West Coast Blues: Radiation & Rain

Whenever I go off on a rant about this, people tend to label me an "alarmist" or worse, but radiation is nothing to mess with, it's invisible, has astoundingly long half-lives in even its least potent forms (how long it takes half of a sample of it to decay to "safe" levels), accumulates in effect, and, oh yeah, can kill you if you breathe it or absorb it through your skin. I am not an idiot, thank you very much, and I had more than my fair share of science courses in high school and college. Check my transcripts if you like - I was pre-med at one time. I have more than a casual understanding of cell biology and I know what happens to irradiated cells. It isn't pretty. Go do a little reading on radiation sickness. In its milder forms, it can be rather flu-like, with the addition of spontaneous bleeding from gums and such. But if you are exposed to a large enough dose, really bad things start to happen. Try not to look at any pictures, unless you want those images seared into your retinas for the rest of your life. Remember, once you've seen something, you can't "un-see" it. A basic description is this: your cells dis-integrate. Think about that for a minute. The very stuff that holds your cells together - that makes you, well, "you" - starts to unravel at the cellular level and from all outward appearances, you begin to melt (desquamation). Good enough? Thought so! Now how in ANY kind of conscience - good or bad! - could you, as a Government entity, allow this to happen to your people and 1) not do anything to stop it and 2) not at least keep people informed? Is there no collective soul to our collective humanity anymore? First, I lay a huge portion of blame squarely on the shoulders of the Japanese government. Did they ask for the precipitating event, that original earthquake and resulting tsunami in March 2011? Of course not! But so many of their actions and inactions since that time have been bent on coverup and deception, and still the problem of irradiated water spewing directly into the Pacific continues unabated to this day. And then I lay blame at the feet of the FDA and the CDC, both of which have irons in the coverup fires on our own shores. It has been well-documented that radiation levels have risen in milk products from certain west coast dairies, whose cows graze on grass watered by the rains produced in the evaporation cycle fed by the irradiated waters of the Pacific. Babies and elderly people drinking these products have been dying (I believe the latest count was around 30,000 - yes, staggering, isn't it?) from symptoms strangely resembling early stages of radiation sickness. But these reports are being deliberately NOT reported in aggregate form where they might raise more than an eyebrow (oh, say a panic, maybe?), so the CDC is ducking out of some responsibility here, too. Now for the $64 million dollar question: is there anything that can be done? Of course there is! First of all, get Japan some help in getting the problem solved and the leak stopped and the entire Fukushima plant safely shut down and disassembled. Because guess what? Apparently it is sitting on some very unstable ground and is in danger of dropping its radioactive rods into an underlying aquifer, thereby poisoning drinking water. Because this is a global problem, global resources should be brought to bear to solve it. Then it might be a good idea to convene a multi-national panel of thinkers to see if anyone can come up with a way to filter the rain to eliminate radiation from it, or somehow get the radiation out of the evaporation cycle so that the food supply would stop being poisoned. Start treating people for radiation sickness. And, yes, informing the public is a really good idea. And maybe none of these are the elegant - or simple - solution really needed. I'm just one lone thinker here. But it really bothers me that so few people seem to be aware that this is going on and is a huge environmental crisis sitting right on our doorstep, killing thousands of people, and we aren't even being told. And you doubt our media is being controlled? Think again!