Web-based truths obligate us to prepare

There seem to be two takes on the response to the fallout. One says that there's an ongoing leak and the risk must be acknowledged. Another, held by the docile Americans, holds that what the government tells us about fallout means we don't have to do anything to react.

Well, the question of fallout is an objective one: there either is or isn't a direct risk. Now if there's a direct risk, some could argue it may not require taking precautions, being that the risk is too low. That assessment of the risk should be the result of objective analysis of all relevant facts, and presume a worst case scenario.

In the Internet age, if government simply says there's no risk, people are bound to question authority. While there've been plenty of good reasons to distrust the mainstream media, this in itself is NOT proof that a conspiracy is afoot. The media may just be parroting what the government tells them.

Complaints have been lodged that there is a mainstream media blackout over the impact of the leak. One theory would have us believe that the media blackout (or tone-down) is a cooperative effort by GE, which owns NBC-MSNBC with Comcast. This concept has added weight considering the Fukushima plant was built by GE on a GE design.

Not so much now--with the Libya story asserting itself--but earlier, CNN and Anderson Cooper were far more involved in the radioactive leak story, going as far as to stand among Tokyo skyscrapers with a handheld radiation meter.

Since Libya, the mainstream media has been distracted away from Japan. The nuclear incident seems to have been buried with tsunami rubble--a tragedy but one that's ended, whose time is passed. I wonder sometimes if Libya isn't a synthetic controversy meant to distract the American public from the radiation over their heads.

Unfortunately we can't assume the danger is passed here in the U.S., despite what our leaders tell us. The real story is actually how little government will do.

This lack of information makes us vulnerable. More than in the past, I'm roused by the need to provide the missing information. This is a instinct, I guess, that motivates me to write specifically for the Web. People will find out the truth, which can lead them to do the right things, saving future suffering.

The need to take action should at some point exceed the need to get accurate information, a function provided through the Web better than through other media. Yet as valuable as the Web is, it doesn't do the work. Many take no action on what they learn on the Web although the numbers who rely on it are growing. The recent Fukushima event has many pondering the effects; those with access to the Web are typically more aware of the situation.

Like the poor people who took to the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon leaked, what you don't know can kill you. Corexit 9500 dispersant made swimming treacherous. I've read stories of swimmers and recreational water users contracting what appears to be chemical poisoning and burns. For more see my envirosite articles on the spill from last year.

Anyway, information is only so valuable. Taking action is the key to this disaster. Whereas people in the Gulf could move away, or stay off the water, we can't avoid downwind radiation. Now as small as the risk may be, it's the absence of information coming out of our government that rightfully scares us.

This post actually began as a comment on the U.S. government response to Fukushima at OpEdNews.com titled, "Only fact is we are on our own." I cross-posted a recent article there on the Fukushima leaks from my enviro-site (link below.)

~start comment~
"I wrote on the radiation at OpEdNews before (here and here) agree there's a cover-up in play, and that the fallout posed a bigger threat than was being explained in the corporate media.

Just how bad is the radioactive fallout? We know there's some out there, but unless we have our own Geiger counter, how are we to know what's irradiating us?

This lack of information makes us vulnerable. As individuals, it would appear there is little we can do. Even most libertarians would accept that nuclear accidents are not solvable (nor preventable) by individuals but rather a responsibility of the state.

[To quote the author...]"Yet the administration has not provided us with a national supply of KI, or guidance for using it."

I agree with the urgency of the author's message. Nuclear accidents are a disaster that the people are very much forced to depend on government. 

As those resources are stretched--and cuts in budgets add up--I think we owe it to our families to be better prepared.

If there was a silver lining to Katrina, it was to give Americans a preview of what to expect in the event of a widespread disaster. Inadequate responses are to be expected. We can complain rightfully, that gov't has a responsibility but if it lacks the capacity to react, the accident moves on to "disaster status."

I think the Deepwater Horizon typified this helplessness. Let the maintenance degrade, let the regulators get "captured" by Big Oil hookers and free drugs and a crisis is inevitable. Same with cutting banking regs.

The inadequacy of the Fedgov response is an opportunity for the private sector. Naomi Klein has called this "disaster capitalism."

I've heard that with nukes, power companies must make some safety shortcuts in order to be profitable. In other words, if they do everything they can to make nukes safe, then they'll lose money. That's hardly a bullish indicator for this industry.

