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Speaker 1: Pushkin a warning before we start. Many of our cautionary

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Speaker 1: tales end in tragedy, but this one discusses death by suicide.

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Speaker 1: If you're suffering emotional distress or having suicidal thoughts, support

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Speaker 1: is available, for example, from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

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Speaker 1: in the US. In the year eight sixty nine, an

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Speaker 1: earthquake hit Japan, a big one. There's an account from

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Speaker 1: the time. It tells of violent trembling people buried under

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Speaker 1: fallen houses, while horses and cows desperately ran about and

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Speaker 1: trampled each other. After the quake came the tsunami, roaring

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Speaker 1: like thunder was heard towards the sea. The chronicles of

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Speaker 1: eight to sixty nine rode the sea soon rushed into

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Speaker 1: the villages and turns. In the nineteen sixties, eleven centuries later,

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Speaker 1: a nuclear power plant was planned for the same area.

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Speaker 1: The project designers had to ponder the lessons of the past.

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Speaker 1: They would build a seawall to protect the plant, of course,

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Speaker 1: but how big should it be. Unfortunately, the account from

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Speaker 1: eight to sixty nine didn't say how high the tsunami was,

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Speaker 1: so the engineers had to make an educated guess at

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Speaker 1: the reasonable worst case scenario. Nineteen feet is roughly the

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Speaker 1: height of a two story building. A wave any bigger

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Speaker 1: would really stretch the imagination. If your seawall could withstand that,

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Speaker 1: you should be okay. Wouldn't you think I'm Tim Harford

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Speaker 1: and you're listening to cautionary tales. The nuclear plant was

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Speaker 1: named Fukushima Daichi, and the engineers thought it was well protected.

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Speaker 1: Then on March eleventh, two and eleven, one of the

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Speaker 1: largest earthquakes in recorded history sent another devastating tsunami, roaring

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Speaker 1: towards the coast. It scoured coastal communities and sucked their

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Speaker 1: remains into the sea, killing more than fifteen thousand people.

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Speaker 1: But when at three twenty seven in the afternoon it

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Speaker 1: struck the Fukshima power station, those engineers might briefly have

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Speaker 1: felt vindicated. Their wall repelled the wave, alas tsunamis come

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Speaker 1: in more than one wave. Eight minutes later, the next

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Speaker 1: one appeared, and it was bigger, much bigger. It roared

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Speaker 1: over the wall. It knocked out the power supply. Without

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Speaker 1: electricity to pump cooling water, the workers knew it was

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Speaker 1: only a matter of time before the reactors started to overheat,

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Speaker 1: but how much time was a mystery, as the control

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Speaker 1: panel had also gone dark. Desperate workers borrowed flashlights from

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Speaker 1: nearby homeowners. They inched through the bowels of the plant,

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Speaker 1: looking at the gages. They strained to heave open vents

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Speaker 1: that might release the growing pressure and stave off explosions.

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Speaker 1: But this cautionary tale isn't about the design of nuclear

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Speaker 1: power plants in tsunami prone areas. It's about what happened

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Speaker 1: next and what lessons we should learn as we cope

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Speaker 1: with a fallout of any disaster. Mikio Watanabe and his

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Speaker 1: wife Hammoko grew up in Yamakia, a rural rice growing

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Speaker 1: area not far from Fukushima, Daichi. Mikio and Hammoco had

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Speaker 1: been married for thirty nine years and raised three children.

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Speaker 1: They were looking forward to seeing out their old age

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Speaker 1: in their picturesque hilltop home, but they couldn't afford to

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Speaker 1: retire just yet. They had taken out a second mortgage

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Speaker 1: to renovate the house for the next generation. On the

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Speaker 1: evening of the tsunami, as engineers scrambled to contain the damage,

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Speaker 1: the authorities ordered everyone living close to the plant to evacuate.

