dotinthesky: (Default)
Dot in the Sky ([personal profile] dotinthesky) wrote2003-07-01 04:24 pm

(no subject)

In the early 1980s, (Carole) Gallagher moved from New York City to St. George to work full-time on her oral history of the casualties of the American nuclear test program. Beginning with its first nuclear detonation in 1951, this small Mormon city, due east of the Nevada Test Site, has been shrouded in radiation debris from scores of atmospheric and accidentally "ventilated" underground blasts. Each lethal cloud was the equivalent of billions of x-rays and contained more radiation than was released at Chernobyl in 1988. Moreover, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in the 1950s had deliberately planned for fallout to blow over the St. George region in order to avoid Las Vegas and Los Angeles. In the icy, Himmlerian jargon of a secret AEC memo unearthed by Gallagher, the targeted communities were "a low-use segment of the population."

As a direct result, this downwind population (exposed to the fallout equivalent of perhaps fifty Hiroshimas) is being eaten away by cumulative cancers, neurological disorders, and genetic defects. Gallagher, for instance, talks about her quiet dread of going into the local K-Mart and "seeing four-and five-year-old children wearing wigs, deathly pale and obviously in chemotherapy." But such horror has become routinized in a region where cancer is so densely clustered that virtually any resident can matter-of-factly rattle off long lists of tumorous or deceased friends and family.

- taken from "Dead Cities and Other Tales", by Mike Davi

[identity profile] jellyfishfur.livejournal.com 2003-07-01 09:56 am (UTC)(link)
is this true?

i've been to st. george. they have red dirt and it stains.

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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-02 02:06 am (UTC)(link)
all the information in the book is footnoted... and Carole Gallagher, from what I gather in the book, is a serious anti-nuclear war activist who has done her research... i think it might be true. How big is St. George?

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[identity profile] jellyfishfur.livejournal.com 2003-07-02 11:01 am (UTC)(link)
Not very big, I think...No cities in Utah are very big, besides Salt Lake.

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[identity profile] jellyfishfur.livejournal.com 2003-07-02 04:15 pm (UTC)(link)
heck no! i'm a california girl. :) i lived in utah for about 4 months during my "mormon phase." hehe

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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-08 07:59 am (UTC)(link)
one of my dreams is to visit California. A good friend of mine went to Uni in Santa Cruz and when she showed me photos of the area... I just knew I had to go there.

which part of California?

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[identity profile] jellyfishfur.livejournal.com 2003-07-08 10:19 am (UTC)(link)
I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles, about 20 minutes east of Malibu (where all the stars and beaches are! haha). Now I live in San Diego, which I love. Santa Cruz is way far up north - it's beautiful, but a different vibe from SoCal. People down here can be really superficial and plasticky.

You should DEFINITELY come visit.

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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-09 08:31 pm (UTC)(link)
I will!

:o)

and you'll have to show me all these plasticky people and movie stars.
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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-02 03:50 pm (UTC)(link)
your genes are the superheroes... because you are still around to tell tall tales!
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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-08 07:54 am (UTC)(link)
yo, ye ain't my boo
so quit yapping da foo
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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-09 08:35 pm (UTC)(link)
tickle tickle

uhh, who's the bad kitty?
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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-12 02:02 pm (UTC)(link)
oh wo, honkey tonk woman
give me give me give me
the honkey ponkey please
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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-13 07:24 am (UTC)(link)
then why you wearing skirts, foo?
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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-14 07:48 pm (UTC)(link)
only if he does a "Back, Sack and Crack" once a month.
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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-21 09:22 am (UTC)(link)
pfff... who cares? ok, send us the chest pics!

:oP
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[identity profile] commonpeople.livejournal.com 2003-07-22 02:16 am (UTC)(link)
aaahhh...

ok.

:o)