BUGS, BOTS, AND GHOSTS

JUST AS, FOR MANY AMERICANS, IT IS DIFFICULT to reflect on 9/11 without mass disquietude, for many Japanese 3/11 is not merely another day. At 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, the Thoku earthquake and tsunami—better known today as the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Disaster—rippled along the Northeastern coastline of the island country. This unprecedented triple attack included a magnitude 9.0 earthquake that moved Japan eight feet east, a 9.8-foot tsunami that killed over 15,000 people, and a Level-7 nuclear melt-through of three nuclear vessels.

This multivalent catastrophe, both natural and manmade, might be said to have created an almost complete tabula rasa. In addition to the earthquake and tsunamis, which disrupted tangible space, radiation extinguishes another intangible dimension: time. Considering that Plutonium 239 has a half-life (the period in which 50 percent of nuclides will have undergone nuclear decay) of 24,110 years, nuclear aftermaths indeed seem to defy a human conception of time.

Unfortunately humanity’s sense of emergency does not last for 20,000 years, for good reason: If we were to continue to dwell at length in the