Towns, villages to get missile, disaster alert devices

[Davey]

Towns, villages to get missile, disaster alert devices

Sunday, October 22, 2006 at 07:23 EDT

TOKYO ﾂ― The Fire and Disaster Management Agency is planning to provide every city, town and village in Japan with devices to receive a dedicated signal transmitted via a satellite that warns of a ballistic missile attack by another country as well as natural calamities such as earthquakes and tsunami, agency sources said Saturday.

The agency is planning to start running the J-ALERT nationwide instantaneous warning system next fiscal year, which begins April 1, after local governments ready themselves to receive signals amid growing concern over North Korea's missile launches and nuclear test. The agency is planning to provide the device ﾂ― a satellite modem that can receive signals transmitted by the agency ﾂ― to around 1,400 cities, towns and villages equipped with wireless communications systems for disaster preparedness over two years from next fiscal year, the sources said.

Source

It's sad that this is needed, well is it really needed?

 

[craftsman]

Saturday, Oct. 21, 2006
Kim diabetic, may nuke Japan, Nakagawa says
Kyodo News
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il could launch a nuclear attack on Japan because he suffers diabetes, Liberal Democratic Party policy chief Shoichi Nakagawa said Friday.
"One would not do such a thing normally, but because that country's leader has overeaten rich food and suffers from diabetes, he could think about it," Nakagawa reckoned in a speech in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, referring to the possibility of North Korea using a nuclear weapon against Japan.
Anxiety has been rising since North Korea's declared nuclear test on Oct. 9.
Nakagawa, who is chairman of the ruling LDP's Policy Research Council, stirred up controversy after remarks he made on an Oct. 15 TV program calling for debate about Japan going nuclear and a possible review of the country's nonnuclear principles.

There is a lot of madness at the moment about Japan getting attacked (see above). It looks like a tried and tested political technique used around the world - make your voters scared of a real or imaginary threat and they may just agree to anything you want.

 

[Mars Man]

Speaking of the news in the OP; that sounds so Japanese--an extreme overdoing of safety measures for whatever, until the measures themselves produce unsafe potentials.

I agree with that second post too. Thanks for sharing Dutch Baka san, craftsman san !! MM

 

[thomas]

It's sad that this is needed, well is it really needed?

It is sad that they are going to use our tax money for such useless hi-tech nonsense.

 

[Davey]

It is sad that they are going to use our tax money for such useless hi-tech nonsense.

Agree!!

Btw, when the alarm goes off, where should we run to? ☝

 

[thomas]

Btw, when the alarm goes off, where should we run to? ☝

If the alarm goes off, I'll just pop open a bottle of 黒糖焼酎 (black sugar shochu) and wait...

 

[Pachipro]

Btw, when the alarm goes off, where should we run to?

If the alarm goes off, I'll just pop open a bottle of 黒糖焼酎 (black sugar shochu) and wait...

I agree Thomas. Seems kind of useless and a waste of money to me and a typical Japanese reaction. Since North Korea is so close there would be no time to seek shelter anywhere.

There is a lot of madness at the moment about Japan getting attacked (see above). It looks like a tried and tested political technique used around the world - make your voters scared of a real or imaginary threat and they may just agree to anything you want.

I agree with you here craftsman and I believe what Henry Louis Mencken and Frank Herbert wrote:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence, clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins - all of them imaginary." - Henry Louis Mencken

ﾂ"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despotﾂ…maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.ﾂ" – Frank Herbert

 

[craftsman]

when the alarm goes off, where should we run to? ☝

I think the idea is to all gather in the town gym and collectively be bombed rather than dying as individuals at home. It's much more Japanese!

 

[ricecake]

Don't they have underground tunnels use for bomb shelters in rural Japan ?

 

[Davey]

I thought that schools had bomb shelters? I will ask that one of these upcoming days!
This is related to another thread that I made a couple of months ago:

Missiles boost market for nuclear bunkers

 

[Hiroyuki Nagashima]

Don't they have underground tunnels use for bomb shelters in rural Japan ?

There are a lot of underground centres and underground shopping centres.
However, they do not become bomb shelters.

There are a lot of refuges from natural disasters in Japan.

There is a company selling a nuclear bomb shelter in Kobe.

ŠjƒVƒFƒ‹ƒ^[‚ð‚Ì‚¼‚¢‚Ă݂悤I Š”Ž®‰ïŽÐ D•”¸‹@»ìŠ

A type that can accommodate about ten people.
14.000.000-15.000.000 yen

probably...
Cold war era
I think that a manual for nuclear war was distributed to the nation in Europe and U.S.A.

 

[shiroma]

There is a lot of madness at the moment about Japan getting attacked (see above).

It is rather surprising that no duck-and-cover hysteria was observed in the past among Japanese society during the cold war when communist Soviet&China were aiming their missiles at Japan (well China still does.)

Interestingly those anti-nuclear "concerned citizens" peace movement organizations, including ones in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are totally quiet about Kim Jong-il's wrongdoings.
Some people wonder whose mouthpiece they are.

 

[ricecake]

There are a lot of underground centers and underground shopping centers.However,they do not become bomb shelters.

Isn't Japan an earthquake island nation,California homes don't have basement as it's common in America's midwest for tornado hideout ?

 

[Hiroyuki Nagashima]

Japan does not seem to assume war damage.
An earthquake, a typhoon, or a refuge such as an eruption are appointed.
A school, a public hall, are refuge places.

避難マップ(全国避難場所一覧)

全国の各市区町村の避難所・避難場所の一覧

www.animal-navi.com

A Japanese underground shopping centre is not designed with airtightness.
I think that it is impossible to stay there for more than two weeks.
Perhaps I will die of radioactive contamination.