Distracted MassesVol. 1 Issue #2 Oct. 2014 | Page 48

sure Hawaii will survive without too many heavy metal or radiation related problems, so there probably isn’t that much to worry about. After all, Hawaii has been hit by nuclear fallout before in the 50s and 60s during the U.S. military’s nuclear tests in the Pacific, one of which took out a streetlight in Oahu even though those tests were conducted thousands of miles from Hawaii. And as far as I know no Hawaiians died of cancer from those tests, only the Marshallese and other Pacific islanders closer to the test sites got sick or died. But most of those islanders survived the fallout then and so did the people living on Hawaii, so I’m sure they will survive this as well. Maybe there will be some illness and even death caused by the eating of contaminated fish, which Hawaiians eat by the bucketload on a daily basis, including the bluefin tuna or ahi which has been found to be contaminated as far away as California, but it won’t affect everyone. Thyroid cancer, higher infant mortality rates, and other such problems may arise from the fallout in the air, rain, and soil, but the Hawaiian people will still live on, however those who say everything is just a-OK might want to reassess the situation again. To understand the mentality of those who keep the truth about nuclear accidents to themselves we once again return to Marat Filippovich Kokhanov in Voices From Chernobyl. Kokhanov says radiation readings were off the charts everywhere he took measurements, yet he kept silent. He said he tested milk and meat which he said couldn’t even be considered food items, but rather a “radioactive byproduct.” Yet he didn’t say a thing. Kokhanov explains: “So here’s the answer to your question: why did we keep silent knowing what we knew? Why didn’t we go out onto the square and yell the truth? We compiled our reports, we put together explanatory notes. But we kept quiet and carried out our orders without a murmur because of Party discipline. I was a Communist. I don’t remember that any of our colleagues refused to go work in the Zone. Not because they were afraid of losing their Party membership, but because they had faith. They had faith that we lived well and fairly, that for us man was the highest thing, the measure of all things. The collapse of this faith in a lot of people eventually led to heart attacks and suicides. A bullet to the heart, as in the case of Professor Legasov, because when you lose that faith, you are no longer a participant, you’re an also-ran, you have no reason to exist. That’s how I understood his suicide, as a sort of sign.”39 a bunch of bananas.40 Of course I don’t believe this, but I can always pray. Perhaps all of us should. References 1. Siegel, Marc. False Alarm, The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey: 2005. 2. RT. “Plumes of mysterious steam rise from crippled nuclear reactor at Fukushima,” published time: Jan. 1, 2014 20:15, edited time: Jan. 2, 2014 22:43. http:// rt.com/news/fukushima-steam