My Family Health Blog

Symantec, the big multinational anti virus company has an official demonstration video of how the stuxnet virus works. This virus is rumored to have infected Iranian nuclear power plants and lately the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan. So it is rumored that the Japan problems were compounded: earthquake, tsunami, nuclear power plant physical damage and stuxnet virus infection which prevented the Siemens PLCs from doing their job.

And some people are in disbelief as to the existence of the Stuxnet virus. Well, some people have never seen a PLC before. I’m an engineer and I’ve come across PLCs in engineering school and at work. PLCs are used to control industrial machinery… such as those machineries in a nuclear power plant.

Israel and the United States have emerged as the prime suspects behind the Stuxnet worm attack, which has infected the Iranian nuclear plant at Bushehr, following the discovery that a “wealthy group or nation” must have been responsible for the malware assault.

Pass this around people, viruses are no longer a personal annoyance, they are a real and present danger with massive consequences. Industrial sabotage.

This video demonstrates how W32.Stuxnet can compromise a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), resulting in unintended consequences for the machines connected to it. From the Symantec Security Response blog.

For More Information, please visit:

securityresponse.symantec.com

I just came across some brilliant writing from CrisisMaven’s blog about how he got to stop the nuclear power industry in his country. Pro-nuclear power lobby money seems to be flowing in our country lately with all those politicians wanting to explore nuclear energy again. We stopped them once with the Bataan Nuclear Power plant, we can stop them again this 2011 with the Fukushima worse than Chernobyl event.

During that public hearing we asked essentially but two (complexes of) questions:

How great is the risk of the above scenario with millions of long-term casualties? The obvious answer always is: negligible. Then what is negligible? Ok, one accident occurring in more than one million years! Ok, so, does that mean it could only happen in a million years from now? Oh no, that is a statistical figure arrived at by calculation. Of course it could occur much sooner and then not occur for another million years. So, we said: if its probability is not exactly zero and it will happen at some point in time, could it not actually happen just as we speak? Well, that always gets your pro-nuclear proponent a little aggravated, but, under subpoena in a public hearing he will admit, “yes, it could actually happen right now ‘as we speak’”. All you then have to ask is: well, if it did indeed happen right now and our country would be uninhabitable for thousands of years and hundreds of thousands would be killed within days and weeks and possibly millions in a generation, would you then still call this “cheap electricity”? Would you still –in hindsight!- call this the safest form of electricity generation? You need not say more.

But then, for good measure and before they persuade your politicians and civil servants behind closed doors as to how unrealistic and unscientific such an approach would be, you ask a second question: how reliable is your calculation of the “one in a million years” risk? Now, before it gets complicated, let’s jump to the solution: all these calculations are based on estimated frequencies of failures of certain parts in a nuclear power station. So they say, for example “normal cooling fails once in x years”. But if that fails, emergency cooling sets in (like at Fukushima???) and the chances that this also fails is y. And so in order for both to fail during the same incident we arrive at a multiplication of x and y and that is, say, a million years (of course there’s more to that to justify some of the highest salaries in industry). But when you are adamant to see how they arrived at those figures that went into this seemingly “exact” calculation, then, you see, they can only estimate. Unlike the automotive industry which crashes hundreds of specimens of each new model, they never even crash-tested one nuclear power station in the whole world! It’s like if GM or Ford or Toyota would say “hey, we here have two models, one costs only half because we didn’t test the airbags but we made a damn good calculation of their risk of failure; and because we didn’t crash anything in the process, we saved a lot of money and you can have a cheaper car”. Well – which would you prefer to drive your daughter to school in? You see. Now, if you multiply two estimated figures, while the result looks exact beyond ten digits after the decimal it still is nothing but a guess! How good such guesses tend to be can be clearly seen when the air intakes of Fukushima’s Diesel generators were less then twenty feet above the ground, but the Tsunami came in at about forty-five! So, when you do guesswork, you have to allow for a margin of error. But how great is that margin of error? Well, while no one knows exactly, after all, it’s all anyone’s guess and only a rough estimation, we asked the subpoenaed experts in my country during that public hearing: wouldn’t you agree that this accident every million years (which could be now) will happen “once in a million years with a margin of error of plus or minus ten million years?”. Again, there’s no arguing about that – since they don’t have any figures but assumptions.

