Althouse: "Communities in northern Japan are being overwhelmed by radioactive wild boars..."

April 5, 2016

"Communities in northern Japan are being overwhelmed by radioactive wild boars..."

"... which are rampaging across the countryside after being contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster."

42 comments:

Eric the Fruit Bat said...: On the plus side, they're probably pretty easy to spot after dark.; 4/5/16, 8:31 AM
MaxedOutMama said...: The Chernobyl effect - wild animals thrive. Rough on the farmers, though.; 4/5/16, 8:35 AM
PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...: Sounds like bullshit to me.

There was so much desire to sensationalize the nuclear danger from Fukushima that truth took a back seat. This is, if it was even allowed on the bus at all. Sounds like someone else pimping !!!!DANGER!!!!DANGER!!!!DANGER!!!

Same thing with Chernobyl. About 50 people died, mainly firefighters, all on the first day. Otherwise the effects of Chernobyl radiation have been pretty meh.

Never let truth get in the way of a good story.

John Henry; 4/5/16, 8:38 AM
MadisonMan said...: I can't read the whole article, but that is a most excellent headline!; 4/5/16, 8:39 AM
Bob Boyd said...: We ought to round them up and air drop them on ISIS.; 4/5/16, 8:42 AM
prairie wind said...: There was so much desire to sensationalize the nuclear danger from Fukushima that truth took a back seat. This is, if it was even allowed on the bus at all. Sounds like someone else pimping !!!!DANGER!!!!DANGER!!!!DANGER!!!

Yep.; 4/5/16, 8:43 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Radioactive wild boars.

A bit of a letdown after all the Godzilla movies.; 4/5/16, 8:43 AM
JPS said...: In other terrifying news, the average person from the region around Fukushima is carrying around 4,000 Becquerels of radioactivity, mostly in the form of the radioisotope potassium-40, with a half-life of over one billion years.; 4/5/16, 8:45 AM
Bobby said...: Oh, I saw this one. I think it defeats Anguirus and maybe Mothra, too, before Godzilla comes in and saves Tokyo.; 4/5/16, 8:47 AM
Curious George said...: Nuclear bacon. Mmmm.; 4/5/16, 8:47 AM
Robert Cook said...: Deaths from the Chernobyl disaster number nearly 1 million worldwide.

This is not to mention the damage to animal life in the region. The area around Chernobyl is still uninhabitable.

Over time, the deaths from Fukushima will probably exceed Chernobyl, as it is a worse--and still ongoing and not concluded--disaster.; 4/5/16, 8:51 AM
JPS said...: Robert,

The thing is, the larger you want to make that number, the shakier the assumptions behind the connections.

A few years ago I read that 14,000 Americans had died from Fukushima fallout. The basis for this claim? Well, it turns out that in the summer of 2011 the death rate in the U.S. had some tiny uptick. Now multiply that uptick by 300 million and you get a non-tiny number of deaths.

Now, if you are stupid or dishonest (I don't mean you, Mr. Cook), you look at what could possibly have caused those excess deaths, point to a nuclear incident half a year earlier, and yell, Aha! What else could it be? (The answer is always, It could be anything else that you don't understand.) And so, 14,000 radiation deaths - without anyone's checking into a hospital with Acute Radiation Sickness, and without anyone's having had nearly enough time to develop radiation-related cancers.; 4/5/16, 9:03 AM
MadisonMan said...: Why couldn't one eat the boar meat after testing it for radiation?; 4/5/16, 9:03 AM
bridgecross said...: As a frequent traveler to rural Japan (beautiful countryside by the way) I can attest that wild boar are no joke, irradiated or not. You give those suckers a wide berth.; 4/5/16, 9:07 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Life Increases Death, Experts Assert

In Italy, they serve wild boar in restaurants. Pretty good stuff when they know how to cook it. I take it as a sign of the collapse of civilization-- it's not just Italy.; 4/5/16, 9:13 AM
Robert Cook said...: "A few years ago I read that 14,000 Americans had died from Fukushima fallout. The basis for this claim? Well, it turns out that in the summer of 2011 the death rate in the U.S. had some tiny uptick. Now multiply that uptick by 300 million and you get a non-tiny number of deaths."