While the Deepwater was doomed due to profit motive, I guesss Fukushima was destined to fail based on the proximity to the ocean."
~End Comment~

Just how quickly would the government response degrade? First, there's the sheer number of incidents to manage in a disaster. Communication problems abound. In 9-11, we saw a failure to coordinate radio frequency and provide the right equipment to emergency response personnel.

Then there are people who are completely unprepared. They may not anticipate a crisis nor its combined effect. Elderly loosing medicine, for instance. Or tourists and the such, who can't evacuate. For more on the "golden horde," see the survivalist perspective below.

Much of the deterioration in the response can be attributed to human error in making bad decisions. For instance, people might stay to try and weather a hurricane, then back out and request assistance.

Or it could be like hundreds of motorists stranded on Lake Shore Drive in a recent snowstorm. They were explicitly to stay off the road but used it anyway.


Like other recent tragedies, there's now a sustained pattern of government neglect. I'm not going as far as to say there's a conspiracy afoot, but the bankers' bailout in 2008 showed, that given the right level of political influence in Washington, the private sector could exploit any tragedy. Nuclear leaks may be too politically unattractive, compared to post-war reconstruction, for instance. There's nothing good created out of protection, little to show for the vast expenses.

I would argue that we the people have a right to know the threat posed by the leaks. If people don't prepare, then they choose to trust their government.

Cynicism is well-placed. By not trusting the Official Explanation (whatever the crisis), we're more prone towards self-sufficiency, which has become something of a lost art in America.

Many of us simply don't have the stamina to raise our own food, store enough properly, and handle the physical end of a homestead-type existence. So we've become dependent on our roads, our sewers, our way of life can't sustain itself without cheap fuel. We've grown accustomed to having anything we want available to buy. Without power, or our credit cards, we're made mostly powerless.

The corollary of being dependent is to put trust into government to provide for us what we can't for ourselves. In times of crisis, this faith is misplaced. As systems on which we've grown to rely break down, we're bound to find ourselves dealing with a new reality.

Of course a energy crisis alone can't end America, it can end American as we know it, what survivalists might call TEOTWAKI: the end of the world as we know it. Rather than a deconstruction, the lifestyle would shift towards a simpler existence, marked with hard physical work for many. Rather than base our existence on the automobile alone, we'd be drawn to more primitive forms of transportation. Economic might similarly depart from traditional definitions as mechanisms like barter and alternative currencies--like work-for-time credit--replace a fiat currency decimated by overspending.

Now many of us wouldn't choose a frontier lifestyle. Not of our own free will at least. People would more likely sit around and wait for someone else to serve their problems. Some things would change but remain. Commerce/trade would persist into what some might call the End Times, kind of like the movie Eli, which I reviewed here last year.

I think the Mad Max series of movies typifies the kind of societal breakdown that could occur. We'd go from a system of justice to a society that's at the mercy of its own fragility. At this first stage, police would find themselves outnumbered by gangs. We're seeing this along the Mexican American border--no one wants to oppose the gangs.

The next stage is a more thorough decapitation of society. Authority wouldn't flow from the top-down but rather by those with the most power, who use it to increase their strength and popularity largely at the expense of weaker groups and the disorganized. Small feudal groups grapple with each other for control of dwindling resources.

The we get to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, where a twisted form of order is established. In some ways we can see the seeds of our future self-destruction in the rudimentary reestablishment of that society. Fights are settled in an enclosed arena, where the bloodthirsty madness of the group turns even the mentally handicapped into objects of public sport.

Yes, we've regained some stability by that time, but the society is simply too warped to be worth saving, again, from self-destruction. What fell off the wall can't be put back together again. Or can it? Should it be saved, or will a better one come of the former's destruction? Popular support sides with optimism, for instance at the end of the movie Eli, where historians assemble knowledge lost during the apocalypse.

Whatever the final outcome, it's a scary thought to consider the enormous suffering that accompanies a End Times-like event. Mind you that I'm not saying we're in the End Times, but rather than apocryphal literature and perspectives created in popular fiction may turn out to be accurate in some respects. In our age, End Times fantasy offers relief, a form of entertainment.

Instead of ignoring any possibility of risk (and thereby justify the lazy approach to do nothing about it), it's better to prepare for something bad to happen. The alternative is to accept what happens to you, like the half million Japanese in refugee camps. And if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. Sure, there may not be a fault line where you life, but nuclear plants can leak, even far away.

