How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Plutonium
May 11, 1969 was Mother's Day. I am sure we attended church and later celebrated at our home in Arvada, Colorado. My brother would be celebrating his third birthday on May 14. And I was a month a away from being six.
On Sunday afternoons we typically played outside in the back yard. I remember my Mom had a clothesline that we had to avoid as we ran around. We also had a sandbox. At about 2:00 P.M. that day the worst nuclear accident in American history occurred at the Rocky Flats plant that was just West of our home.
Recent picture of my Mother in front of our old house in Arvada, Colorado (taken in 2012)
My mother has fought cancer for many years
Of course, we had no idea at the time. But a fire broke out in the plant and a stream of plutonium drifted over our neighborhood.
Pattern of the plutonium exposure
Our house was in the middle of the bright red area
Rocky Flats was a top secret nuclear trigger facility in the 1950s and 1960s. As such, most people were not even aware of the purpose of that facility. Even many workers had no idea what was done. This was at the height of the Cold War.
As this was all secret, the radiation leak was not made public. No evacuation occurred. And the government assured everyone that everything was under control. It was only later due to FBI investigations that the scope of the cover-up was reveled.
Many kids in the neighborhood developed cancer at a frightening rate. I remember my pet cat died of cancer a year later. Of course, none of us were aware that we were exposed to a plutonium leak. National Security and stuff.
A lady who was my neighbor at the time has written a book about the subject. It is interesting how this deadly incident is still relatively unknown. But this is not a theoretical story to me. I lived through it with my family. We were at ground zero.
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/12/154839592/under-the-nuclear-shadow-of-colorados-rocky-flats
Is the government paying for you (or your mother and brother) to have follow-up health care? I have a relative who works at Los Alamos National Labs and they do pay for this for him.
ReplyDeleteBTW, he has nothing to do with anything nuclear. A lot of the people who work at LANL like to joke that, “they do not work with nuclear weapons, they work with the dangerous stuff.” I get the impression that big nuclear weapons are not really made any more, but that they do have things just as deadly. The preference is for weapons that can be targeted more accurately. The desire is to target people only in a certain area or even only in a certain building, or to target only members of a certain group. The group they were working on a couple of decades ago was Whites (Jews and mixed race people were supposed to be spared). I do not know if they ever got anywhere with this. Since there are a lot of shared genetics, I would guess it would not be an easy task. Then biological warfare research was shut down (except for defensive purposes) in the U.S. There are rumors that it still goes on elsewhere, most notably in Israel and China. Targeting people and not “infrastructure” is considered desirable as is targeting infrastructure but not people.
Things are definitely kept secret not only to keep weapons info from being generally known, but to keep the American people from being upset. Some of the most sensitive information is how much various things cost and how often a project malfunctions or is just cancelled before getting anywhere. Think boondoggles galore times decades!
As you imply, the goal is not to “protect America” as the immigration situation clearly shows. Among the various contractors the goal is to get funding for this or that project thus keeping one’s company (or one’s group of engineers) well paid. The goals of the funding source (the U.S. government) as opposed to the funding recipients can be seen by anyone with open eyes and a functioning brain. Thanks for pointing some of these goeals out in your broadcasts!
Anyway, I hope you get frequent check-ups and remain in good health!
Another great vid from RamZpaul. Thanks.
DeleteThe biggest threat to the people of any country is their own government. Your Founding Fathers new this only too well when they advocated a well-armed people's militia instead of a government controlled standing army.
PS: Always knew RamZpaul was weapons-grade :)
Plutonium is good for you. Smoking is bad for you.
ReplyDeleteBeware the military industrial complex not those guys over there.
Diversity is our strength. Decadence is progress.
War is peace. Be all you can be. You are not special.
Ok I'm just going to call the coincidental timing of my conversion to conservatism with an armed robbery on my house a pure coincidence.
ReplyDeleteGreat vid