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Speaker 1: The next morning, they widened the evacuation zone by a

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Speaker 1: few more miles, then more again. As scientists tried to

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Speaker 1: model the radiation spread, more villages got evacuation orders. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: about one hundred and sixty four thousand people had been

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Speaker 1: told to leave their homes. Mikio and Hammoko were among them.

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Speaker 1: The chicken farm where the Watanabe's worked was also forced

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Speaker 1: to clothes. Who wants to buy chicken raised near a

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Speaker 1: nuclear disaster? Michio and Hammoco lost their jobs. Sheltering in

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Speaker 1: temporary accommodation, they had nothing to fill their days but worry.

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Speaker 1: Mikio says of his wife. She cried so much and

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Speaker 1: repeatedly asked me to take her to our home. In June,

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Speaker 1: they asked the authorities for permission to go back and

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Speaker 1: check on their old house. It was granted for one

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Speaker 1: night only. The weeds in the garden they found had

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Speaker 1: grown to almost head high. Michio set about clearing them

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Speaker 1: while Hammoco cooked dinner. It was just like old times.

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Speaker 1: She was happy to be back in her kitchen. Why

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Speaker 1: not just stay? Did they really have to leave again tomorrow? Yes,

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Speaker 1: said Michio sadly, Yes they did. Well, you can go

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Speaker 1: back said Hammoko. But I want to stay here, even

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Speaker 1: if that means living alone. I never want to leave

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Speaker 1: my home. Don't be stupid. We have to leave together.

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Speaker 1: That night, Michio got up to use the bathroom. When

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Speaker 1: he got back to bed, Hammoco grabbed his arm and

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Speaker 1: wouldn't let go. She was crying so hard. Then in

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Speaker 1: the morning, Mikio got up early. He went back outside

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Speaker 1: to finish clearing. In the distance, he noticed a fire.

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Speaker 1: He thought nothing of it. Hammoco must be burning. The

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Speaker 1: weeds had cut down yesterday. Only later did he discover

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Speaker 1: her charred body. His wife had doused herself in kerosene

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Speaker 1: and set herself alight. Three months after the cruel sea retreated,

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Speaker 1: the tsunami had claimed another victim. Hammoco's death was horrifying,

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Speaker 1: but she was a hidden victim of the disaster. Because

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Speaker 1: nobody would connect to death by suicide with a tsunami

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Speaker 1: months earlier. It would instead seem a sad and unrelated statistic.

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Speaker 1: For this reason, it's what we might call a hidden death,

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Speaker 1: and hidden deaths are all too easy to overlook. To

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Speaker 1: see why, let's leave the tsunami for a train crash.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry some of our cautionary tales can be like that.

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Speaker 1: I'm afraid. The train in question is traveling north from

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Speaker 1: London to Leeds in the United Kingdom in the year

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Speaker 1: two thousand. It's approaching the town of Hatfield, but one

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen miles per hour. But the rail has

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Speaker 1: the tiny cracks. The metal has been getting gradually fatigued

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Speaker 1: until now it's held together. But this train turns out

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Speaker 1: to be one too many. The cracked rail shatters, the

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Speaker 1: train skids off the tracks, One of the carriages overturns

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Speaker 1: and hits a gantry. Four passengers are killed, more than

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Speaker 1: seventy injured. The Hatfield derailing was a serious accident, which

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Speaker 1: raised an alarming question how many other rails across the

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Speaker 1: country might also be just one train away from failing.

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Speaker 1: The people in charge decided they should take no chances

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Speaker 1: while they found out. They put strict new speed restrictions

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Speaker 1: on stretches of track across the country and began the

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Speaker 1: painstaking process of examining the tracks for signs of damage.

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Speaker 1: If another rail failed, the thinking went, the trains would

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Speaker 1: at least be going much more slowly, there'd be more

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Speaker 1: chance of surviving an accident. That made sense, but it

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Speaker 1: had a predictable consequence. Many rail passengers also own cars,

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Speaker 1: and every journey is a choice which will be quicker, cheaper,

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Speaker 1: and less hassle. Slow the trains and you change that equation.

