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by save_ferris 2348 days ago
> I rather have 10 Fukushima nuclear accidents than one big dam break

You say that, but Fukushima didn't even come close to reaching it's catastrophic potential. Japan was facing the possibility of having to immediately evacuate 50 million people[0], or roughly 15% of the US population. An evacuation on that scale would almost certainly top any other emergency evacuation in human history.

Japan got pretty lucky with the weather conditions during that episode, and if you flip that coin 9 more times, you'd find out pretty quick that they got pretty darn lucky the first time.

0: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/12/national/kan-ci...
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save_ferris 2348 days ago
I got curious about the largest evacuations in history and a cursory google search says that the largest sea evacuation took place in NYC during 9/11, when 500,000 were ferried out of the city, beating Dunkirk in WWII (319k).

So the prime minister of Japan was facing the possibility of an evacuation 100x this size. That is truly insane.

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