2 Comments

Did you know that the government also appropriated the Plowshare metaphor?

After WWII there was "Operation Plowshare" which endeavored to find peaceful uses for nuclear weapons.

Among those were Project Gasbuggy when the US government was, I shit you not, fracking gas with nukes. This site is about 70 miles up the road from me in the Carson National Forest.

"Adjacent to the reservation of the Jicarilla Apaches, the site provided ideal test conditions."

The native American dancer in a headdress is just a ghost in this film at 4:45 mark:

https://youtu.be/F3MHOkHApRc

Colorado just marked the 50th anniversary of "Project Rulison" which was a similar fracking with nukes experiment. As a result the people of Colorado passed a ballot initiative requiring the Federal government to get approval from the people before detonating any more nuclear weapons in the state. More on that, and the attempt to stop it with peaceful protests, here:

https://www.cpr.org/2019/09/10/want-to-trigger-a-nuke-in-colorado-well-thanks-to-project-rulison-50-years-ago-you-need-to-ask-voters-first/

While reading up on all this history I found a mention in the Congressional archives that if all went well, they would use nukes in Arizona to create giant underground caverns where they could store rain from the monsoons, to use as municipal water source.

Hell world indeed.

Expand full comment
author

what the fuck

Expand full comment