I don’t want to belittle or minimize the heroics of all the folks working to contain the nuclear disaster over in Japan. Nor am I claiming that there’s nothing to worry about and we ought to all be eating on uranium-dyed plates. But we here in the US have absolutely no perspective when it comes to nuclear radiation. All you have to do is suggest that some trace radioactivity might make its way to the US, and folks run out to buy potassium iodide by the bucketfull.

So…  Here’s some perspective, courtesy of XKCD:

Posted on March 20 at 12:44 PM