EarthquakesAndTsunamis

EarthquakesAndTsunamis is sci-fi concept in support of the technical language «Tarja»
that is system of writing texts while avoiding visually ambiguous Unicode characters
(with aims to ensure that every symbol has a distinct appearance in the default font).

This article demonstrates how visually similar Unicode characters (⼤ U+2F24 vs 大 U+5927) can cause file-name errors in automated systems.

The text below is loaded as an extreme example of a problem caused by the confusion of the Unicode characters:
By default, some Unicode characters at some software have very similar pictures.
In this sense, the default support of the Unicode is underdeveloped, has bugs, faults, errors:
To century 21, the default bijective relation between the characters and their glyphs, pictures is not yet established.

Many cases of such a confusion are mentioned at util.unicode but only one of them is taken into account in the text below.

The name of this article is written without spaces in order to avoid confusion with more generic article
(that can be entitled «Earthquakes And Tsunamis» but yet not loaded)
to describes the general concept(s) related to earthquakes and tsunamis.

The text below may be interpreted as a phantasy of the Top Editor of TORI.

Prehistory

In one civilized country, let us denote it with letter "J", a big earthquake is denoted with term 大地震.

In the same country J, a big tsunami is denoted with term 大津波.

In country J, there was a big nuclear plant, let us denote it with letter "F".

The nuclear plant F was located near some very big and very pacific Ocean.

However, the designers of the nuclear plant kept in mind both the earthquakes and tsunamis (when the Ocean is not so pacific).

There was special Protocol, how the personnel and the mechanisms of the nuclear plant should act in a case of an earthquake and the tsunami (that usually come on a half-hour after the earthquake).

The instruction was entitled "地震".

In a case of an earthquake the automatic was supposed to reduce the power of the reactors or even to stop the chain reaction there.

The Relaxation heat still is sufficient to melt and to vaporize the reactors after the emergency shut-down, but not sufficient to generate vapour in amount required for the turbines and electric generators to feed the pumps to cool the reactors.

For this reason, the emergency generators were designed to provide electricity to feed the pump to cool the reactors until to pass so-called «Iodine pit»; when the reactors can be activated again.

En fin, the designers took into account, that very big earthquake may cause very big tsunami that destroys the emergency generators. For this reason, there was special instruction entitled "大地震".
That instruction, overdoing the "地震" instruction, prescribed that one of reactors, the safest one, remains working at the minimal power, barely sufficient to feed the special safe generator, to feed the emergency pump, to cool all the reactors.

At the big earthquake, the special program-robot was supposed to pick-up the special instruction "大地震" and to keep the safest reactor working, for the case, if the emergency generators are destroyed by a big tsunami and the electric power line is damaged at a big earthquake.

However, such large earthquakes and tsunamis occur rarely - about once per century. But in country J, there was a proverb: The catana may be required once per life, but the samurai should wear it everyday. The same about the instruction 大地震, that was supposed to keep one reactor working in the case of a strong earthquake.

In order to keep all the system working and safe, the designer Nichi O san had been employed. Nichi O san used to keep in order all the instructions.

The servers handling the reactors run under Linux. It is the safest operational system. Even at Microsoft company, the most important servers run neither under Windows, nor even under Macintosh, but under Linux.
At the default Linux font, character X5927 大 looks too small. Operators had difficulties searching for file "大地震.txt" in the most important directory at the most important servers.

Nichi O san resolved that difficulty replacing
character X5927 大 to
character X2F24 ⼤ in the filename;
at the default Linux font, character X2F24 ⼤ looked bigger and easier to read and to identify - especially during an earthquake, when everything is shaking.

Then everybody was sure that in the case of a big earthquake, as the Human operators as the automats will work in the correct and save manner.

However, the script that was supposed to block the shutting down the safest reactor, did not know, that the new name of the instruction is
not "大地震.txt",
but "⼤地震.txt".
At many computers, these two names looked the same; so, nobody mentioned the mistake.

Disaster

When the Really Big Earthquake happened, the poor script at the nuclear plant "F" honestly looked for file "大地震.txt", but did not found it, and did not block the shutdown of the safest reactor; all the reactors were shut down.

