8.9 Earthquake has struck Japan

Good live feed at NHK, thanks Jeff: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ - NHK English

They just showed a city of 70,000 wiped clean and another city smoldering in ashes. Hope those people got out, but with 10 minutes lead time... ever try to leave a concert parking lot at the same time as everyone else?

Listening to NHK it sounds like they assign a magnitude level to each location. So the epicenter felt an 8.9 while city XYZ 50 miles away felt a 7.1 and city ABC 100 miles away felt a 5.0. Makes sense.
 
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New video coming out looks like very large cities completely wiped out. I can't imagine how this will affect the U.S.A's already crumbling economy. We're gonna be dealing with this for a long time.
 
jeremy wilson said:
New video coming out looks like very large cities completely wiped out. I can't imagine how this will affect the U.S.A's already crumbling economy. We're gonna be dealing with this for a long time.
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I don't want to get into a political / financial discussion but disasters like this are actually good for the economy as a whole. It's complicated, but when you have a country like Japan which is full of the world's most diligent savers (bad for economy) they are know going to be spending to rebuild (good for economy).
 
B Ozanne said:
I don't want to get into a political / financial discussion but disasters like this are actually good for the economy as a whole. It's complicated, but when you have a country like Japan which is full of the world's most diligent savers (bad for economy) they are know going to be spending to rebuild (good for economy).
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Thats very interesting. Never looked at it from that perspective.

Anybody have any input on what happens if this reactor goes into meltdown? Hearing and reading that pressure and radiation levels continue to rise to very dangerous levels.
 
Japan's economy has been stagnant for more than a decade now. They have a public debt to GDP ratio of 200% Aside from construction, this isn't good for the economy of Japan.
 
jeremy wilson said:
Thats very interesting. Never looked at it from that perspective.
Anybody have any input on what happens if this reactor goes into meltdown? Hearing and reading that pressure and radiation levels continue to rise to very dangerous levels.
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See Chernobyl. Actually, Japan's reactors have a containment structure over it that Chernobyl did not have (and had to be hastily attempted to be constructed. Most of the people that built it died.) so it would probably not be exactly the same thing. But it would be Bad.
 
Good day all,

Ryan McGinnis said:
I don't know if "rocks" is quite the word I'd use.
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This whole event is just sick and insane. Towns disappearing in sseconds, all 63 million square miles of the entire Pacific basin agitated with huge waves, the shaking, etc.

God bless anyone caught in that quake / tsunami. Too much information for alot of people.

I'm gonna throwup...
 
Chris Hayes said:
Japan's economy has been stagnant for more than a decade now. They have a public debt to GDP ratio of 200% Aside from construction, this isn't good for the economy of Japan.
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Stagnant because nobody spends any money there...and it's been more like two decades. The government debt is a different issue and that complicates things. Even so, I'm of the opinion that disasters can be positive for the economy. Germany and Japan didn't become the world's second and third largest economies by chance.... they were both largely destroyed by WWII and the reconstruction spending led to an economic boom for decades. Again, it's an economic theory open for discussion.
 
Ozanne, I love economics and I am anxious to see the effects this quake has on Japan's economy. With their debt being so high, and their economy stagnant, they might have a hard time borrowing to rebuild. So, they might have to abandon some cities or rely on the private sector for rebuilding.
 
this is a real wake up call to see cities and towns wiped off the map. it goes to show you never know when it will all come to an end. to echo cdcollura's statement i too am sick to my stomach and wish to "throwup" im sitting here at work and i feel so helpless to do anything but then imagine what japanese people are going through. this is a global impact event. my thoughts and prayers are with all involved.
 
That's pretty scary to have something like that to happen to a major city, I'm stationed in WA and the tsunami wave went as far as to have an 8 footer hit part of the west coast of OR.
 
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