Disaster handling

In recent times we have seen at least 2 disasters. One, the BP oil well blast, and the other the Japanese Nuclear plant after the big earthquakes and tsunami

The oil disaster was 100% man-made, while the Japanese nuke plant was partly both, at least per me. The oil disaster is a well chronicled series of human failures, oversight and bad management and escapism.

When the Japanese PM first announced about the nuke plant, it was in pretty calm terms. Just like when the blast took place in the oil well and BP immediately made the statement that there was no leak. This fact being in memory, I somehow knew I would be hearing more about the Japanese plant as well. And when I did, the news was : people around 3 kilometer radius were being evacuated, about 50,000 of them. The question still remained in mind, however, because the plants were still far from being mended, and the numbers have gone on ahead.

So are the Japanese similarly irresponsible as BP executives? Far from it. Because, imagine if they had hit the panic buttons immediately. What would have ensued was the mass exodus of people from regions near and far. Inevitably, this would have led to chaos and traffic jams and general violence. Instead, the Japanese have managed their disaster in a sensible way, by evacuating the people in the 3 Km radius first, then proceeding to move out more, who were further away, thus before the disaster could reach them (hopefully).

I suspect there will be a lot of lessons that will be drawn from this episode. Well, maybe we needed this disaster, so our species could be better inoculated from the dangers of our new technology in future. When playing "Big Spoiler" what Nature has done is to result in technological advancements. It is true: what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.