Editor,
Imagine yourself in Japan — now.
Imagine you have survived the earthquake and tsunami. You have lost everything. You know you were luckier than those unknown thousands who perished. What is left of you is not just your naked life, but what is dearest to you — the life of your children.
Yet, reality is brutal and merciless. You are forced to realize there is no time to recover from the devastating shock and horror. There may, in fact, never be time at all as you knew it. Another catastrophe, far bigger than the first two combined, looms.
It’s happening right now before your eyes — with no end in sight.
Its magnitude is immeasurable, unimaginable to your limited mind. How can one think thousands of years ahead of time if this lifetime, the immediate future, is uncertain? Radioactive particles have already reached North America. Soon they will reach Europe and Russia.
You are told to wash off the nuclear rain from your skin. But there is no water to wash it off with. Meltdown and explosions have contaminated tap and groundwater. Even the ocean shows signs of contamination.
You are hungry and thirsty. Your children are crying. You are tempted to eat. You are tempted to feed your children — despite the warnings against radioactive milk and vegetables. Your youngest child has lost his appetite, lost his love for life.
Here you wake up from your nightmare. No, you are not in Japan. You are in the United States. You are relieved. You are lulled into a sense of security as the politicians swear such a disaster would never happen here.
Yet, the nightmare is real. Not for you. Not yet. But it will, eventually. It’s already happening. Radioactivity knows no borders.
“It can’t happen here!” — that is exactly what Japanese officials said.
They were so self-assured in their convenient and lucrative lies that Tokyo Electric Power Company faked and falsified regular controls. Why could, why should this not happen here? Because it must not happen here? Every man-made catastrophe won’t happen, until it will happen, because it can happen.
Imagine Fukushima-Daiichi in California. You live a catastrophe of a different category: The U.S. without California … California without its people.
You refuse to contemplate this possibility. You deny the actual reality in Japan. Multiply Fukushima by a simple factor for this planet. Humanity is without a world and the world without people. Radioactivity is the end of history.
There is not even an afterlife with the half-life of some of these isotopes.
Bribed politicians dispel this scenario as nonsense. They are accustomed to making false promises to please corporate donors who profit from these risks.
We need an Egyptian uprising to convert the politicians to the truth of this reality.
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If they refuse, replace them. Fukushima must mean the immediate end of nuclear power, in Los Alamos, in New Mexico, in the U.S. and the planet.
This must be our religion, our philosophy, our spirituality, our whole life. Life depends on it. Remember, you just woke up from this nightmare, but only so that you can act on it. Convert your life to this struggle within the limits of your means and abilities.
Then push those limits. You may not get a second chance.
Joachim L. Oberst
UNM faculty
