The alternative to my nuclear Ark
Posted on 05/30/2002 4:53:41 PM PDT by mhking
[ FRIDAY, MAY 31, 2002 2:24:25 AM ]
SONIA JABBAR
Somebody, please build me an Ark. It should be large and capacious, able to accommodate not only my family and friends and the chance acquaintance, but also the neem and gulmohur trees in front of my house, a pair of Indian elephants, Bengal tigers, Himalayan bulbuls and rose-ringed parakeets, my books and CDs, my dogs, my friends’ dogs, and any other sentient being on this subcontinent wishing to leave.
I don’t particularly want to sail away from my beloved land, but at this juncture the alternative on offer doesn’t really inspire confidence.
Amid the sabre-rattling, the battle cries and the glib talk of a limited war, which may escalate into a nuclear exchange, comes this reassuring piece of news: the DRDO has developed a portable nuclear shelter usable for 30 people up to 96 hours, equipped with its own power supply, toilets and water tanks. This is the alternative to my Ark.
We must rank first among the loony nations. Until yesterday we were witness to our government’s inability to contain the Gujarat carnage, and today we blindly trust it to navigate us through a possible nuclear holocaust unscathed — assisted by portable nuclear shelters.
Naturally, neither the government nor the DRDO elaborates what would happen to the shelter were it to be three to 30 miles within the radius of the blast; whether it would be able to withstand the temperatures rising over 300,000 degrees Celsius? This government has long since abdicated responsibility of answering such questions. Trifling questions, perhaps, when it comes to defending the nation’s honour, but which must be answered.
The most honourable, patriotic, nationalistic people were the Japanese; ever ready to die for land and the emperor until Hiroshima put an end to all that nonsense. Taketa San is a man every Indian should meet. I met him in ’98 right after our nuclear tests.
He was barely in his teens when the Americans nuked Hiroshima. They lived out in the suburbs, but his sister was in the city that day and they bundled her home in a wheelbarrow. He spoke to us in Japanese, but from the tears flowing down his cheeks and the eloquent gestures of his hands I knew immediately that his sister was among the thousands whose skin had peeled off and had hung down from raw flesh like rags.
Her death many hours later had been excruciatingly painful. Taketa San keeps the memory of that tortuous day alive, like a festering wound. Even though it must cost him physically, mentally, emotionally to do so, he recreates it afresh each time for a new audience so that we must feel what he felt, must feel the horror of it in our bones, so that we never, ever allow it to happen again.
For those who lack a sense of history to temper their bravado: The American A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a prototype, a crude and smaller version of the kinds of nuclear weapons we have in our possession today, and yet it killed over 200,000 people, many instantly, and many more slowly and painfully.
A recent study conducted by Dr M V Ramana and his team at Princeton showed that a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan, using only a tenth of the weapons in their possession, would kill or injure over four million people. Many would die in the immediate blast. Others would suffer slower deaths from burns and radiation.
The truly unfortunate would take their lifetime dying slowly, a lifetime searching vainly for water in the sere, treeless nuclear wastelands.
Admittedly, one good thing about the bomb is that it is perfectly democratic. So whether you’re the Raja of Race Course Road or the Leper of Lodhi, you get fried and no money in the world can bribe your way out of this mess. Also, it is perfectly incurable.
One small dose of radioactivity — and there’s much of that around with the mega-bombs — and cancer with impressive keloids could be your lot. As for your children, should they survive, and their children’s children, factor in the radioactive lifespan of Plutonium 239, which has a half-life of 24,000 years, and then hedge your bets. India, as we know it, would be over. This wonderful, mad, exuberant civilisation, which took over 5,000 years to build, could be destroyed in under five minutes.
On second thoughts I’m not so sure I’d set sail on the Ark after all. What if half way across the globe I’d suddenly remember the smell of the earth after the first monsoon showers, and know I’d never smell that smell again. And if I were to recall Phooli, my cleaning lady, who for some reason couldn’t come along, who bore her poverty with dignity and a toothless grin... or Humayun’s tomb or the Sal forests of the Terai which would surely be no more, I know my heart would shatter into a million irreparable pieces.
