As I'm sure you all already know there has been some some crazy shit goin down in Japan for the past 2 weeks. It is estimated that it will take 310 billion dollars to rebuild Japan. Even though people "know" what's going on, sometimes I don't think people "understand" or realize how much of a crisis Japan is facing at the moment with the complete devastation of infrastructure, a nuclear emergency, and a death toll exceeding 10,000 (and thats reported deaths).
Imagine that you were sitting in your living room watching your routine TV show or at a bar watching a game in the NCAA tournament and all of a sudden on the bottom of the screen there's an emergency banner that notifies everyone that there has been an earthquake 80 miles off shore and that everyone has 40 mins to evacuate because theres a tsunami coming (let's we not forget the waves seen in Japan were high enough to surpass four story buildings.) Imagine how scary of an idea that is, of trying to get a hold of everyone you love, grabbing everything thats important to you and getting the fuck out of there. Imagine the mass pandemonium going down with everyone stopping at gas stations and pumping full tanks so they can escape..would people fight over gas? would you be willing to wait in line at a gas station for 20 mins to get gas? would there even be people working the gas stations?
In addition to the utter devastation caused by the earthquake and the tsunami itself (towns completely wiped off the map), they continue to face the issue of a nuclear crisis with one of reactor cores leaking radio active material. I'm not sure if anyone knows how serious it is but Japan continues to urge more evacuations due to dangerously high levels of radiation (aka down the road cancer).
All in all, this whole ordeal continues to make me realize how you should be grateful for everything you have (family & friends, your healtlh, material possessions, luxuries of a power and clean running water) because you never know what tomorrow brings, whether its going to be great or devastating.
