.g the 2022 cascadia emergency exercise: https://mil.wa.gov/asset/6390e374e0f21 https://mil.wa.gov/asset/6390e374e0f21

lupusreal 2y ago
Bridge maintenance is sorely needed across the whole country. Anyway, the reason this stuff doesn't get enough funding is because the process of sorting out public spending priorities is called politics. Everybody has their own idea about what needs money and how much money should be thrown around. There's no objectively correct way to sort it all out, no means by which we can weigh the relative merits of increased library funding against retrofitting single family homes against earthquakes except by asking people which they prefer. And different people have different tolerance for risk, somebody who decided to tolerate the risk of a major earthquake sometime in the next X years because they'd rather fund some other project isn't necessarily wrong. It's not a matter of simply educating people about the risk (and FWIW, the average person in Seattle is definitely aware that the region is geologically risky.)
- cloudwalk9 2y ago
  > Bridge maintenance is sorely needed across the whole country. Not just that, but also to rethink how we reinforce them in major waterways or even minor but navigable waterways, if any heavy enough boat can just crash into a support column and take the whole thing down... albeit accidentally in that case.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    That is almost as unrealistic as wanting to nuclear bomb proof them