THE SUNDAY MUSHROOM CLOUD: It's inevitable, at least twice this week
Write more about atomic attack on America. Please.
Big ups to Indiana newspapers covering the mock terror atomic attack on Indianapolis. They helped contribute to the weekly quotient of atomic-attack-is-coming-to-America stories, well documented in this blog during the past first year of its existence.
" ... [The] leader of a group of scientists who monitor and assess global security through its well-known Doomsday Clock sees a nuclear attack becoming less and less unthinkable," writes a newspaper in Terre Haute.
Yes, thinking about the unthinkable certainly ain't what it used to be. Now the United States overflows with those who tell us how we'll meet doom, their merciless farting always going boom. Then they send out press releases to notify us of the really fine work they're doing.
“ 'These risks are hard to judge, ' said Kennette Benedict, executive director of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, an organization that has updated its Doomsday Clock every other month since 1947," informed the newspaper. " 'But many in the field who are military, former government officials and intelligence types say it’s not a matter of if, but when.' ”
Attention newspaper opinion writer: Don't ever let readers know that's what they always say!
And don't let on that if any self-respecting terrorists gets hold of an atomic bomb, he's no more likely to waste it on Indianapolis than Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. (It's just more convenient to do a drill there, as opposed to stirring up Manhattan or Washington, DC, on a busy work day.)
If your eyes aren't yet rolling sufficiently, the New York Times Sunday book review dragged readers through its contribution to the literature of thinking about the unthinkable until nausea is provoked. (About two months ago, the Sunday magazine did the same thing.)
This time it was delivered in an elegantly-styled piece of dogshit, not-so-imaginatively entitled "The Nuclear Threat," a book review by someone named Jonathan Raban. C'mon editors, how long did it take you to come up with that title? A second or two? Hey, dear reader-ninnies, we'll pair it with a skull and some missiles, too! (Never mind that the review isn't about ICBMs, ha-ha!)
Raban is taken with a copy of "The Atomic Bazaar," a new book by William Langewiesche, and a hasty fix-up of various riffs played out in the Atlantic Monthly magazine.
Once again it is time to relate the story of how terrorists, from the point-of-view of a man-on-the-beat, will put together their improvised nuclear device, its core material of highly enriched uranium taken from old rickety Russian labs where the security is crummy.
"One way or another it will be no great feat to transport the stolen [uranium] to Istanbul where assembling it into a workable bomb will require a machine shop, a nuclear scientist, several technicians and up to four months of work," it is written.
"The Atomic Bazaar is an important book, but not a perfect one."
No it isn't. Only someone who is a glutton for punishment would buy it.
Anyone familiar with the literature of atomic disaster and the spielers on it in magazines knows why: The same story is always written, unflinchingly, with only the names, places and nationalities of the terrorists changing to fit whatever convenience seems appropriate. There are unpleasant truths embedded in it but the script is now so overpeddled, everyone knows it by heart.
In the meantime, Jericho, the CBS television drama about nuclear devastation dealt to the United States and the way it impacts a small town in Kansas, was unceremoniously cancelled. Some angry fans wrote e-mails in protest but the show's ratings took a big nosedive when it inexplicably took a long holiday mid-season. Most viewers, understandably perplexed, changed channels and never came back.
The danger of atomic attack to Indianapolis and Alaska, too, maybe.
Write more about atomic attack on America. Please.
Big ups to Indiana newspapers covering the mock terror atomic attack on Indianapolis. They helped contribute to the weekly quotient of atomic-attack-is-coming-to-America stories, well documented in this blog during the past first year of its existence.
" ... [The] leader of a group of scientists who monitor and assess global security through its well-known Doomsday Clock sees a nuclear attack becoming less and less unthinkable," writes a newspaper in Terre Haute.
Yes, thinking about the unthinkable certainly ain't what it used to be. Now the United States overflows with those who tell us how we'll meet doom, their merciless farting always going boom. Then they send out press releases to notify us of the really fine work they're doing.
“ 'These risks are hard to judge, ' said Kennette Benedict, executive director of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, an organization that has updated its Doomsday Clock every other month since 1947," informed the newspaper. " 'But many in the field who are military, former government officials and intelligence types say it’s not a matter of if, but when.' ”
Attention newspaper opinion writer: Don't ever let readers know that's what they always say!
And don't let on that if any self-respecting terrorists gets hold of an atomic bomb, he's no more likely to waste it on Indianapolis than Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. (It's just more convenient to do a drill there, as opposed to stirring up Manhattan or Washington, DC, on a busy work day.)
If your eyes aren't yet rolling sufficiently, the New York Times Sunday book review dragged readers through its contribution to the literature of thinking about the unthinkable until nausea is provoked. (About two months ago, the Sunday magazine did the same thing.)
This time it was delivered in an elegantly-styled piece of dogshit, not-so-imaginatively entitled "The Nuclear Threat," a book review by someone named Jonathan Raban. C'mon editors, how long did it take you to come up with that title? A second or two? Hey, dear reader-ninnies, we'll pair it with a skull and some missiles, too! (Never mind that the review isn't about ICBMs, ha-ha!)
Raban is taken with a copy of "The Atomic Bazaar," a new book by William Langewiesche, and a hasty fix-up of various riffs played out in the Atlantic Monthly magazine.
Once again it is time to relate the story of how terrorists, from the point-of-view of a man-on-the-beat, will put together their improvised nuclear device, its core material of highly enriched uranium taken from old rickety Russian labs where the security is crummy.
"One way or another it will be no great feat to transport the stolen [uranium] to Istanbul where assembling it into a workable bomb will require a machine shop, a nuclear scientist, several technicians and up to four months of work," it is written.
"The Atomic Bazaar is an important book, but not a perfect one."
No it isn't. Only someone who is a glutton for punishment would buy it.
Anyone familiar with the literature of atomic disaster and the spielers on it in magazines knows why: The same story is always written, unflinchingly, with only the names, places and nationalities of the terrorists changing to fit whatever convenience seems appropriate. There are unpleasant truths embedded in it but the script is now so overpeddled, everyone knows it by heart.
In the meantime, Jericho, the CBS television drama about nuclear devastation dealt to the United States and the way it impacts a small town in Kansas, was unceremoniously cancelled. Some angry fans wrote e-mails in protest but the show's ratings took a big nosedive when it inexplicably took a long holiday mid-season. Most viewers, understandably perplexed, changed channels and never came back.
The danger of atomic attack to Indianapolis and Alaska, too, maybe.
posted by George Smith at 12:47 PM
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