Now that killed the most advanced nuclear design at that point in time – if the then most advanced and “safe” reactor couldn’t be built because of safety concerns, shouldn’t all other, less “advanced” nuclear power stations be decommissioned immediately?

Read the full text of this insightful blog post at http://crisismaven.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/how-i-brought-down-the-nuclear-industry-in-my-country-and-how-you-can-do-it-in-yours/

Australian Mr. Cruise Ship Jobs Guru posted a video of his monologue just as it finally hits him and he understands how grave his situation in Tokyo, Japan is. He has just been told not to drink the tap water because it is radioactive. Since the water is undrinkable, then the water should not be showerable as well. He was also told to buy sticky tape and tape up his apartment so the radioactive air doesn’t seep in.

Australian Mr. Cruise Ship Jobs Guru finally hits him says Japan is evacuating, Tokyo is evacuating. He’s got friends in the Yakuza (organized crime) who are also evacuating Japan. Says this is the real news. And his experience in Japan is ending. He’s going to have to leave.

He says he got red zit like stuff growing on his face. He thinks he is already radioactive.

Better late in the realization of truth than never. Good luck to him and may his cruise ship career take root in another country.

If you live in Tokyo, maybe you might like to have a word with this guy and take an international vacation for a few months.

If you are expecting the Japanese Prime Minister to announce a Tokyo wide or Japan wide evacuation, it probably will not happen. You should know when to evacuate yourself, decide for yourself.

Why don’t you have a look at what the American military did? They just evacuated 200,000 US Military personnel and dependents from Japan. What does that tell you? Actions speak louder than words.

My wife initially bought 3 starter bicycles in the mall. They were terrible. Overpriced junk. They had caliper type brakes that were unsuited for children because it requires adult strength to brake. Thus my children were biking effectively with no brakes!

Within the garden, all 3 kids learned how to ride and balance bikes. But then I just had to buy each and every one a new bike for safety. Real bikes. I got 2 mountain bikes for the 2 older boys. And 1 BMX bike for our young girl. Cheap and safe. Made sure they had V-Type brakes that work really well.

Now I think I need to get a bike for myself so I can join their wheels club with their aunt and cousins biking around in the village.

If you have loved ones living in Japan, then convince them it may be a good idea to go on months long international vacations. Stay for a few months in my country, rent an apartment and go around the country. Take a good number of pictures. Enjoy life. Get out of your country and take an airplane ride, while you still can. When the sh** hits the fan, you may not be able to get out of Japan. I believe the sh** has already hit the fan. The Fukushima reactors are doomed, has been doomed from the start and it may bring everything, the entire country with it. And if it does, you are already vacationing outside Japan. Safely.

Remember Chernobyl. How bad Chernobyl was.

The name Fukushima will take over the name Chernobyl in the next years to come as the gold standard for the worst nuclear disaster ever.

Hirose Takashi: What They’re Covering Up at Fukushima:

Hirose Takashi has written a whole shelf full of books, mostly on the nuclear power industry and the military-industrial complex.

Probably his best known book is Nuclear Power Plants for Tokyo in which he took the logic of the nuke promoters to its logical conclusion: if you are so sure that they’re safe, why not build them in the center of the city, instead of hundreds of miles away where you lose half the electricity in the wires?

The poster Delta Force in godlikeproductions.com has made some english translations of an interview with Hirose Takashi:

Read it and weep. The best discussion thread ever in the forum explaining the Japanese disaster. http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1412216/pg1