You can't be watching the news without seeing what is going on in Japan. Most of the news is related to the atomic power plants. Here in the USA, people are all asking if our atomic power plants can take a 9.0 earth quake? Is this logical or not? As you might have expected. I have my own views.
I was listening to the news and heard several people asking if an atomic power plant in their area could take a 9.0 earth quake? This seems like a very logical question to ask, but let's look a little closer. Try this one to get a better idea of what we are up against. I read in the news paper about a home that was crushed and the owner killed by a falling pine tree. The question that was immediately asked was why the home was not built strong enough to with stand the force of a falling tree? It seemed like a logical question. Next, they wanted all homes in the nation inspected to see if they could handle a similar falling tree. Again, this seemed like a logical question, but wait. What all these normal people forgot about was the probability of a bad thing happening. If you have home located far from the nearest tree, the chances of a tree falling on your home is "zero". People seem to focus on the event rather than the probability of that event happening. We all take chances all the time and we know the risk, but when the remote even happens, we forget about the probabilities and complain that they should have been zero.
In the case of Japan, a decision was made about the chances of a big earth quake and the amount of money that should be spent to strengthen the atomic power plants. Knowing the chances of a big earth quake, they built the atomic power plants accordingly. Now when the bad event happens, it seems every one forgets about the earlier decision. They knew when they made the original decision what could happen. Now that it has happened, everyone seems to want a "do over". This big earth quake has to be a one in a thousand year event. What if Japan went without any atomic energy for a thousand years? How much of a loss do you think that would have been? How many kids would have died from hunger during that time?
Most people do not know this fact. More people have been killed in the USA by cars hitting deer than all the people killed by atomic power plants world wide. Why don't we hear an out cry about deer? They are far more dangerous than atomic power plants. I think you are starting to see how little logic is being used by the news. More people have been killed in car accidents than by war in the USA. More people were killed in the drug war in Mexico than were killed in Iraq. What we need is to keep things in perspective and use more logic than emotion.
