Real life effecting fiction?

when trying to create realistic fiction based in our world has real world events ever helped or hindered your writing?

It just did to mine though I'm not sure if I've been handed a plot hole, or a gift, my work is based in japan 20 Minutes into the Future.

It's not set in exact date at the current time but some time after 2012 and before 2015's end. With major character hailing from Sendai and Tokyo and the majority of the plot taking place in Tokyo, being a person who likes to show their work I have just been handed something that I at least need to mention it since I'm trying to create a realistic and accurate as possible portray of modern japan. I already have every set up for how to alter my writing, unless the reactor go then I'll have to change setting to America and play with some of my characterization.

So has anyone else ever had a major or minor event alter the course of their story?

Fukushima reactor is not going to turn the area in and immediately around Sendai into the next Pripyat even in the worst case scenarios.

@Topic: Can't say I have had that much, then again my setting is deliberately set far enough into The Future (by some like 460 years) that I don't have to worry about Real Life significantly disrupting my plot.