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Speaker 1: Passenger numbers fell by almost half. And when people abandoned

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Speaker 1: the train and getting their cars. Instead of fatal consequences,

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Speaker 1: train crashes mercifully are rare. Car crashes are not. Your

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Speaker 1: twelve times as likely to be killed in a car

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Speaker 1: than on a train for each mile traveled. So if

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Speaker 1: slower trains mean more car journeys, that probably meant more

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Speaker 1: road accidents too. How many more crunch the numbers and

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Speaker 1: it was probably about five extra deaths and seventy five injuries,

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Speaker 1: almost exactly replicating the toll from the derailment. But there's

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Speaker 1: something else about those five people who died. They're just statistics.

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Speaker 1: Their names weren't in the newspapers. We don't even know

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Speaker 1: if there were five, Maybe there were three or eight,

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Speaker 1: or if we were very lucky none at all. Nobody

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Speaker 1: blamed the policymakers for having allowed another hat field. As

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Speaker 1: a society, we tend not to notice hidden deaths. If

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Speaker 1: those deaths happened to our friends or our family. We

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Speaker 1: grieve them, but we usually believe the deaths were bad luck,

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Speaker 1: that they couldn't have been prevented, usually, but not always.

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Speaker 1: After his wife's suicide, Mikio Watanabe decided to sue TEPCO,

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Speaker 1: the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operators of the Fukushima

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Speaker 1: Daichi Nuclear Power Plant. For them to argue that the

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Speaker 1: suicide is not directly related is unforgivable. If the accident

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Speaker 1: hadn't happened, he said, he and Hammoco would have lived

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Speaker 1: a normal, peaceful life. TEPCO had already compensated the evacuees

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Speaker 1: for part of the value of their homes and their

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Speaker 1: lost income, plus a flat fee of a thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: a month to cover their emotional distress. For Mikio, that

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Speaker 1: flat fee didn't begin to acknowledge his bereavement or his

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Speaker 1: late wife's obvious anguish. He asked the court to agree

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Speaker 1: that it wasn't enough. Hamako Watanabe wasn't the only person

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Speaker 1: who found the evacuation after Fukushima too hard to cope with.

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Speaker 1: Fumio Okubo was one hundred and two years old. He

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Speaker 1: heard on the TV news that his village had been

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Speaker 1: instructed to evacuate. I don't want to leave, he told

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Speaker 1: his daughter in law. Then I've lived too long. That night,

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Speaker 1: he killed himself. A few years later, an official report

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Speaker 1: looked into how many suicides were linked to the disaster

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Speaker 1: at Fukushima, Daichi. The research has counted fifty six. That

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Speaker 1: might have been an underestimate. The national broadcaster NHK put

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Speaker 1: the figure at one hundred and thirty. The suicides were

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Speaker 1: only a fraction of the hidden deaths. The first evacuations

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Speaker 1: were ordered in a hurry as workers strained to ease

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Speaker 1: the pressure in the overheating reactors. A bus would arrive

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Speaker 1: in the village and simply had to get on with

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Speaker 1: whatever possessions you could carry. There was no time to

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Speaker 1: plan or prepare. How could there be. The threat from

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Speaker 1: radiation brooked no delays. Some elderly residents of nursing homes

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Speaker 1: couldn't get onto the buses themselves, so they were carried

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Speaker 1: on and laid across the seats, and the bus was

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Speaker 1: driven off without doctors or nurses or for the first

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Speaker 1: few hours food or water. Some of them didn't make it.

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Speaker 1: There were longer term effects from lifestyle changes. Many evacuees

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Speaker 1: were farmers, used to the outdoors, and now they lived

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Speaker 1: cooped up rates of hypertension, rows and diabetes. Others suffered

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Speaker 1: because they were already vulnerable and their care was being disrupted,

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Speaker 1: say Ochie, a doctor and researcher, told The Financial Times.

