Coastline Pilot

February 28, 2003

 

Chasing the Muse

By Catharine Cooper

 

I left the war for the weekend.  Turned off the radio, the television, the paper and traded ‘event currency’ for the camaraderie of good friends and the vastness of the desert.   Wide-open valleys beckoned, and the absence of daily news loosened the constriction in my heart. My spirit soared on the raven’s wings and drifted over salted plains and dusty dunes.

 

We wandered rock fields, star fields and up narrow back-country canyons.  The world felt sweet:  new and open.  From that vantage, it was difficult to grasp the rational for widespread global unrest. 

 

The desert already appears to many as a wasteland.  The ground is stressed by lack a gentle climate and water.  Plant life develops unique strategies to contend with the harshness – odd leaf shapes that have little transpiration and shrubbery that tucks low to the ground, huddled against violent winds.  All of earth’s surface could look like this if we don’t find resolution with one another.  

 

I love this desert space.  It’s lack of clutter.  It’s sharp edges.  It’s relentless call to survival.  But it is a love born by juxtapositions.  I need the rain forests and the luxuriant jungles to balance this clime.  Life is fragile, and the desert, more than anywhere, is a stark reminder of how temporal we are. 

 

So how is it, that any leader of any nation – or even a rogue terrorist unit – can bear to sacrifice this life?  How can we risk destroying our home planet?

 

The type of war being bantered around carries more weight than any before.  We shoot, they shoot.  It’s been said before.  But it’s the type of gun this time that moves the mark.  Nuclear doesn’t simply destroy buildings, governments and societies (aka: human beings).  Uranium enriched weapons permanently contaminate the land and it’s citizenry (if any are left) for thousands of years.

 

Can we talk about what REALLY happens in a nuclear explosion?  At ground level, craters 200 feet deep and 1000 feet in diameter.  All buildings out to 1/2 mile from epicenter completely destroyed.  At 1.7 miles, only reinforced concrete remains.  At 2.7 miles, bodies are sucked from buildings and are converted to missiles.  Overpressure enters nose, mouth & ears and causes rupture of lungs and membranes of the ears.  Intense heat will cause humans to spontaneously ignite, becoming walking, flaming torches.

 

40 to 50 miles from the epicenter (we’re assuming only ONE), people will be instantaneously blinded by retinal burning.  Firestorms will engulf thousands of square miles, and people in fallout shelters will be asphyxiated as the fires consume all oxygen.  Most of the city and its inhabitants will be converted to radioactive dust, which will fall outside the perimeter on anything left living.  Brain swelling beyond the skulls capacity will occur and produce vomiting, diarrhea, blinding headache, seizures, coma and death.

 

Pretty picture?  If the ‘they shoot, we shoot’ scenario is played to it’s fullest, nuclear winter will ensue.  Radioactive smoke from the firestorms will reduce the sunlight reaching the earth by 17%.  The resultant massive subfreezing temperatures would destroy all biological support systems, resulting in starvation, thirst and hypothermia.  

 

A 1985 SCOPE document, published by the White House states, “… the total loss of human agricultural and societal support systems would result in the loss of almost all humans on Earth …  this vulnerability is an aspect not currently a part of the understanding of nuclear war; not only are the major combatant countries in danger, but virtually the entire human population is being held hostage to the large-scale use of nuclear weapons…” Written in 1985!  Yet, in 2003 our government supports the use of nuclear weapons as a first strike option.

 

The world has become a more fearful place, and fear breeds into itself like a disease unchecked.  Our ‘alert status’ this week is orange – a high risk of terrorist attack.  Because people seem willing to do the unfathomable – kill themselves so that they can inflict damage on an ‘enemy.’

 

The desert chill cuts through my light shirt and I am thankful that a jacket is sufficient for warmth.  Overhead stars envelope me.  The same stars that shine on North Africa and portions of the Middle East.  We are surrounded by the same sky and we float on the same planet, partners in the human experience.

 

I don’t carry a religious pole, and it is difficult for me to comprehend blowing oneself up as a means of salvation.  The world is populated with many different faiths.  Underlying them all is the fact that we share one planet, one home, and no matter our differences, without the earth as our foothold, we have nowhere to stand.

 

 

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