Nuclear Experimentation Year 73

 Nuclear Experimentation Year 73 – 

An Experiment in Fascism

By Ethan Indigo Smith

The nuclear era began on 16th July 1945, when the United States Army set off the Trinity detonation in New Mexico, the beginning of the infamous Manhattan Project that produced the world’s first nuclear weapons. What has transpired in the 73 years since has been nothing short of catastrophic.

I met a new friend on a walk with my dog one day. After I mentioned I am a writer he inquired what I was writing about. At that point in time I had been writing and researching nuclear experimentation. I told him I had been writing a lot about the nuclear industry, the incident at Fukushima, and related nuclearisms. He responded, ‘Oh so you’re the one.’ He was not familiar with my writing, what he meant was that there were so few journalists looking into the subject that I might in fact be the only one doing it! His comment made me smile for a moment, but he had a point.

Given how critically important it is to humankind’s survival, why is global nuclear contamination – a threat to all life on Earth – so often overlooked when we talk about the health and future of humanity and our natural world?

Nuclear: An Experiment in Fascism

My conclusion has long been that nuclear experimentation is an industry of fascism to the letter — an oligarchical collectivist’s dream. Rarified elements are mined, refined, burned and then transformed into weaponry and held as waste. Those weapons are used at the discretion of ‘the few’, for the specific purposes of ‘the few’, at the expense of all else. The risks are socialized, damaging our environment and our collective health, while the power and benefit is held by the oligarchs, who conceal their actions behind the State-Secret privileges, corporate bureaucracies, and countless other institutional curtains — including the corporate media, which obediently and silently falls into line, refusing to even acknowledge the problem exists.

Ultimately nuclear experimentation is about military power, just as it was when the Manhattan project was founded.

    “The building of nuclear power plants in the U.S. began in 1943 to produce atomic bombs — it was not until 1957 that plants began to produce electricity, providing a continuous supply of plutonium to the nuclear weapons programs.” — Dr. Andreas Toupadakis, former-US government scientist

The inception of the nuclear experimentation era began with a test detonation in a remote area of the Nevada desert on July 16, 1945. Prior to the detonation, indigenous populations were removed from the area and the military moved in. Long before, the area was named Jornada del Muerto Valley, because travelling across the desert valley was so dangerous. Surely this is aptly named location is where humankind began its journey of death — of nuclear self-annihilation. The history that followed has been marred by coverups, contamination and cancer.

Embedded deep within the military industrial complex, the functions of nuclear experimentation are so heinous that death, disease, environmental destruction, risk and secrecy are all standard parts of the nuclear equation, even when things go as planned, and especially so when ‘radiological events’ occur.

Prior to the Trinity detonation, the team of military scientists debated extensively as to whether the reaction from the detonation would cause the Earth’s entire atmosphere to erupt. Ultimately, orders were followed and the detonation happened anyway, since the military industrial complex does not care if it must set fire to the very atmosphere itself, in order to destroy its enemies and create order. This is important to know, for it reveals who was actually in control of nuclear experimentation from outset, and demonstrates that nuclear experimentation destroys our individual rights — including our right to self-defense.

Whether you’re in the blast zone of a nuclear detonation, constantly exposed to the radiation from local nuclear power generation and waste storage experiments, or like all of us, affected by the radioactivity constantly leaking from failed experiments like Fukushima, when it comes to nuclear experimentation, you have no rights. You have no right to self-defense.

Fukushima: The Worst Environmental Disaster in History

    “More than seven years after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis, radioactive water is continuing to flow into the Pacific Ocean from the crippled No. 1 plant at a rate of around 2 billion becquerels a day.” — The Japan Times

    “Cleaning up the Fukushima site remains a massive challenge – and one that we’re going to be reading about for decades, never mind years.” — Richard Black, director of Energy and Climate Intelligence, Tepco

    “It needs to be clear that this problem is not gone, this is not just a local problem. It’s a very major thing… It’s a disaster of unseen proportions. … Tepco, these energy companies haven’t a clue what they’re doing.” — Mycle Schneider, lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report

The Fukushima event is the worst environmental disaster in humankind’s recorded history. It also is a window into the reality of nuclear experimentation. The event continues to remove our inherent ability to defend ourselves, releasing a stew of burning elements that our biology cannot deal with effectively without remediation. The stew is being released directly into the Pacific Ocean. When radioactive elements make contact with ocean water or any water that is not of the highest purity, it reacts and turns into more and more, smaller and smaller pieces. This is where nuclear industrial jive-talkers get the idea that the ocean will dilute Fukushima radiation releases. In fact there is no diluting radiation. In this case, it is more accurately dispersing radiation to every corner of the planet.

And yet who would know? Soon after the Fukushima event Japan enacted the Secrecy Law and since then everything related to Fukushima news is government sanctioned – or else. This is eerily similar to the way the nuclear experiment has operated since its inception, and not so coincidentally is exactly how the US government has approached the subject specifically of and relating to depleted (more accurately, reignited) uranium weapons, and of course nuclear detonation weapons.

It’s very telling though. Militaristic institutions rule by way of controlling information. Democratic institutions work by releasing information.

Nuclear Experimentation is Destroying Our World, and Our Rights.

President Trump recently proposed to further invest in the mine/refine/burn model of power generation, in an attempt to funnel more government money into subsidizing the nuclear and coal power industries. Given the failed six-reactor experiment at Fukushima has in the past 7 years caused unprecedented damage to our natural world, one can only attribute Trump’s support for further nuclear development to his own oligarchical collectivist tendencies and allegiances. To his credit, Trump and the leader of North Korea reportedly met towards peace and reconciliation between North and South Korea, however only nuclear and ballistic capability got them a seat at that table. If there is to be peace, then praise is certainly due. But how much longer should the future of the entire planet be reliant on the responsibility and restraint of nuclear leaders? No-one should have that power.

In addition to a degrading the environment, increasing toxicity; in addition to forcing the abandonment of entire regions; in addition to threatening all life present and future, nuclear experimentation results in less peace, less ability to defend our self and others, less freedom of speech, less individual liberty, more institutional dependence, more militarism, more institutionalized energy, more censorship, and apparently, increased stupidity.

When exposed to radiation people can become lethargic and incapable of forming coherent thoughts, even before being sickened by exposure. Take that truth and stack it on top of the truth that nuclear experimentation developers continue to accumulate nuclear waste, having left problems pertaining to waste disposal to be solved by more intelligent people — sometime in the future. Clearly radiological exposure inhibits our ability to think critically even about radiological exposure itself. But it is obvious the reason we think so little about the damage caused by nuclear experimentation is more because of politically induced apathy, rather than radiation induced stupidity.

When it comes to the nuclear experimentation industry, political steering can be as obvious as the Secrecy Law in Japan, the silence of US media, or the support of US oligarchs for nuclear experimentation programs; or it can be as subtle and deadly as irradiated elements themselves. With so much at stake, the world needs to end the deadly nuclear experiment before it becomes the end of us.

About the author:

Activist, author and Tai Chi teacher Ethan Indigo Smith was born on a farm in Maine and lived in Manhattan for a number of years before migrating west to Mendocino, California. Ethan’s work is both deeply connected and extremely insightful, blending philosophy, politics, activism, spirituality, meditation and a unique sense of humor.

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