A big downside of preparing is dealing with those who haven't prepared. I find the survivalist perspective entertaining in this regard. Yes, it does dehumanize the golden horde--not unlike a zombie shooter--but I guess this is the price that must be paid to keep yourself safe...or so they believe.
The original article by Brian T. at survivalblog.com explains:

"Misconception number five:  Needy hungry hordes will come from town.  Not likely, when local resources (read: booze and junk food), and the aid from whatever governmental response is exhausted they will do nothing.  By nothing I mean nothing that need concern you. They will sit in a refugee center or at home and pass the time playing cards, talking but essentially just waiting. Certainly the burning and looting that started seconds after the beginning of the event will increase until there is nothing left to burn or steal.  When food and clean bedding all run out they are not likely to walk out of town any more then than before. They are weaker by that time and as out of shape as most of us. They have rarely walked any distance at all in their adult lives and are unlikely to start now. The biggest reason is that they are psychologically predisposed, brainwashed, to wait for rescue and will stay in town.  It is easier to wait and thus easier to make hunger somebody else’s problem. With no gas and no desire to do any tiresome walking means you are not going to see many if any at your BOL(Bug Out Location.)  Most will sit and if they move at all they will head for another urban area rumored to be better, particularly if they are being trucked there by the National Guard or other entity..."

I'm not a survivalist nor ascribe to this opinion, but with so many real life horror stories, who can afford to ignore this zombification theme? On the other hand, I've been reading that interpersonal relations will become more necessary during End Times. Your life could depend on that doctor you know, or your replenishing food supply, or just in making a mutual support society in order to deal with the many issues of that period.

At the very least, those who've put in the work required to protect themselves can enjoy the benefits. The unprepared meanwhile will be like locusts, hungry and desperate. I read the following from a recent article on a survivalist site:

"the "golden hoards" actually are...your friends, family and unprepared next door neighbors and theirs, and theirs, and theirs. They will be the ones at your doorstep, if they know you have food and other supplies.
Can you turn them away? Will you shoot them if they won't leave? Will you risk sacrificing the lives of your family by joining the rest of the lemmings in the G.O.O.D. traffic jam? These are the big questions that need to be dealt with by those who are conditioning their minds for the realities of such events."

We don't see this deterioration in Japan. Survivalists would argue that's only because the response can be sustained for so long and that government-provided resources will quickly run out in a real crisis.

I saw this comment by Pogue on a post about the tsunami which exposes the schadenfreude some preppers might feel when crisis hits the unprepared:
"I love watching people panic over nothing. Ever notice how bad people freak out over a winter storm? They get the survival french toast makings (eggs, milk, bread) and go nuts. And ever see how many people wait until the last minute to evacuate ahead of a hurricane they’ve known about for a week. A disaster in the US would see total chaos. Hell, when Homestead was flattened in 1993, the people there rioted when the USG didn’t rescue them within 24 hours."
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Movie Review: The Road and Book of Eli

Warning: This post contains plot spoilers for these movies

These two movies depict a future America a state phrased by survivalblog.com as TETWAWKI, The End of the World as We Know it.

I was struck by the dreary, stunning yet foreboding imagery of The Road. The Road stars Viggo Mortensen, who reduces his weight precipitously to play the role. He escorts his son along a road to some hopefully better place.

In one scene, Mortensen's character swims out into the sea to scavenge a cracked up old rusty freighter. The blue-gray (always gray) waters are rough, surprisingly so for a completely naked Mortensen to swim to in a real world way. His low body weight must've made the scene hard to shoot, and dangerous.

We're not exactly sure what's caused the apocalyptic North America in The Road. Earthquakes and forest fires create a scorched out landscape, which is caught in Director John Hillcoat's cameras as a gray, soggy existence. Food isn't found; nothing is growing, nothing alive at least. (A beetle emerges in a later scene, an indicator that perhaps the Earth is recovering.) The only breathing things appear to be the humans themselves, who are scurrying around the wasteland looking to feed on anything whose path they cross.

As the pair go down the road to some undefined location, they encounter all sorts of unpleasantries--foremost among them, cannibalism. Starvation on an epic scale justifies the smorgasbord of human flesh.

In The Road, a heavily disguised Robers Duvall plays a small role as an almost Kurosawa-type/Taoist old-man-walking-alone role. Blind, of course, Duvall's character can see into the past and future like some itinerant sage. He represents both what the world was, and what it will be. I guess Mortensen and his son are striving to escape Duvall's fate but need to embrace the old man, to learn from the past mistakes of humankind, to not go back, or along The road. They leave it and its many dangers soon after.

