Posts by Rich of Observationz
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I was trying to work out the chances of dying in a natural disaster, as opposed to any other means. Less than 1000 NZ inhabitants have died in all such disasters since colonisation (including Napier, Christchurch, Marlborough 1855, Wairarapa 1848). If you assume maybe 5 million total deaths since then, then that's a 1:5000 chance of dying in such a disaster. Even if you assume that modern average disasters will be more lethal than historic ones (due to increased population density) then 1:1000 would be an outer estimate of one's likely demise involving earthquake, volcano or storm.
So ignoring the news is a perfectly sane thing to do. Of course, disaster readiness is a harmless and enjoyable hobby, but I wouldn't be worried about missing tsunami warnings because I don't sleep with radios tuned to all available channels and some sort of Twitter-driven alarm clock.
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My phone has data turned off when roaming (I assume iPhones can also do this) to avoid roaming charges.
I can't quite see how if I was stuck in an earthquake/supervolcano eruption/nuclear disaster I would be able to either purchase thousands of dollars of prepay credits, or alternatively get a local SIM).
Until roaming charges become sensible, a lot of the utility of smartphones is lost, at least for those of ordinary means.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to SteveH,
Ok, I take your point on the land being coastal. The price of land in that part of Japan appears to be over $2mln a hectare, so I took 10%. The actual figure somebody could sue for (assuming that nuclear reactors aren't protected by statute in Japan) would be quite large - based on annual rental plus incidental costs.
AFAIK most of the facilities at Sellafield are physically intact (with the exception of Pile I which suffered a serious fire in 1956). Decomissioning a wrecked reactor or fuel pond is likely to more difficult than working on an intact facility.
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but isn’t “heritage” all about political acceptability applied to private property? Seriously interested in where people draw the line.
Restrictions on altering heritage property are defined, I think, in the district plan, which has to be adopted through due process. Enforcing those restrictions again requires due process.
I suspect that a general requirement in an NZ plan to make painting a building a controlled activity would meet with some opposition.
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Do people realize what the cost of the Japanese situation is likely to be? Lets say:
- total loss of plant $20 billion
- indefinite loss of land use within 1km of plant (300 hectares @ $2mln/hectare = $600mln
- loss of land use within 20km of plant for one year (100,000 hectares @ $200k/hectare) = $20 bln
- decommissioning of site (based on 50% of Sellafield estimate) - $15 billion
- loss of agricultural production due to contamination (10% of $71bln) - $7bln
- loss of earnings by evacuees (200,000 * 50% * $30k) - $6bln
Total ~ $69 billionThat's a conservative estimate. And guess what - they weren't insured! No insurance company would cover such a risk, so the government and people absorb it. If nuclear power plants had to be insured for their potential liability, they would never get built.
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Field Theory: Japan moves, in reply to Lea Barker,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were airbursts, with the device exploding 580m above the ground.. Most of the radiation was produced by the actual explosion event - there was a very limited amount of persistent fallout (mainly from the fission products of the reaction).
That's the reason the cities could be rebuilt and repopulated so quickly.
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9:07pm... Apple said it is delaying its launch of the iPad 2 in Japan. "We are delaying the launch of the iPad 2 in Japan while the country and our teams focus on recovering from the recent disaster," said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris.
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What's the legal basis for Auckland Council to paint over a privately owned wall without consent?
Is painting a wall a restricted activity in the district plan - if so they should get an enforcement notice, shouldn't they? Is there a by-law which allows the council to overpaint graffiti without the owners consent?
In teh absence of that, it's criminal damage on the part of the council, surely?
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[sorry, that was probably illegal and conflicts with the fluffy soft-left ethos of this place].
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IMHO, the real problem isn't buildings, it's people.
The longer Christchurch remains a disaster area where normal life is impossible, the more people will leave. It'll be the mobile professionals, the young people going to or leaving university (who's going to enroll at Canterbury next year?) who'll up and off to Wellington, Melbourne or London.
New Zealand is already littered with cities, towns and suburbs where anyone "onto it" leaves as soon as possible and doesn't come back. If Christchurch isn't fixed fast, then it'll become another one, whether or not it eventually gets a Norman Foster designed city centre.
What's actually needed is to fix the services and clear the rubble - maybe bulldoze it all into a Schuttberg and make the cleared sites into temporary open spaces. That needs to be done as quickly as possible - the government really should call a halt to all other construction (like relaying pipes in Wellington) that's using resources that could be redeployed into fixing Christchurch.
Only once that's happened can we really start to think about long term rebuilding.