Undoubtedly to many, one of the main threats of our age is the existence of nuclear weapons and the proliferation of nuclear arsenals among the powers that be.
Ever since we were children we were taught about the devastation that would come from even a single explosion of this kind, how nature would require millions of years to somehow absorb and overcome the nuclear radiation and how we would irrevocably destroy the basis of our existence if we ever allowed a hot nuclear war to unfold with only a few bombs dropped anywhere on Earth - it would spell our end as humanity. Or so we are told.
Since for once everybody seems to agree that nuclear power is terrible and devastating maybe we ought to ask some audacious child-like questions about the matter... and see what kind of answers we get, if any.
We may disagree with most government narratives, may have seen through a million lies that have negatively affected our lives and that of the people that came before us and may have even vowed to never legitimize these controllers ever again. But then we turn around, listen to the same sources of information for our basic worldview and then simply run with the dystopian story we have been given. A story that is worth a second look before we get too carried away by fear of an invisible enemy...
While the government's "educational efforts" about teaching kids methods like "duck and cover" have been broadly criticized for their "irresponsibility", I seldomly read about people willing to question the whole notion of nuclear weapons as such, something I always thought to be weird - why would nuclear power be exempt from closer inspection at a foundational level?
Wait, what are you saying?
Well before I make any claims or assertions here I want to share this question with you that has been on my mind for many years, and has in hindsight turned out to be my motor for digging a bit deeper into this topic. The question I have always asked myself about nuclear weapons and radiation is as simple as it is relevant even today:
If the explosion of nuclear weapons is such a life ender and literal poison to the ecosphere for millions of years to come... how is there anything going on at all in places like Hiroshima and Nagasaki today?
Have you ever asked yourself that?
I remember being amazed when I found out that there are somehow people living in those places today, not a century after the supposed radiation bombs have been dropped. I wondered how that would be possible if nuclear radiation were indeed the menace to biological health of organisms and the environment we have been led to believe it is? Don't forget, we are told that nuclear radiation destroys cells of living things for generations to come - all living things.
The reaction of people was a real hint that something more was going on here when I first asked this in school: Nobody really seemed to care about the question. Not my teacher, nor the other students in class... Some people were quick to offer ideas how this could potentially be possible, and I gotta say none of them convinced me one bit maybe because they didn't believe the reason themselves and just wanted to justify the story all of us already knew...
I had issues with the cognitive dissonance in looking at this technology in a specific authority-sanctioned way - namely that nuclear bombs were the most devastating weapon humanity had ever devised that can permanently contaminate an area to such an extreme degree that no life would thrive here again in the next million years or more... and then to turn around and not become sceptical when a student asks how there is anything going on in those former bombing locations in Japan mere decades later...
If radiation permeates and destroys all living cells with an incredibly large halflife span, then how does nobody have the same question about Hiroshima and Nagasaki where people actually live, go to restaurants and raise their children today?
But my fellow students didn't really care to dive deeper and the topic was dropped. Looking back I think that is the first time that this area of inquiry became interesting to me - obvious questions with insufficiently-reasonable answers. If this is such a threat, how is life thriving there? How is any animal life coping, not to mention all the people going about their daily business as if nothing major had ever occured here?
My questions didn't really stop there though. I found out rather recently that Chernobyl is apparently a place where nature flourishes as well. Yeah I know, I know, how can that be right when we have all those "measurements" of radiation... Well, take a look at some pictures and videos showing this place that humanity has allegedly poisoned for millions of years to come no 30 years ago... And then tell me this looks like a poisoned forest if you compare it to any "non-radiation" forest you have ever seen...
Or what about the most recent "disaster" on our minds, the meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi? Do you really think an ecologically interlocked system (nature) would look as healthy and flourishing not a decade after the event? I have a really hard time accepting that this area is somehow completely unfit for life, and showing me Geiger counters and red markings on maps somehow are not enough to disctract from the simple fact that nature thrives here where all the humans have left. And that nature doesn't really seem to care about human's radiation measurements and radiation thresholds...
We will probably look a bit deeper into this topic in the future as there are some really interesting points to be uncovered about the history of nuclear power and how it has been utilized to further a certain agenda, something that really surprised me and that wants to be considered. But I figured it may be prudent to simply start with the question about the discrepancy between the affected environment we expected to find, and the actual environment that is observable and in stark contrast to mainstream science's predictions about the degree of biological devastation.
Maybe the purpose of these technologies is something else altogether...
Since the system offers explanations for anything there are of course attempts to explain this away for the one kid who does ask the question. Highly dogmatic attempts. But we will leave that be for now and explore those in the next part of this miniseries, I am tempted to leave the debate open as long as possible here.
So let me ask you: Do you find this discrepancy weird? Were your surprised at all to see nature in these places thrive so short after a big disaster? Can you find an answer that satisfies your curiosity from the get-go or does the question start to nag? I would be thrilled to collect the best ideas that attempt to explain this away and will share them in the next part of this mini-series.
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