In Denzel Washington's Book of Eli, America is a far different kind of place, though in both movies, cannibalism and lawlessness rule, although Gary Oldman, playing the evil Carnegie, does organize a town providing water, security, and barter.

Barter becomes the chief means of trading, just like we saw in Mel Gibson's Mad Max series, which has become the granddaddy of this expanding genre. The first stage in all these dystopia/post-apocalyptic movies is a breakdown of order--what I call Mad Max Level One--then the rise of gangs, graduating through to reestablishment of order, the rebirth of small towns like the aptly named Bartertown. In Eli, Carnegie takes the place of Tina Turner's Aunty Entity ruling over his private domain.

Eli's style contrasts with Mortensen's. Eli is a hardy adventurer-turned-crusader/guardian of The Book. At some previous point, Eli had received a message from the Holy Spirit that he was to take the Holy Book to the west, and his enemies would part before him, or something like that, clearing the route for Eli down the road to salvation and rebirth.

An atmosphere of fear plagues The Road, while Denzel rises above it like some superhero invulnerable to the many evildoers plaguing the post-apocalyptic world. Mortensen is anything but the hero, hiding and scampering and only reluctantly killing. He retains his humanity--perhaps because of his son--even as he slowly dies from injury and starvation. Eli never dips below his moral principles, which have come to him in a supernatural (believers would call it "divinely inspired") way.

Mortensen's character seems more possessed with simple survival, scampering away even from a stocked shelter out of fear when he hears scampering above. Which survival methodology is more probable? Well, Mortensen's is realistic, while Denzel's is pure Hollywood.

I was struck by similarities in The Book of Eli's world and the popular computer game series Fallout. Both have nuclear war as the force majeure causing TETWAWKI. In scorched out flatlands we see craters caused by nuclear warheads pockmarking the ground.

Radiation doesn't seem to plague the survivors much in Denzel's world, which is one where the Holy Bible has becomes a much-treasured item sought by Oldman's dark hero Carnegie to control minds and exert power. The Bible, you see, is blamed for much of the destruction, and every last copy burned by survivors of the Holocaust. Implausible though it might seem, the Bible that Eli (Denzel) carries is the last in the world. {Personally I found this premise unlikely considering 1), the number of Bibles in use today, and 2) the value of the Bible as a source of spiritual strength, which would be more in demand after than before the apocalypse.}

The Road is scary because we don't know how much time passes between the beginning of the crisis, which begins softly, as Mortensen draws the blinds against a nighttime sky lit red with fire, and the time he and his son leave on the road. In The Book of Eli, a whole new generation comes of age, referring to Eli and Carnegie as "old timers," who are a shrinking group.

The Road makes the impending trip a scary but unavoidable tragedy-simply for lack of food they must travel the dangerous road. Some time into the calamity, the wife of the man--we don't learn the name of Mortensen's character, nor hers--played by the beautiful Charlize Theron can't handle the gloom and wanders off into it.

The Road is the darker of the two. You leave the film in a bit of a downer. I guess it's the cannibalism, or to be more accurate, the dark symbolic imagery of cannibalism, the skulls on stakes here, the human captives locked in the basement, the cold callousness of tortured calls felt as much as heard when Mortensen and his son wait out in the dark, nearly becoming captives themselves.

It hit me after the film that it's cannibalism rising in such a world that bothers you. In Book of Eli, cannibalism is brought up slyly, with dark humor: a couple invites Eli and Solara into their house, serving them tea in a shaking-like-a-leaf-if-there-were-any- left way, which is apparently a symptom of some disease I'd never heard of before where you eat too much lean, red meat. I guess if the cannibals could only devour hungry humans, their meal items would likely be starving as well as provide a food source lacking much fat.

In the Book of Eli, Eli is checked for shaking hands by a guard at the entrance to Carnegie's town, demonstrating that cannibalism was reviled even by the robbers and rapists who frequented the town. In this regard, Hughes' world reconciles itself to ours a little more; the instincts of the townspeople are still humanist at their core, despite all the inherent post-apocalyspe divisiveness and individualist nature of survivalism.

Hope, the greatest treasure

If the sole purpose of these movies were to warn, they'd have done that excellently, at perhaps the price of a depressive experience for the reader/viewer. Instead Hillcoat and Eli's Hughes push a ray of optimism into the inherently dark backdrop--if not for the characters trudging through the wasteland, then their offspring and followers (in the case of Book of Eli, it's the pretty yet overly-self-confident-for-such-a-time-and-place Solara, played by Mila Kunis.)

