Bikini Atoll
I received an email from a friend this morning. The email was a request for a emergency response of sorts. I was urged to email my legislative Representative in Springfield to register my desire that he vote “no” today on a Bill that entails a 5 billion in tax hike. A take hike of this magnitude will be equivalent to a nuclear detonation to the daily livelihoods of ordinary citizens. So much value will be taken from earnings, that the pulse of the body politic is bound to flat-line.
I thought of a Nat Geo special that I recently viewed on the nuclear testing by our nation at the end of WWII in the South Pacific. Even today the soil and living organisms of Bikini Atoll are so contaminated with cesium 137 as to be uninhabitable.
The nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll program was a series of 23 nuclear devices detonated by the United States between 1946 and 1958 at seven test sites on the reef itself, on the sea, in the air and underwater. The test weapons produced a combined fission yield of 42.2 Mt of explosive power.
The United States was engaged in a Cold War Nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union to build bigger and better bombs from 1946 until 1992. The first series of tests over Bikini Atoll in July 1946 was code named Operation Crossroads. The first test was dropped from an aircraft and detonated 520 feet (158 m) above the target fleet. The second, Baker, was suspending under a barge. It produced a large Wilson cloud and contaminated all of the target ships. Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, the longest-serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, called the second test “the world’s first nuclear disaster.”[4]
The second series of tests in 1954 was code named Operation Castle. The first detonation, Castle Bravo, was a new design utilizing a dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb. It was detonated at dawn on March 1, 1954. Scientists miscalculated and the 15 megaton nuclear explosion far exceeded the expected yield of 4 to 8 megatons (6Mt predicted), and was about 1,000 times more powerful than each of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The scientists and military authorities were shocked by the size of the explosion and many of the instruments they had put in place to evaluate the effectiveness of the device were destroyed.
The military authorities and scientists had promised the Bikini Atoll’s native residents that they would be able to return home after the nuclear tests. A majority of the island’s family heads agreed to leave the island, and most of the residents were moved to the Rongerik Atoll and later to Kili Island. Both locations proved unsuitable to sustaining life, resulting in starvation and requiring the residents to receive ongoing aid.
–Wikipedia
It seems to me that “miscalculation” is a fair summation of human history.
Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.
Gospel of Luke chapter 23 verse 34
2 thoughts on “Bikini Atoll”
During the work on the Manhattan Project there were a number of scientists who were truly uncertain as to whether or not the chain reaction set off by detonation of the first nuclear test might not go completely out of control and turn the earth into another, smaller sun. Our sun (as are all stars) is a nuclear reactor where matter is constantly being converted into energy. What this means is that humanity felt it was worth the risk to create a weapon that had the potential of completely destroying the earth. I view this as another sign of our species’ self-destructive tendency. Whether it is thermo-nuclear war, over use of antibiotics, global warming, polluting the seas or depleting the ozone layer, we are constantly finding new ways to potentially eradicate humanity and everything else in the process. The bottom line is that nature will eventually reclaim the earth and in the end we will barely be a footnote. The really sad part of this is that it doesn’t have to be this way, but our narcissism is our ultimate Achilles heal and there doesn’t seem to any way around that character flaw.
Only one hopeful thought comes to mind. When a hazard is recognized, that is the first step in altering our customary behavior.