Earthquake Plus Tsunami in Japan : Food and Water

The monster earthquake, tsunami, and aftershocks that have hit Japan create priorities in a hurry. First, of course, comes the need to avoid being hurt or killed by the quake itself as the Earth shakes, objects are jarred loose to fall from high places, and the ground buckles in other places.

Then there are the horrors of an onrushing wall of water which in this case, according to reports, varied in depth from two to thirty feet, depending on location. Fires kill, too, not just by burning or smoke inhalation but also by launching toxic chemicals into the air.

These are all immediate, deadly, and very much in-your-face.

But you are a survivor. Through whatever combination of luck, good advance planning, assistance from others, or outright divine intervention...you are alive. You have escaped the direct physical assaults of the biggest earthquake to hit Japan in more than a century.

Now, if you are to stay alive, be it in the home of a friend or relative or in one of the crowded emergency shelters, you must move another priority to the head of your personal list:

Sustenance.

Your body needs food, and it needs water as well. Water first; thirst will kill us faster than hunger. But where to find either? The infrastructure in your neighborhood has been utterly destroyed. In fact, your entire neighborhood has been utterly destroyed.

Only bottled water is safe, and you find yourself dependent upon assistance from the government and the international relief effort for even that. The lines are long, but there is water at the end.

Hungry every moment of the day and night, running low on Ramen noodles, you take what money you have in your pocket to visit the grocery stores--which have nothing left on the shelves. Word spreads of a place where there is actually food available, and you rush to join the mob. Red Cross meals are handed out, but these are not meals such as would be devoured by a 500-pound, lard-laden behemoth on America's television show, Biggest Loser.

These meals are simple--and small--bowls of rice.

You are alive. There is a roof over your head, of sorts. You have found enough food and water to make it through another night, although little more than that. There is talk of another evacuation to yet another shelter even farther away from the nuclear plant, should the radiation levels rise just a bit more. This frightens you, but only to a degree; your brain's fright receptors are shorting out. It has been four days since the earthquake first hit, and you have seen too much, endured too much.

You sleep.

And hope desperately, as you slide down into unconsciousness, that you will not remember your dreams but will awaken once more to a new dawn, a new day, a new struggle to stay alive--but with new hope as well.