Both movies do cradle hope at their core.Like any dystopia movies, expressed vividly are the uglinesses of the post-apocalyptic world. More subtle, yet beckoning, are the little glimpses into a future less stained by violence and destruction, a world where reconciliation is possible.

In The Book of Eli, the Bible ends up getting delivered to Alcatraz Island, where a small but committed team of re-constructionists attempt to assemble the knowledge lost from the pre-apocalyptic world. It's an effort at re-humanization we can all appreciate.

I saw on a Discovery special not too long ago about what would happen during times of starvation. Apparently people have been documented traveling vast distances as they starve. Often spiritual leaders arise who promise to lead "their people" to a "promised land." We know also that extreme hunger can cause delirium, hallucinations, and the like. So the notion of a long-distance march may be quite plausible in a dystopic environment, especially one driven by mystical or religious experience.

Some inner motor must lead us on, blindly during these times of starvation. In that sense the Exodus-like wanderings are a demonstration of faith, the inner experience of belief in hope. Instead of confined to the spiritual world, our physical longings are brought to reality through the unifying event, the Apocalypse, and all the woes it spawns--including of course hope in the infallibility of Nature and faith in our fellow man.

Dark future fantasies

I've always been a fan of movies like The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. In that movie, Heston is the sole surviving human immune from a virus, at least he thinks so until discovering others like him. One aspect of these kinds of movies are the circumstances under which these scenarios which could occur, and how the concordant dystopia would unfold, or society unravel: "how did we get there." We think of these thinks mostly to prevent them, I guess, or perhaps better cope with them should they happen, though how someone will react is anyone's guess.

Trying to determine a time that TETWAWKI occurs has become can be a bit of a challenge. I guess when law and order break down, and laws can no longer be enforced, we've entered Mad Max Level One. Gangs will rise in such an environment. Interestingly, we don't need an apocalypse to cause TETWAWKI; nor do we need a nuclear winter nor zombie/vampire takeover to start the dystopia ball rolling. TETWAWKI is a subjective experience: a child leaving their home could mean and an end to all their expectation of the world outside--if it's limited to that. We've had plenty hells on earth; they need not require much space at all--heck a serial killer's basement could provide the setting.

Once started, the dystopia ball gets rolling, and further acts of depravity increase as civilization breaks down. This is the lesson of both movies, the dark specter of fear that colors the stories in each. We cringe at the the thought of losing what we hold dear: it's a threatening notion that strikes us on a personal level. It's not so much the actual apocalypse that gets us, and provides a compelling story line, but the shocking realities that ensue. We enter these movies not as voluntary Mary Poppins-style wanderers down the Yellow Brick Road of endless smiles but instead are pulled, dragged...unwilling prisoners to the dark side of our nature.

The idea of dystopia makes for good entertainment precisely because we want to see--deep down inside of some repressed part of ourselves--Nature exact some vengeance. George Carlin sums it upped magnificently in his video clip (from 3m15sec on), Saving the Planet as well as in his HBO special, Life Worth Losing, unavailable on youtube at the moment. People are drawn to natural disasters because they want to experience their mortality, or to contradict the arrogant notion that people are masters of their universe. Floods and calamities are Nature's way of getting back, or so Carlin iterated.

Deep down inside, we may all dread yet almost expect calamity to strike. Disaster films have grown more popular with scenarios of global warming, asteroid collisions, and similar issues, some of which humanity can endure. It's the purpose of a movie to entertain, so rare it is to see a movie where all the humans die off...I can't think of any titles. The Road comes close to killing all hope as you develop a personal attachment to the survivors. It's hard to wish anyone dead, but dying is a typical condition in a post-apocalyptic world. The movie 2012, which I saw recently as well, echoes the theme of worldwide calamity, yet even there Africa survives even if America doesn't.

The 70s saw a jolt of these movies: Airport7_, The Poseidon Adventure, etc. (see a list of here, about halfway down.) The idea of getting wiped out en masse has been central to entertainment for some time.

Perhaps there's some auto-response in our brains that let's us accept death, should it come through some wild event affecting us all simultaneously. Maybe the shock of the attack releases a surge of serotinin or some naturally biological response takes over, kind of like what's thought to happen to animals killed and eaten alive on the African savannah. Observing these victims in their death throes, the animals often seem quite docile despite what must be an immense desire to flail and kick.

Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) References:

The Book of Eli

The Road

The Omega Man

Complete synopses for the movies are available at all links.

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