B-bob-omb
In July of this year, New York City released a public service announcement for its residents. As of October, the one-minute, thirty-five-second video, published on their YouTube channel, has garnered less than a million views
When I watched it there was a kitschy, unskippable ad for men’s deodorant beforehand. The video opens
EXT. A New York street, lined by brownstones. There are no trees. The sky is clear. There is a small, barely noticeable pile of rubble in the bottom right corner. A police siren wails. Ominous music plays.
A woman in a black turtleneck and slacks eventually strides onto the scene, her hands professionally poised at her sides. She doesn’t NOT resemble a member of an amateur improv troupe.
She informs us calmly, assuredly. “So there’s been a nuclear attack. Don’t ask me how, or why. But the big one has hit.”
She speaks of it as though it were an earthquake in San Francisco. Or a drought in Death Valley. An inevitability. “The Big One has hit.”
The suede couch was soft against my cheek. Every time I laid my face against it, I had to force myself to forget all the people who’d had sex on it. Barf. I sit up and slide my palms under my seat. Hoping it’ll drag me back to earth.
“What are you watching?”
He had clicked through YouTube and stumbled upon “Mt. St. Helens is About to Blow Up,” by bill wurtz.
“It’s the guy who makes the funny ‘entire history of the world’ videos.”
“Isn’t that a volcano?”
“Yeah, a super volcano!” Like it was a Disney ride.
“Yeah, like when it blows up, it'll cover up the sky with ash.” He says this with glee. A tightly curled smile.
My mouth was dry. From weed or panic, I don’t know.
“Like the dinosaurs?”
“Mhmm.” He nods, blinking impossibly slow.
My mouth could be gray inside, for all I know. My tongue and tonsils could be ash. I could literally cough up my lungs. Lips sealed, no chance I’d expose the sand dune inside.
“Did I freak you out?” I couldn’t see what he looked like as he said this, because my head was now between my knees. My eyes tightly shut.
I nod, too fast.
“ I’m sorry.” He whimpers.
I breathe. I manage it. “Don’t you hate that?”
It sounds cool, as I say it. Measured, even. The bit of gravel in my voice makes it sound sexy. I might as well be in a Jazz bar, I’m so blasé.
“But that’s life. Not only is your personal death imminent, but there’s a constant possibility of a–a–global event that ends the human race.” As he says this, he sounds much cooler than me.
Shockingly well put for a high person. A high optimist. The person, who when high, gets really talkative, and so lovey-dovey it’s suffocating.
My breath, in and out. Too fast, too ragged. Scraping against the sand.
He breathes with me. In and Out. In… 1.2.3.4. Hold 2.3. Exhale 5.6.7.8.
The person I look to as my in-flight oxygen mask.
Put your mask on first before others. I know he’d put my mask on before I could decide whether to die by suffocation or die on impact. He’d make me live, for me.
I was not in a jazz cafe, being blasé. I was on a tan suede couch that toomanypeople had had sex on.
I was on the floor of my college apartment.
I was on a rock, floating in space. A rock that had a self-destruct button buried in its core.
A Brief, But Shockingly Informative History of Nuclear Power!
In 1938 two sciencey virgins split a Uranium Atom. This is called nuclear fission. They’re Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman. And they’re like shit–kabloomy.
A balding Italian dork, Enrico Fermi, escapes Mussolini-Italy, after receiving the Nobel Prize for developing the Fermi-Dirac statistics, which is this:
idk
The same hairless Italiano dweeb winds up in America, where of course, his intelligence is commodified for war. He thought you could take nuclear fission, and cause a reaction that would make a bigger ba-bang. He receives a $6,000 grant from Columbia University to conduct an experiment on his theory on nuclear chain reactions. He spends a majority of the $6,000 on Graphite. His experiment resulted in the first Atomic test, which was performed on a squash court in Stagg Stadium in 1942. Literally so reckless, kind of metal af.
The experiment, known as the Chicago Pile-1, was instrumental in the funding of the Manhattan Project. As was the Einstein-Szilard Letter, which purported the dangers of such research. But you know, the kind of ‘if this ends up in the wrong hands’ kind of dangers. But Good Guys could play with the boom-boom toys. The Nazis could NOT. That would be bad, said Einstein. He encouraged the sitting U.S. President to fund Fermi’s research. Thus, funding the Manhattan Project.
The Manhattan Project formally began in September 1942, under the leadership of U.S military personnel, and the minds of Oppenheimer, Szilard, Bethe, O’Lawrence, Fuchs and Seaborg. Einstein was not a part of the project, having been denied security clearance in light of his apparent pacifism.
The Manhattan Project bombed the shit out of fields in Oak Ridge, Tennesee, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford, Washington. (By the way, they had to buy the land to bomb it, and of course they bought land out from under poor people, forcing them to relocate.)
