Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Polite and courteous to the end…

Reporting from Tokyo –
She was elderly and alone, injured and in pain. When the massive earthquake struck, a heavy bookshelf toppled onto Hiroko Yamashita, pinning her down and shattering her ankle.
When paramedics finally reached her, agonizing hours later, Yamashita did what she said any “normal” person would do, her son-in-law recounted later: She apologized to them for the inconvenience, and asked if there weren’t others they should be attending to first.

The word ‘civilization’ is usually prefaced with the words ‘thin veneer of’, but if anyone is going to have a polite and orderly apocalypse it would be the Japanese. Contrast this with stories from Haiti, Katrina, and a few other places.

Will it be all smiles and polite ‘thank you’s? Of course not, but I would bet that as far as nation-changing disasters go this will be the least riotous and most orderly. At least, until the reactors explode and everyone realizes its every salaryman for himself.

Im reading as much as I can on the responses and mobilizations of emergency services over there and it is indeed a fascinating thing to watch. Lessons to be learned? Absolutely. But I want to wait some more and see how things shake out before addressing that topic. However, it appears the biggest thing to take away is that in a nation as amazingly high-tech as Japan they are still suffering a tremendous communications problem. This is one of those textbook situations that give ham radio guys wood.