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Sunday,Mar 26 2006, 04:49:07 AMTHE FACT THAT THERE IS NO HOPE IS THE ONLY HOPE TH
THE FACT THAT THERE IS NO HOPE IS THE ONLY HOPE THERE IS
by Clifford Latta 03/06
When, or if, those who attempt to control human events realize how perilous our situation is then, perhaps, they can begin a dialogue that might, from utter despair, give us some hope. It now appears, to almost everyone everywhere, that the human race is doomed.
Among the many potential disasters, too numerous to mention, is the fabled 'China Syndrom'. When the radioactive rods, in a nuclear energy plant, are exposed to the air, which happens if the water covering the rods is, for whatever reason, not there, the heat from the rods will melt through the ten or twenty or fifty feet of concrete beneath them and continue melting through the earth until they reach magma or water. We know what happens when the radioactive rods hit a water table; the water will turn to radioactive steam which will explode up through the hole and shoot straight up to the stratosphere where the radioactivity will circle the earth on winds of four or five hundred miles an hour. That is a 'China Syndrom'. If it happened it China it would be, of course, an 'America Syndrom'.
There are now many hundreds of atomic energy plants producing electricity around the world for the energy needs that come with demanding masses...with many, many hundreds (someday, if we last that long, there will be many, many thousands) of plants being built or planned.
China has plants that build atomic energy plants.
The inevitable China/America Syndrom disaster comes automatically with any societal disruption great enough to prevent the application of the 'precise' technology, at every single plant, that is required to 'keep it all going' and it must be kept going forever...or for 6,500 years, which ever comes first. Plutonium-240, the radioactive material used in most reactors has a half life of 6,500 years.
If one considers the fact that civilizationis have always come and gone...waxing and waning. No more! Homo Sapiens have been on this earth for about 50,000 years...Platonium, a man-made radioactive material, has a half life of 81 million years. The U.S. govenment has about 90 tons of Plutonium stashed in a dozen places around the country. Among the countries in the nuclear family there is hundreds and hundreds of tons of Plutonium stashed under all sorts of circumstancs. Plutonium-239, the radiactive materials used in most bombs has a half life of 24,000 years.
Plutonium-238, the type of radioactive material used in commercial and medical applications, has a half life of 88 years. There is so much Plutonium-238 type materials in use and storage that there is simply no way to estimate how much of it there actually is. This is the material from which monstrous dirty bombs can easily be made.
Over the face of our planet, with its ever shifting geography and demographics, China/America Syndrom time bombs wait...waiting for a major societal disruption. In a dire situation, perhaps sometimes before 'dire', the personnel at one or two or twenty or two hundred atomic energy plants might, in an attempt to save their families, fail their duty. Or, perhaps, one person or fifty people might breach security and intentionally cause a melt down. Wherever, whenever for whatever reason such an event might occur the rest of the world must be prepared to step in and keep the rods covered with water. It's that simple: We humans must be prepared to enter 'problem' areas, regardless of the problem, to keep the radioactive rods covered with water. If we fail more than a couple of times, and that includes accidents, during the next many tens of thousands of years the resulting China/America Syndrom will begin a predictable series of events that will lead to the utter destruction of all life on this planet. Our planet will become a sizzling hot, glowing, radioactive, atomic energy source. I've written a short story called "Glowing Planets" about our planet being part of a hugely bigger, other dimensional being's battery to run his kid's 'Zingplastorbuff', you know, the one with the retractable 'jibber'. "OOPS, there goes another hundred, million, billion, trillion, quadrillion planets into atomic melt-down..." And the Ohm meter goes up and the Zingplastorbuff merrily qweedizzles away.
The End...really.