They built a ‘pilot’ plant just southwest of Chicago, but faced delays in doing so. So, as a solution THEY BUILT A NUCLEAR REACTOR IN THE SQUASH FIELD OF STAGG STADIUM. ON THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CAMPUS. A 17 MINUTE DRIVE FROM DOWNTOWN CHI TOWN. THESE MEN WERE ENTRUSTED WITH THE MOST DANGEROUS INSTRUMENT KNOWN TO MAN?! DID THEY WANT TO NUKE THE ITALIAN DOG? POUR NUCLEAR WASTE INTO LAKE MICHIGAN?! DIP DEEP DISH INTO AN ACID VAT? Eventually THEY MOVED CHICAGO-PILE 1 to Red Oak, Illinois. A two and half hour drive west from the city. THEY MOVED IT? YOU CAN MOVE IT?!
Yes, you remove the nuclear waste, store it in a safe dry container, dismantle the reactor, and then reassemble it elsewhere. But like–they were doing this for the first time then. Do you think they followed all the steps by rote? Reader, I am learning too much and I am SCARED.
The Manhattan Project unofficially ended after the success of the Trinity Test in Los Alamos, in July 1945. It officially ended as H-bombs detonated on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August of that same year.
Two years later, Einstein would be quoted in Newsweek as saying, “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would never have lifted a finger.”
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are decimated within minutes. The blast results in Hurricane force winds, fire storms, and total devastation. It is estimated that a combined 130,000 to 215,000 people died.*
In 1958, the U.S. turned the nuclear reactors into electricity generators. While the most dangerous form of electricity generation, they have zero carbon emissions. So, chew on that, Greta! (Sorry, Greta, misdirected anger, I–I don’t know what I’m doing.)
After that, nuclear energy became a dangerous life force. Yes, it gives us energy, but meltdown is always possible. Like ordering a vodka redbull at the club. Nuclear weapons become an imminent threat, like Sarah after she’s had too many vodka redbulls at the club.
*For research, I listened to the podcast “At The Brink.” Their episode, “Hibakusha,” includes testimony from three survivors of the attacks. At the top of the episode the host, Lisa Perry, says in a chipper voice “You should be warned that we have not censored these stories in any way. And this episode contains graphic descriptions of death, physical trauma, and suffering. [...] But we advise discretion for young or sensitive listeners.”
I am a sensitive listener. I tuned in for 10 minutes. I purposefully opened a tab on Google Images, typing “puppies” into the search bar, in hopes to distract myself from the atmospheric audio of baby’s crying, sirens wailing. It didn’t help. I couldn’t listen. On my $300 baby blue Beats my mother bought me for a birthday present, in the comfort of my studio apartment, nearly 80 years away from the incident, I couldn’t bear witness. I turned back on the self-serving music that makes me feel like I exist within the parameters of a movie montage and rubbed the ever-present knot at the nape of my neck. I write this article for a while longer. Eventually, I crawl into bed.
I’m sitting at my neighborhood’s coffee shop/gay bar (yes it’s both, gotta luv NewYork.) It is a stunning fall day. The sun slants against the sidewalk, there’s a nip in the air, but a breathless wind. I am writing this article.
“Ooooh meta!”
That’s you. The reader. That’s your dialogue. Say it, say it out loud.
Do it. Say it:
“Ooooh meta!”
Thank you. You said it weird, but thanks. You look nice. Moving on.
I put the song on. The one I’ve avoided. “Mt. St. Helens is about to Blow Up.”
The funky synth and bass slide in.
And it’s not that bad.
Mostly because I tune it out, in order to write this. Also, my really pretty barista drew a smiley face on my latte and attempted to make heart-shaped latte foam art and I’m debating asking her out? I don’t know–what do you guys think? Ahh-nevermind.
Bill Wurtz sings,
“Mt. St. Helen’s about to blow up, and it’s gonna be a fine, swell day.”
He goes on in the three minute and twenty three second song to merely mention the ideas of economic collapse and the climate change crisis. But really, the tone of the song is optimistic. He totes the strength of his blimp, and claims that Mt. St. Helen’s “dreams of puppies, and is filled with music.”
Mt. St. Helens precedes to sing the rest of the song, electrically scatting, all the while wearing a pair of sick sunglasses. You can see what I’m taking about below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elizAugXVcI
Kind of embarrassing to admit that this silly song caused me a panic attack. But trust, panic attacks over trivial things? Common occurrence in my household.
And now some reactions from media outlets, regarding the Emergency Department’s (OEM) PSA:
Reuters took to the streets to interview New Yorkers. They ask these questions somewhere between 59th st, and 70th, the affluent adjacent-to-the-UWS neighborhood, that contains cultural touchstones like Lincoln Center, Columbus Circle and the Target on 60th.
First, they poll an older white woman wearing a sunhat:
“This message is so alarming quite frankly, there's so many other things going on for us to worry about–”
Then a younger white man, who has a slight British accent. He wears wire-rimmed glasses.