Fukushima is too recent for anyone to reasonably accept that 14,000 Americans could have died as a result of it. Summer 2011 was only months after Fukushima, so any such claims obviously cannot be supported. I'd be interested in reading the article that made that claim. In a decade or two, it will be more likely that particular death statistics can be more accurately claimed to be the results of Fukushima.; 4/5/16, 9:23 AM
Bob Ellison said...: In a decade or two, it will be more likely that particular death statistics can be more accurately claimed to be the results of slipping on banana peels.; 4/5/16, 9:27 AM
holdfast said...: And some people say there's no reason for a civilian to own an AR-15 (or maybe an AR-10 in this case). Well next time someone says that I will say "Radioactive Wild Boars". Mic drop.; 4/5/16, 9:39 AM
Fernandinande said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/5/16, 9:40 AM
SJ said...: @PuertoRicoSpaceport, @Robert

I think "only 50 died from Chernobyl, mainly firefighters, on the first day" to be wrong. At least, the "on the first day" part.

On the other hand, I think "1 million" to be an over-estimate.

There are large swaths of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus that are in the don't-live-here-for-a-century zone.

If I can trust Wiki, there are fewer than 5000 cancer cases in the Chernobyl region that are likely to be linked to the event.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster

And there are fewer than 50 known to have died from radiation exposure or trauma while working to contain the fire at the facility. Each one has their own line in the table on the Wiki article.; 4/5/16, 9:40 AM
Fernandinande said...: How many? How "radioactive"?

Radioactive wild boar roaming the forests of Germany

More radioactive pigs nabbed in Italian countryside

US Nuclear Regulatory Commish sez:
Pig
A colloquial term describing a container (usually lead or depleted uranium) used to ship or store radioactive materials.; 4/5/16, 9:41 AM
Bobby said...: Robert,

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment was not peer reviewed before publication. Since publication, it has been reviewed by a number of experts, the vast majority of whom blasted the work's source material, methodology and conclusions.

There's room for challenging the narrative on Chernobyl, but your source is not it. As one reviewer put it, "the value of this review is not zero, but negative, as its bias is obvious only to specialists, while inexperienced readers may well be put into deep error" and that the book is closer to science fiction than to science.; 4/5/16, 9:46 AM
Fernandinande said...: Did boars inhabit mountainous areas prior to the nuclear accident?

"The brown area represents wooded hills adjacent to rural communities. The green areas are where rice paddies and fields used to be. The area is now infested with weeds, as we saw in the report. Boars are omnivore animals. They eat anything, but grass is their staple food. On average, 50 percent of their yearly food intake is composed of grass. Boars were rarely spotted along the coastline, but now they’ve expanded their habitat to areas along the ocean.
...
The community we saw in the report has only a limited number of returnees -- maybe only several households. Residents are coming back to homes far apart from each other. The social infrastructure has yet to be rebuilt for the entire community. There are still farmlands that are left unattended, allowing boars to have it their own way."; 4/5/16, 9:53 AM
Robert Cook said...: Bobby,

If what you say is accurate, I stand corrected. Do you have a citation for peer-reviewed studies that provide more accepted estimates of the actual Chernobyl deaths?; 4/5/16, 10:13 AM
John Henry said...: Robert Cook,

And yet there are hundreds (thousands?) of people who refused to evacuate Chernobyl and have lived there continuously since the incident. None have suffered any ill effects from the radiation.

the Chernobyl exclusionary area is a wildlife preserve par excellence with no evidence of radiation damage to the animals.

After the plant blew up 2 other reactors on the same site continued operating for about 10 years. Construction of a fourth plant continued for another 6-8 years though I don't recall it ever being finished.

I call bullshit on the 1mm death statistic.

John Henry; 4/5/16, 10:14 AM
jr565 said...: Wild Boars!
The wild boars are calling
On their way back from the fire
In august moon's surrender to
A dust cloud on the rise
Wild boars fallen far from glory
Reckless and so hungered
On the razors edge you trail
Because there's murder by the roadside
In a sore afraid new world; 4/5/16, 10:19 AM
Rusty said...: Just how radioactive are they?
I mean maybe they are harmless tasty radioactive.
Radioactive bacon might taste good.
Just like regular bacon.
But with more radioactive goodness.; 4/5/16, 11:08 AM
Bobby said...: Cook,

