Japan's complex megadisaster offers scary glimpse of future
The crisis in Japan could be considered the first "complex megadisaster" the world has ever seen — a potent combination of natural and technological calamities that might become more common in the future.
Although the world has seen countless natural and man-made disasters — including the 1986 Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine, the worst nuclear accident in history, and the 1984 leak of poisonous chemicals in Bhopal, India, the largest industrial catastrophe to date — "what we haven't had is all this happening simultaneously," Redlener said....