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Don’t know about anyone else, but in the wake of the recent natural disasters that have been happening lately, are you getting tired of all the Chicken Littles, especially the media ones that keep fanning the flames?

Too many people (unfortunately my SIL included) are freaked out by the recent earthquakes and tsunamis, convinced that the Last Days are here at hand and the world is going to abruptly end within the next couple years or so.  I keep hearing arguments about the seemingly abnormal number of natural disasters that have been taking place, and how Judgement Day is almost here.  That God and Jesus Christ are coming, and both are pissed.

My take on things?  Whatever.

Not to minimize the very real suffering that the people of Japan, and other recently ravaged areas, have experienced.  But natural disasters are one of those unfortunate facts of life, and something we all have to deal with as the price we pay for living life here on earth.  They’ve been happening for thousands of years, some periods of time worse than others (remember all the hurricanes of 2004-2005?), and there is no real rhyme or reason or cycle to them.  Oh, and I believe all this nonsense about man-made climate change killing us is a bunch of crap, but that is something I won’t get into very far right now.  Suffice to say the forces of nature are far more powerful, and adaptive to whatever we may add to the works, than we are willing to give credit for.

Japan suffered a monstrous earthquake, one that would leave just about any part of the world totally devastated.  Despite this, their strict earthquake codes probably lessened the damage and loss of life.  The real problems came from the tsunami, which there really is no adequate defense against, other than get the hell to high ground promptly.  And then there is the sobering business about the nuke plant which I’ll discuss more on in a minute.

So what does this all mean?  Northern Japan suffered a terrible disaster and significant disruption to their infrastructure and everyday lives.  The final bill for the damage and loss of life will likely be staggering.

But guess what?  In the grand scheme of things, they’ll clean up the mess, bury their dead, and go about their business.  Life will go on.  Just as it did after the major quake that leveled the city of Kobe sixteen years earlier.  Or Hurricane Katrina.  Or any other natural disaster.  The world won’t end, just maybe change a little bit.

Another irritant is the situation they had with the nuke plant, which has brought the anti-nuke people back out in force, screaming “Meltdown!” and “Chernobyl!” and “Three Mile Island!” with the media headlines.

Okay, let’s explore the worst-case scenario, which was indeed Chernobyl.  That happened due to having no containment for the reactor, and utterly incompetent personnel who disabled all the safety systems while running a questionable “experiment”.  The result was an explosion that released a goodly amount of radiation, an entire city abandoned and turned into a ghost town, and a number of people exposed to varying levels of radiation, most notably the firefighters and workers who tried to put out the resulting fire and contain the runaway reaction.

Serious, indeed, very serious.  A disaster created by poor design and stupidity, with significant ecological and environmental impact.  But once again, in the grand scheme of things?  They cleaned up the mess the best they could, learned numerous lessons to be incorporated into the design and operations of future nuclear reactors, and life went on.  No China syndrome.  No Armageddon.

And Three Mile Island?  Serious and expensive, but really nothing more than a burp.  No loss of life, and minimal release of radiation.  Even though it was found that the core indeed experienced an almost-complete meltdown, it was totally contained.  The basic design of the plant and containment, not to mention all the redundancies built into the system, kept the damage confined within the plant and reactor.

Of course, the problems at the nuke plant in Japan are considerably more serious and will likely have its share of negative effects.  And I for one would take a good hard look at the current designs and figure out a way they can be made safer against such a one-two punch from nature, or even if they should be built in such high-risk zones.  But at this point it doesn’t look to be another Chernobyl.

Life will go on.

And someday Judgement will happen, and we’ll all progress (or regress) to the next level of our existence.  Or perhaps we’ll end up getting it in the midst of a natural disaster ourselves.

But I’m not going to lose tons of sleep over something I have absolutely no control over.  I’ll help those who I can help, and pray for those I can’t, and go on about my life and do the best I can to take care of my family.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t prepare for something really bad to happen.  We should all have some provisions and plan in case things go to hell in a handbasket for any length of time.  But to go around screaming “the sky is falling” and panicking and freaking out everyone around us is childish and irresponsible.

And as a final note, I’m a little tired of all these megadisaster and “what if?” shows depicting some apocalyptic disaster striking one of our major cities.  Especially the ones about comets, there’s nothing we could do and we’d be totally screwed, so why worry?

Life will go on.

(And it will be better when I can have some time to properly blog without interruption.)

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