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The Cold War's Legacy of Mutation
fm6 writes: "Not surprising, but still pretty sobering: Russian communities downwind from cold-war-era surface testing sites are experiencing 50% increase in mutation rates. I'm reminded of Terry Tempest William's term: Virtual Uninhabitants."
Is Evolution Over In Humans?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Make anyone else think of the X-Men? Mention of mutation always brings that to mind. [X-men theme plays in head]
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
I imagine the spam "Now you can get a 50% increased chance of having the super powers you always wanted!!!". Coming to you from the same people who brought you "Want to be a SPY!?" and "Spank me HARD, make me wet"
(titles taken from actual spam-messages I've gotten during the last couple of months)
We just bought some rural property in southern Utah. My wife was searching for plant zone information for our area and happened across a link discussing the sterility and cancer rates of people in Cedar City and Parowan. I can't find that link, but a quick search turned up several relavent sites:
http://www.downwinders.org
http://www.eq.state.ut.us/EQRAD/fallout.htm
Method of processing duck feet
This, and all related stories, are all just too bad -- because each story like this, be it to reminisce or extrapolate, means that we're a mark of probability closer to experiencing these effects amplified as the result of direct, near-ground-zero exposure. Peace be with you, wherever your marker falls.
[ka-boom]
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/maps/
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http://rex.nci.nih.gov/massmedia/Fallout/conten
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
You do know that was just a movie? Most mutations are quite unphotogenic.
cowboy neal's third nut...
This raises the frightening possibility that the Slavs could evolve -- specifically, what if they evolved a society that wasn't based on stealing from each other all the time ? What if they stopped blamming Chechens, Gypsies, Americans, Jews, Tsarists, anti-revolutionaries, or whoever, and admitted that it's their own fault they live like medieval peasants ?
Given that their society already has lots of smart people and technology, this could provide an unacceptable challenge to American Hegemony.
I propose the following in order to stabilise Slavic society at it's current level of disfunction:
1) Get a mousy-faced leader who crushes all creative opposition and free press but never really does anything.
2) Distract any attention on societies ills by having a small war on the side. Everybody hates Muslims, maybe they can find some muslims on the edge of their terrority to harass. The more smart young men are drafted and sent there the better. The ones that aren't killed can learn to kidnap and shoot muslims and charge the families to get the mutilated body back, rather than going to college and learning useless technology stuff; this will prepare them well for the future of Slavic "civilization".
3) Encourage as many Slavs as possible to steal from each other in many small and petty ways. The annoyance and trouble should cost more than the goods stolen. Customs officiers can take things from luggage, also encourage people on trains to accuse someone briefly getting off not having a ticket just as the train leaves, so they can take their luggage. Policemen should take bribes from drivers. The more Slavs are distracted, the better.
4) Encourage Slavs to put each other into prison where they can get raped and infected with AIDS, and learn how to commit crimes and forget how to work. Since not enough young Slavs actually commit real crimes, putting them in jail anytime they are accused and not letting them out until they can prove their innocence may be advisable.
5) Anytime a Slavic business has tough times, publish editorials saying "They're giving our country to the Jews."
6) Anytime a Slavic business does well, publish editorials saying "This business only does well because Jews secretely own it." We can not let and Slavs see an example of Slavic success, except through crime.
7) One word: vodka.
With diligence, attention, and a stern stomach for the necessary tactics, this potential threat can be faced down, and the Slavs can become the new Niggers of the world. When the alien masters arrive to take us all to the stars, they will be so repulsed by the Slavs that they will leave them all here, to stare about the empty Earth and wonder whose fault it is now.
If there is anything I have left out, please post below. I will making a report containing these recommendations to the Illuminati High Council, and I want to be complete.
Thanks !
A mutation in an intron isn't going to do much? Or ar they talking about people with extra fingers?
-- SIGFPE
It's too bad everyone thinks nuclear power is the way of the future, if only we can contain the wastes. Never mind that, even when subsidized, it's still the most expensive way to boil water.
What worries me is situations like this in the future. This is just (!) after some atmospheric testing. In 10-30 years, when all the US nuclear reactors go offline, all the fuel rods and other radioactive waste (I'm not sure, but I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable if I knew that I was drinking water formerly used as steam heated by uranium) have to be dealt with. Right now, as a previous slashdot story has noted, the US will be dumping its nuclear wastes in an earthquake-prone area likely to contaminate the water table in the area of Las Vegas. Even a small amount of radioactivity, as seen in this story, can cause mutation, to say nothing of the level of contamination during that Japanese disaster a decade or three back. Think about what happens when a large US city is exposed to bunches of radiation. It suddenly becomes not far off on another continent, but in our own back yard too late to do anything about it.
Write your congressman about Yucca Mountain. Hope that state's rights prevail and the governor of Nevada can nix the project. It's our future. This isn't something like the DMCA or the SSSCA - this is nuclear waste in our back yard.
How many folks are going to turn off their air conditioner, blow drier, and computer when the fossil fuels are gone?
You fucking dolt.
Right, it was just a comic book with lots of fancy spin offs and tie ins. Obviously a comic book is far superior to a movie as a touch point for life and death issues like this one! After all, a comic book is literature!
"Mr. President, we must not allow a mutation gap!"
Sorry, anything concerning the cold war makes me think of Dr. Strangelove!
I lived there from 89 to 2000! Graduated from Southern Utah University in 1993. The local paper sucks. Read the Trib instead.
Best Slashdot Co
Hey, I'm a fan of Alita and Sexylosers.com myself. I consider the whole literature-versus-junk thing pretty bogus. It's just that mass-market fantasies about radiation turning teenagers into superheroes is not the first thing that comes to mind when I read about A-bomb survivors in Siberia and Utah.
I can't remember the exact number, but your average beer has something like 10-100 times the radiation than that of nuclear plant water. And yet people have no problem drinking beer...
Talk to a Nuclear Physicist sometime, we live bathed in radiation our entire lives. All joking aside, we all glow in the dark on some wavelength. =P
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Hey--, I'm a fan of Alita and Sexylosers.com myself. I consider the whole literature-versus-junk thing pretty bogus. It's just that mass-market fantasies about radiation turning teenagers into superheroes is not the first thing that comes to mind when I read about A-bomb survivors in Siberia and Utah.
Interesting that they called it a "nuclear testing facility." Semipalatinsk was an inhabited area. There were also belowground tests according to accounts of people who lived there. (Detonations in abandoned mines.) Basically it was an area used to test the effects of extreme doses of radiation on an average community.
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Having seen the environment there, I'm surprised that there's still life there in any form. It's a fairly barren-looking area, and at certain places (such as the lake,) Geiger counters essentially let out a steady buzz even all these years later. There is also a lab filled with stillborn, mutated fetuses.
I have seen many shocking instances of how depraved humanity can be. Public executions, nazi concentration camps, and similar things, but none stood out in my mind as boldly as Semipalatinsk. If nothing else makes it remarkable, it's the fact that this was done to their own people.
Here are some info sites:
http://www.isar.org/isar/archive/ST/Semipalatin
http://www.well.com/user/fine/journalism/kazakh
http://www.newtimes.ru/eng/detail.asp?art_id=22
It appears that a small group of scientists who studied the area found that the ecosystem surrounding the site appears to be better off than when it wasn't radioactive.
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It seems that, at least in the short term, the animals and plants are better off with nuclear waste because humans have moved from these areas...kind of sad knowing your species is worse than cancer causing nuclear radiation isn't it?
http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/chernobyl/wildlifeprese
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"