I've been watching Japan's multiple-horrorshow unfolding itself with agonizing slowness, have had much time to reflect.
Where I live, the north-western coast of the USA, is due for something similar (Google for [ cascadia seismic fault ]), except that we have no nuclear plants on the Washington State coast (the only two such that cable TV advises me of are instead in southern California). When (not "if") the fault "unzips" the entire coastline from northern California into British Columbia will be devastated; those two reactors will not be in the direct line-of-fire, but will surely receive some tsunami action.
And where I live, the house, is a tsunami-proof hundred vertical meters up-slope from salt water. Further, it's very strongly constructed, an accident of choice of wall paneling and cheapness of plywood at that stage of construction in 2008. There are many seismic faults running everywhere underneath the Olympics and the Puget Sound, some discovered only this year; indeed, there's one directly core-ward from me. So this over-constructed house would most likely slide off its foundations but should remain in one piece, uncrushed, for most foreseeable events, something not true of much of the surroundings.
My spouse, beloved cats, and I should survive the initial event, be among the millions of refugees.
All these morbid thoughts have a positive side; they help me reassess what's really important. Not the latest gadgetry, not the status or money of a good job, but instead family, friends, loves, pets, life, they're really important, right now. As I once saw on a friendly bank's billboard, "The most important things in life aren't really things at all".
You reading this, this is your time; you have your circles of love - enjoy them while you may. Or as my second-favorite Star Trek put it, "Live now; make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again."...
We definitely live in interesting times.
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