I was educated in electrical engineering, so I pretend to be an expert in nuclear engineering or to understand all (or even most) of the details cited by the Yablokov and Nesterenko reporting or those of their reviewers. But I do know the scientific method and can understand the criticisms identified by the following reviewers:

M. I. Balonov of the Institute of Radiation Hygiene published his review in the New York Academy of Sciences here. Interestingly, the New York Academy of Sciences, which published some of the report you cited, noted that: "Under the editorial practices of Annals at the time, some projects, such as the Chernobyl translation, were developed and accepted solely to fulfill the Academy’s broad mandate of providing an open forum for discussion of scientific questions, rather than to present original scientific studies or Academy positions. The content of these projects, conceived as one-off book projects, were not vetted by standard peer review."

Sergei Jargin's review in Radiation and Environmental Biophysics is here. He argues that your cited report overestimated the health impacts and contained poorly substantiated information. (Yablokov and Nesterenko's reply to this review is posted on the NY Academy of Science cite above).

Mona Dreicer has her review in Environmental Health Perspectives here. She argues, among other things, that: "The inconsistent use of scientific units, the grouping of data collected with variable time and geographic scales, the lack of essential background information, and the consistent exclusion of scientific research that reported lesser or no negative impacts leave objective readers with very limited means for forming their own judgments without doing their own additional extensive research. In fact, many major technical studies and reports on the impacts of the Chernobyl accident have been excluded."

Monty Charles has his review in Radiation Protection Dosimetry here.; 4/5/16, 11:10 AM
Bob Ellison said...: People over age thirty or so are trained to think these things:

radiation => cancer

cancer is irreversible

There was a guy...here he is...who lived through both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings. Lived to 93.; 4/5/16, 11:24 AM
traditionalguy said...: OMG. Radioactive Trichinosis. This world keeps right on getting more dangerous. And Trump 2016 Chalkings are appearing everywhere too.; 4/5/16, 11:27 AM
Roger Sweeny said...: There are large swaths of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus that are in the don't-live-here-for-a-century zone.

The fact that some group has said, "Don't live here for a century" doesn't mean their advice is reasonable--even if it's backed by the force of law. My own government tells me marijuana is an addictive narcotic. Wildlife is flourishing in the zone around Chernobyl now. No three-headed fish or anything.; 4/5/16, 11:31 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Bob Ellison said...

There was a guy...here he is...who lived through both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings. Lived to 93.

And now he's dead. As are the vast majority of other people who lived through the bombings, even if they lived half way around the world at the time. Kinda makes you think...; 4/5/16, 11:53 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: What's Japanese for 30.06?; 4/5/16, 12:05 PM
Rusty said...: traditionalguy said...
OMG. Radioactive Trichinosis. This

Maybe the radiation kills it. Ever think about that?; 4/5/16, 12:13 PM
MadisonMan said...: @HoodlumDoodlum, I believe it's "thilty ought six"; 4/5/16, 12:19 PM
prairie wind said...: Kinda makes you think...

LOL. Wish I had made that comment.; 4/5/16, 12:29 PM
Bill said...: Apparently these are not mutant wild boars. How disappointing.

"Deaths from the Chernobyl disaster number nearly 1 million worldwide."
Utter rubbish.

"What's Japanese for [.30-06]?"
7.62×63mm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield
... or maybe just .30-06! https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06%E3%82%B9%E3%83%97%E3%83%AA%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E5%BC%BE; 4/5/16, 12:36 PM
mikee said...: It isn't the radioactive wild boars that are the real problem, it is cleaning up the radioactive wild boar feces that contaminate the soil wherever the wild boars roam.

I, for one, think stepping in a pile of wild boar droppings while outside in the woods enjoying nature is bad enough, without having to fear that it may be radioactive, too. That is the stuff of comic book superhero origin stories.

Also, .308 caliber ammo works well in AR-10 rifles, and is highly effective against wild boar.; 4/5/16, 1:36 PM
exhelodrvr1 said...: How do we know it's not caused by global warming?; 4/5/16, 1:48 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: "Blogger MadisonMan said...
@HoodlumDoodlum, I believe it's "thilty ought six""

Funny and mildly racist! Good stuff.; 4/5/16, 1:55 PM
RMc said...: I hate it when that happens!; 4/5/16, 4:44 PM
buck said...: This is obviously Plan 10. What took them so long?; 4/5/16, 7:48 PM