The worst-case scenario for the Fukushima plant--Part 2

I'll continue to talk about what the worst-case scenario for the Fukushima plant. Could you please read the previous post first (Click here) ?

According to the scenario that emerged a few months ago, if the worst had happened, about 30 million people, including those living in the Tokyo area, would have been forced to evacuate their homes. I'm living in the Tokyo area, so when I first learnt about that, I looked back to what I had done for a month after the 3/11 earthquake. I wanted to see if had done the right thing at the time. What I recalled is below.

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When I learnt about the first reactor explosion in the Fukushima plant that happened one day after the devastating earthquake hit Japan on the 11th of March last year, I didn't understand what was going on there. I wondered what to do. However, since I was forced to struggle against very frequent aftershocks, I couldn't afford to think about it. When I saw another reactor exploding on TV on the 14th of March, I instinctively felt that I should run away from my area, the Tokyo area, which is about 250 km away from that plant. A few hours later, some of my friends living in Osaka emailed me and urged me to go to my parents' house in Osaka, which is about 600 km away from that plant (When the 3/11 earthquake happened, some high-rise buildings in Osaka swung from side to side due to unexpected sympathetic vibration, but the quake in Osaka was small). My friends insisted that anything could happen at that plant, so in the worst case, the Tokyo area wouldn't be safe. Since they have more knowledge about radiation and nuclear power plants than me, their words carried weight. If I had a child or if I were young, I would have decided without hesitation to go to my parents' house in Osaka at the time.

Those terrible explosions caused consternation among the public. Various information, opinions and rumors swirled around. Each foreign country suggested a wider nuclear evacuation zone than Japan did. Some people insisted that a part of the vital highway access to the tsunami-stricken areas from Tokyo was inside the evacuation zones set by the foreign countries, but the Japanese government wouldn't include the highway in the evacuation zone until the very last moment because there were a huge number of people waiting for rescue (This highway was damaged by that earthquake, but emergency cares were allowed to drive there even right after that earthquake). This opinion made sense to me. I did understand that going to my parents' house in Osaka was the best even if I had own situation to deal with. All in all, I decided to remain in the Tokyo area, in hopes that the situation wouldn't get worse. At the same time, I thought I had a chance of being seriously harmed by radiation. 

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It's been said that the worst has been fortunately avoided so far. Because of this, I don't regret having remained in the Tokyo area. However, when I first heard of the worst-case scenario, I wondered if I had made the right decisions. I wondered if I had prepared myself for the worst. I wondered why I hadn't run away from my area when I had instinctively felt that I should do that. I supposed that I had decided to remain in the Tokyo area just because I had wanted to believe that the situation wouldn't get worse. I think that I should follow my instincts in an emergency.