“We’re going to Chicago because of Fukushima”

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A student I know well, who is taking his second class with me, called me an hour ago, very apologetic. “I won’t be in class tomorrow”, he said, “and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Hopefully next week.”

His parents, the young man told me, are panicked about the prospect of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear reactor reaching California, and they’ve decided to go and stay at least through the weekend with family in Illinois. They fly out later today.

My student told me he had begged to stay, and that he knew perfectly well that the danger to the States from the Japanese meltdown is nonexistent. But his parents through a fit, and so he’s going off, hoping to be back by next Tuesday. If I didn’t know him so well, I’d think he was pulling my leg. But I believe he’s telling me the truth about his parents’ paranoia.

I’m hoping he’s the only one.

15 thoughts on ““We’re going to Chicago because of Fukushima””

  1. Hi Hugo,

    I know this is off-topic, but would you consider doing a post on the societal misogyny manifesting itself through the Rebecca Black meme? There needs to be a voice in the wilderness on this one, and with, apparently, this meme short-circuiting the empathetic capacity of pretty much every other blogger I normally respect, it seems like that voice ought to be you.

    Thank you.

  2. His parents, the young man told me, are panicked about the prospect of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear reactor reaching California

    Eat that, Europe, America’s #1 at science! USA!! USA!! USA!!

  4. People are more irrational about radiation than about just about anything else. I really don’t know why. Maybe it’s all the science-fiction movies.

  5. Here’s hoping the young fellow learns to better resist parental fit-throwing.

  10. Girl who made a music video. It’s not very good. It went viral, probably because her voice is pretty awful and the lyrics are, well, calling them stupid would be an insult to stupid. (Though she didn’t write the lyrics.)

    People have been going ballistic on her. I don’t really understand why. It’s amateurish, but the music is actually slightly catchy, if you can tune out the mind-boggling dumb of the words.

  11. I looked around and I guess Rebecca Black is a viral video sensation? I looked around and I mostly see a lot of cruel remarks, which is lame, but pretty much par the course for festering pits of negativity like Reddit and the YouTube comments section. Nothing new here.

  12. Moving to Chicago to avoid the fallout, eh. Well, here on the East Coast we laugh! Laugh!

    Uh, anyone read “On The Beach”?

  13. Funny. I blogged about this today, too, especially since we live about 40 miles south of the Diablo Canyon plant, AND I lived in Europe (Germany) when Chernobyl hit and still remember being afraid of the rain.

    HOWEVER, that was then, and 1200 miles away from the radiation ground zero. Here in CA, we are 9,000 miles away from Fukushima; the health hazard zone is currently at about 50 miles, the health impact zone is at about 800 miles as is common during such accidents. Now, if anything happened at Diablo Canyon or San Onofre, I’d expect anyone here to pack up and run. But Japan?

    *Eurotrash sigh* Americans … *Eurotrash sigh*

  14. Yeah. I resisted the urge to be snarky with him, because I knew he already felt bad. The jet stream can get to Chicago too, if it can reach L.A. If his parents want to be out of that path, they’d be better off in New Zealand or Chile.

    But ask the folks in Christchurch about that.