No, I think the alternative to my Ark would be to figure out where exactly the first bomb was going to drop and then to set up camp right there in the middle of it. Chances are, I would be vaporised immediately. And you, who will still choose the path to the DRDO shelter, consider this: that as your 96th hour draws to a close you may just envy me my fate.
We as a species, might be doomed to repeat the lessons, of others, that we have, collectively, have never been taught.
This article recalls the horror (though at the time, necessary) of what a potential, future nuclear strike might accomplish.
A "Nuclear Exchange" would INSTANTLY create a group of "International Criminals,"--namely, the "SH+T-for-Brains 'National Leaders'" who ordered the use of Nuclear Arms!
BOTH "Participating Nations" would be INSTANTLY regarded as "International Pariahs," & would take Decades to recover--even to "Third World" status!
WHO could Ever Again Trust them??
It's time for India & Pakistan to do a TRUE, OBJECTIVE "Risk Analysis" of the implications of their current policies!
NUCLEAR WAR is NOT an option!!
Doc
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While I can understand your horror and distate for the nuclear option, I respectfully remind you , it is an option.An option I believe Pakistan will not hesitate to use.They have already announced their intentions to do so.I fear they will use it in the very, very near future. Against India. It is actually a matter of when, not if, they employ it.
Islam is not "peace",and the world is not "sane".
May God, any sane god left, have mercy on us all.
Makes me wonder.
If India and Pakistan are stupid enough to launch any short-range ballistic missiles during the current conflict, you can expect nuclear fallout here in our part of the world.
Predicting that fallout pattern is difficult, but will exist. Here's an interesting map. It shows the fallout pattern for a nuclear test in Communist China. I feel sorry for the citizens of Korea and Japan who were under the initial fallout cloud. But, more concerning is the coverage and dispersal of the radioisotopes over our nation (and farm land).
Frankly, if either Pakistan or India begins a war, China and the US should intervene to eliminate both governments. We should agree with Russia and China that any nuclear war on the Indian subcontinent will result in the elimination of both the Indian and Pakistani regimes.
That there is evil in this world is a fact I have no need to be reminded of, as I am not in doubt of its existance and its skope.
I find it beneficial to seek the good.There is precious little out there published, but it IS there.So there is hope.Slendor, threadbare, and struggling, but hope never the less.
I have never been known for my compassion! But I refuse to let evil dictate my life.
My attitude may work for me,here in the USA, but I don't think it will fly in the ME crisis.The people seem set on fighting the battles of the gods.I dont think they do, or can understand the magnitude of the horrors they are about to unleash on mankind.
Maybe what you might get from an X-Ray at the doctors; anything more is simple fear-mongering.
Well on that part you are absolutely correct. If they launch and kill 50 million, the threshold for nuclear use will drop considerably. Tactical nuclear weapons will actually become tactical weapons.
The Flood was commanded by God. As such, He was the only person you could've appealed to. If the nukes fly in India and Pakistan, it will have been commanded by Men. Men can be argued with; governments can be overthrown. If you fear your government will destroy your world, overthrow it or somehow persuade it to stop. Otherwise, you're just a scared sheep awaiting slaughter with a dim idea of what is to come.
Tuor
Nuclear war *is* an option. That is something we all have to understand about this. It *is* an option and, if India attacks Pakistan, it is a *likely* option.
Nuclear war, however, is not a *rational* option. Thus, if either of these countries bring about a nuclear exchange, it will be via a long chain of irrational events cloaked in reasonable-sounding rhetoric.
Man has often proven himself to be an irrational creature. It may be that he will prove it once again...with millions dying as a result. If this happens, I *really* hope the rest of us learn from it, as we evidently did not after Hiroshima.
Tuor
What a PITY that the "Lessons" of Hiroshima & Nagasaki have to be re-learned!
It appears that the "Leaders" of India & Pakistan are suffering from extreme cases of "Testiculo-Cerebral Inversion!!" GOD HELP the citizens of BOTH Nations--if their "Leaders" are far gone into "Cerebral Testosterone Poisoning!"
Doc
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