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Speaker 1: If you compare nursing homes that evacuated with those that didn't,

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Speaker 1: the death rate was three times higher among those who moved.

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Speaker 1: In all, it's reckoned that the evacuation hastened around two

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Speaker 1: thousand deaths. And beyond the hidden deaths, there's the hidden suffering.

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Speaker 1: Satoru Yamauchi owned a noodle bar that had to close.

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Speaker 1: His family didn't want to risk staying just outside the

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Speaker 1: evacuation zone. What if the officials hadn't been cautious enough,

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Speaker 1: and what if they'd underestimated the danger from the radiation.

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Speaker 1: The Yamaouchis decided to move a hundred and thirty miles

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Speaker 1: to Tokyo, where they had a grim time. They struggled

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Speaker 1: for money, They hated their cramped living quarters. Their children

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Speaker 1: were bullied psychologically, says mister Yamauchi. We were wrecked. But

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Speaker 1: all this trauma has to be weighed against the counter factual.

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Speaker 1: What the effects of radiation would have been had the

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Speaker 1: evacuations not been ordered, How many would have died? That

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Speaker 1: question was studdied by Philip Thomas, a risk management professor

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Speaker 1: at the UK's University of Bristol. He found a disconcerting answer.

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Speaker 1: The radiation turned out to be less of a danger

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Speaker 1: than feared. In the worst affected villages. The evacuation added

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Speaker 1: perhaps two or three months to average expected lifespans. In

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Speaker 1: some places that were evacuated, the risk of radiation would

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Speaker 1: have been much more minor, and the gains from leaving

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Speaker 1: were tiny. The statistics suggested that, after their years of

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Speaker 1: struggle in Tokyo, the Yamauchies might now expect to live

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Speaker 1: for an extra couple of days. With hindsight, says Professor Thomas,

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Speaker 1: we can say the evacuation was a mistake. I'm not

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Speaker 1: here to judge that decision. I am interested in understanding it.

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Speaker 1: Predicting the effect of a radical policy such as an

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Speaker 1: evacuation is hard, especially when situations are unusual and fast moving.

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Speaker 1: Here's a quote from a study published four years after

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Speaker 1: the disaster. To our knowledge, this is the first quantitative

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Speaker 1: assessment of the risk trade off between radiation exposure and

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Speaker 1: evacuation after a nuclear power plant accident. Well, quite, it's

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Speaker 1: not like there was a manual, nor did any single

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Speaker 1: expert have all the needed knowledge. The scientists trained to

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Speaker 1: plot the course of nuclear fallout aren't likely to have

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Speaker 1: also studied the psychological impact of evacuations. Then there's an

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Speaker 1: idea social scientists call the identifiable victim effect. The behavioral

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Speaker 1: economist George Lowenstein, who studied that effect, explains that identified

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Speaker 1: victims get much more attention and help than much more

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Speaker 1: statistical victims that will predictably emerge in the future. Charities

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Speaker 1: know all about the identifiable victim effect. It's why they

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Speaker 1: don't show you an infographic about a million children at

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Speaker 1: risk of starvation. They show you a photograph of one

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Speaker 1: specific named starving child. How vividly we can imagine the

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Speaker 1: plight of the victim seems to be part of the effect,

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Speaker 1: but only part. We also appear to feel more responsibility

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Speaker 1: to save people from clear and present risks, rather than

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Speaker 1: risks we must know are going to materialize but haven't yet.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps that's what's going on. The fatigued metal rails, the

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Speaker 1: melting down reactors. Those are dangers that exist right now,

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Speaker 1: the potential car crashes, the long term psychological wreckage. We

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Speaker 1: cling to the hope that these might not happen. However

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Speaker 1: irrational that hope might be. A few weeks into the

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Speaker 1: UK's COVID nineteen lockdown, emergency room doctors started to notice

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Speaker 1: that they were getting half as many calls as usual

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Speaker 1: about heart attacks and strokes. Perhaps for mysterious reasons. People