The electric power line was destroyed (some of towers felt down), but the liquid-fuel powered diesel generators worked keeping the cooling pumps "on" and the reactors save.
This lasted a half-hour.

Then the Really Big Tsunami came; it destroyed the emergency electric generators.

There was also instruction, that prescribed to prepare the forecast of the fall-out in the case of a nuclear disaster and the plan of evacuation. However, the instruction has the similar fault in the name, KanjiRadical instead of KanjiLiberal in the name. The Emergency Script did not find that instruction. For this reason both, the plan of evacuation and the publication of the map of contamination delayed for several months, when some of citizen of country J already got dangerous doses of unstable isotopes and the ionizing radiation.

In such a way, the confusion with Kanji characters happen to be cause of a disaster and horrible delay with publication of the map of contamination and the recommendations about the evacuation.

Warning

The text above is phantasy of the Top Editor of TORI.
The simple model is suggested.
This model justifies creation of language Tarja that does not use those Unicode characters that yet do not have exclusive graphic representation as a default in the popular software.

The model above is supposed to boost elaboration of some analogy or Unicode that does not allow different characters to have the same default picture.

The shutting-down of all the reactors and the delay with publication of the map of contamination might have other reason(s) - for example the insider trading (to sell the contaminated land and to buy the not-contaminated land) - but here, the simplest hypothesis is used.
The description above can be considered as a simple model of historic event, a simple Scientific concept. Every Scientific concept, by definition of term Science, has limited range of applicability. So, if you find another hypothesis, why all the reactors happen to be shut down, or why the publication of map of the contamination lated, -
describe your hypothesis and send the Editor the link, in order to cite your hypothesis here. And explain, please, why your hypothesis is better than that above.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijection In mathematics, a bijection, bijective function, or one-to-one correspondence is a function between two sets such that each element of the second set (the codomain) is the image of exactly one element of the first set (the domain). Equivalently, a bijection is a relation between two sets such that each element of either set is paired with exactly one element of the other set.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CJK_Compatibility_Ideographs CJK Compatibility Ideographs is a Unicode block created to contain mostly Han characters that were encoded in multiple locations in other established character encodings, in addition to their CJK Unified Ideographs assignments, in order to retain round-trip compatibility between Unicode and those encodings. However, it also contains 12 unified ideographs sourced from Japanese character sets from IBM. ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident On March 11, 2011, a major nuclear accident started at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The direct cause was the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which resulted in electrical grid failure and damaged nearly all of the power plant's backup energy sources. The subsequent inability to sufficiently cool reactors after shutdown compromised containment and resulted in the release of radioactive contaminants into the surrounding environment.[8]: 56–58  The accident was rated seven (the maximum severity) on the International Nuclear Event Scale by Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, following a report by the JNES (Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization).[9][10] It is regarded as the worst nuclear incident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986,[11] which was also rated a seven on the International Nuclear Event Scale.[12] ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_pit The iodine pit, also called the iodine hole or xenon pit, is a temporary disabling of a nuclear reactor due to the buildup of short-lived neutron poisons in the reactor core. The main isotope responsible is 135Xe, mainly produced by beta decay of 135I. 135I is a weak neutron absorber, while 135Xe is the strongest known neutron absorber. When 135Xe builds up in the fuel rods of a reactor, it significantly lowers their reactivity, by absorbing a significant amount of the neutrons that provide the nuclear reaction. ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode Unicode (also known as The Unicode Standard and TUS[1][2]) is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 17.0[A] defines 159,801 characters and 172 scripts[3] used in various ordinary, literary, academic, and technical contexts. ..

https://jciv.iidj.net/map/ Japan Radiation Map. (Updated daily at least since y.2012)

Keywords

«Ascii», «Chikara», «Confusion», «Earthquake», «EarthquakesAndTsunamis», «Earthquakes And Tsunamis», «Fukushima disaster», «Iodine pit», «Japan», «Japanese», «Kanji», «KanjiLiberal», «KanjiRadical», «Letter to Emperor», «Nichi», «Relaxation heat», «Romaji», «Romanji», «Tarja», «Tartaria», «Tsunami», «Unicode», «X2F24» «⼤», «X2F3C» «⼼», «X5927» «大», «X5FC3» «心»