I'm not sure how you make a half hour flight take 4 hours, in my experience it takes half that. Personally, I fly from one coast to another once per week, totaling 2400 air miles per week. My entire company flies to the same place as me, from wherever they happened to live. A drive would take 3 days, a train would take about 2. When I fly, I have about two and a half days at home every other week. If I were to take the train, I would have zero time and be a day late back to where I work. Flying is the only way I get to see my family. Honestly, though, if I were as close to home as you, I'd still fly because it still would give me several extra hours at home when I was allowed home. I go through the torture because I'm willing to do so for the extra time I get to see my wife. If I were a bachelor, I probably would skip the two and a half days I get just to avoid the plane too.

To say it's caused by vanity, however, seems rather ignorant to me. (Yes, I'm aware it wasn't you)

Don't be so naive. Anything more than a 9 hour drive and you're paying more for gas by driving, plus wasting a half day or more of vacation each way. And a majority of flyers are business, and therefore actually NEED to be there in a couple hours as opposed to the next day. Who would take an 8 hour drive instead of a 1 hour flight?

One thing you're not considering is building codes of today vs. when the plant was created. There are MUCH stricter laws in place--especially in Japan--that would reduce the risk of earthquake damage tremendously. It wouldn't *eliminate* it, but it sure would make it a lot safer. That having been said, nuclear energy is still the safest form of energy, orders of magnitude safer than coal or oil. Again it's not perfect, but the deaths-to-MW-h ratio is truly amazing.

The fact that most Anon members originated from 4chan and other mentionable image boards tells me that a good majority are *actually* guilty of pedophilia (in the sense that they own pornographic pictures of prepubescent children).

I don't know about other countries, I only fly in and out of Canada/Mexico so it's only half-international. But every time I am screened by an American TSA agent as well as border control. Whenever I take a flight *into* the US I feel almost assaulted--it's more vigirous than within-US flights--so I'm not sure HOW one would slip a bomb through.

I've traveled from Washington to California a few times by train. In the middle/north of Oregon, there's a lot of tall butes and the train slows down. Often, trains will slow down to 20 mph. It's a fairly slow ride...