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Speaker 1: were having fewer heart attacks and strokes. That would be nice,

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Speaker 1: but it seems unlikely. More likely people were sitting at

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Speaker 1: home thinking I might get the virus. If I go

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Speaker 1: to hospital. It's not too bad yet, I'll see if

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Speaker 1: it passes. Chalk up some hidden deaths there. Referrals for

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Speaker 1: suspected cancer were also down by three quarters. Shall I

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Speaker 1: bother the doctors now? It's probably nothing. I'll wait. More

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Speaker 1: hidden depths in the pipeline. As healthcare workers were diverted,

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Speaker 1: children around the world missed out on vaccinations. More deaths

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Speaker 1: will result from that as well. It's not all bad news.

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Speaker 1: The cleaner air from economic shutdowns, for example, has likely

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Speaker 1: extended some lives. There are surely fewer road accidents during

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Speaker 1: widespread lockdowns, But it seems clear that our lockdowns will

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Speaker 1: result in a great deal of hidden harm. That harm

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Speaker 1: is predictable, indeed, it has been predicted, but somehow the

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Speaker 1: hidden impacts just don't feel real until they start to happen.

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Speaker 1: That's the identifiable victim effect. Of course, lockdowns were always

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Speaker 1: going to increase domestic violence, but when the news came

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Speaker 1: through about a surgeon calls to victim hotlines, it still

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Speaker 1: felt somehow shocking. In countries which went for looser lockdowns,

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Speaker 1: such hidden impacts loomed large in the reckoning. The man

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Speaker 1: behind Sweden's controversial choice to keep schools open, the country's

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Speaker 1: chief epidemiologist, and as Technel, explained that this was a

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Speaker 1: public health decision, not an economic one. For disadvantaged children,

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Speaker 1: schools might be the one good thing they have in life,

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Speaker 1: but it's hard to keep focused on the hidden problems

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Speaker 1: when the COVID death count is very visibly ticking upwards

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Speaker 1: right in front of you. The Fukushima disaster has one

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Speaker 1: last lesson to teach us. Hidden tolls on mental health

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Speaker 1: take time to play out. Fumio Okubo took his life

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Speaker 1: the day he heard he was to be evacuated Hamako

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Speaker 1: Watanabe a few months later, but others took longer to

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Speaker 1: slip into a despair from which no escape seemed possible.

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Speaker 1: The peak year for suicides wasn't twenty eleven. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: even twenty twelve. It was twenty thirteen, two years after

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Speaker 1: the disaster. The Japanese medical researcher, doctor Ochie explained why.

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Speaker 1: Initially everyone was really determined, but they got tired, and

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Speaker 1: that's when depression started to increase. As I record this,

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Speaker 1: the world still seems determined to cope with a coronavirus,

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Speaker 1: but our reserves of resolve will not be limitless. We'll

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Speaker 1: get tired too. In the end, the Japanese courts sided

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Speaker 1: with the widower, Mikio Watanabe. They told TEPCO to pay

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Speaker 1: him nearly half a million dollars. They saw that hidden

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Speaker 1: death's matter, that indirect victims are just as deserving of

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Speaker 1: our sympathy and support. We should remember that in the

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Speaker 1: years to come. To write this episode, we relied on

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Speaker 1: original reporting from the BBC, the Financial Times, and The

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Speaker 1: New Yorker. As always, a full list of our sources

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Speaker 1: is in the show notes on Tim Harford Dot com

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Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is written and presented by me Tim Harford

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Speaker 1: with help from Andrew Wright. The show was produced by

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Speaker 1: Ryan Dilley with support from Pete Norton. The music, sound

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Speaker 1: design and mixing are the work of Pascal Wise. The

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Speaker 1: scripts were edited by Julia Barton. Special thanks to Mea LaBelle,

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Speaker 1: Carlie Miliori, Heather Fane, Maya Kanig, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell.

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Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is a Pushkin Industry's productions