“I think there’s definitely a justified reason for it, just for a precautionary measure more than anything else, uhm–but yeah, I’m scared.”
Those are–yeah that’s it, that’s who they polled. I would really like to hear from actual New Yorkers about this. Y’know, the tired commuters, on the downtown D at 6 am. The Ecuadorian nannies, who push the strollers through Central Park every morning. The kids who take the subway each day to school. But yeah, wealthy, white transplants are fine too.
(Dear Reader, I have no leg to stand on here, as I am a white transplant to this city.)
Then Eric Adams, notorious Cop Lover and general fuck all, is shown. He stands in front of a podium that is situated on a random New York street. Which really makes you wonder:
“What the fuck? You blocked off a street for this?”
He goes on to say:
“This was right after the attacks, uh– in uh–the Ukraine and OEM took a very proactive step to say ‘let’s be prepared’ and it doesn’t mean just a nuclear attack, it’s any natural disaster. Pack a bag, know where your medicines are located, these are just smart things to do.”
I have no comment on this statement. It is boring, and measured. But I will say: Fuck Eric Adams. :)
I then, ashamedly, took to Fox News. Because, obviously, they had to comment on the release of this PSA. First Tucker Carlson:
He furrows his brow, his tanned skin wrinkling. The dark of his brunette toupee, and his almost sepia skin, a stark contrast to his baby blues. The video plays, and as it ends, we cut back to his confused, stunned reaction.
“What?!” He blinks, as if lost.
I concur–Tucker– “what?!”
“Now if you were drinking beer and that came on your TV, you’d think she was telling you what to do if your basement floods, or there’s a HEAT WAVE, then she says the part about ‘radioactive dust,’ and you snap to: radioactive dust?”
It’s not really a cohesive thought. I mean, what was the whole mention of “drinking beer?” Was that just a nod to their Middle America listeners? Why did he say Heat Wave, like that?
But no, Tucker, it is definitely startling. But what kind of reality are we living in if we aren’t acknowledging that threat at all times? These weapons have been an ever-present menace since the 1940s. I mean, remember the Cold War? Remember why it was supposedly cold?
(Although we have to acknowledge it wasn't cold at all, it was fought in smaller countries, see: Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan.)
And then, I turned to another Fox News source, because TBH, I really wanted to see what sort of fear-mongering they’d manage. The next bit is pulled from Gutfeld! Fox New’s attempt at Late Night television.
It opens with exterior, eagle eye shots of the NYC skyline, and in big-bold font “Only in New York!” Then within moments, the two “O’s” become shifty eyeballs.
We hear singing in the background, some poor voice actor, desperate for cash, “Start spreading the news, WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE.” Tires screech, you hear a crash. The screen drips red with blood, there are screams. Then in a flash, we cut the anchor of the show, whose mouth is agape, teeth bared like a hungry wolf. He laughs, then drops the smile.
“So how do you survive a nuclear blast, in a city that already smells like ass?”
Canned laughter.
“The New York Emergency Management department released a PSA on how to survive a nuclear bomb, which is exactly what I worried about when a naked man on the R train was fondling himself in front of me. Actually, I was praying for a nuclear bomb.”
His delivery is flawed, he has little charisma. Colbert would’ve done it better.
“Don’t ask me how or why? [...] I’ll tell you how, Biden thought he was pressing the button for the nurse.”
Guys, they have writers on this show. They have comedy writers on this show. I could know these people.
He goes on to say, “Please tell me the steps, Lady Dressed Like Steve Jobs.” Ok, my joke was better.
He turns to me in bed. I am on my way to sleep. He pokes my arm.
“Jet, hey Jet. Can I show you something?”
I nod, slowly, barely cracking my eyes. He tilts his phone in my direction.
It’s a small Instagram cartoon. In fact, here it is:
I immediately started crying. I think I was on my period. I think I had gotten a bad night’s sleep.
Reader, I wailed. It was one of those cries where you’re laughing at yourself, which makes you cry harder, which only makes you laugh more. It was a laughter-induced depersonalization.
I couldn’t help but think of the baby dinosaurs, newly hatched, taking their first uneven steps, balancing their body weight, stumbling, catching themselves. I thought of the eventual look to the sky, as the white streak tore across the sky.
The rumble under their feet as it made an impact. The fear in their mama’s eyes.
The wailing as weeks went on, and food got scarce. Babies don’t know they’re not supposed to cry. And moms are so bad at pretending that a baby’s cry doesn’t break them.
He rubs my back.
“Shhh…they’re birds and lizards now. They’re what birds are.”
“They’re dead!”
“They evolved.”
From the ashes, came lizards.
In the throes of my thorough research (?) YouTube had a suggestion for me: A Tedx Talk, titled “I’ve studied nuclear war for 35 years–you should be worried.”
Very cool title. Attention-grabbing. Effective marketing.
After a few times ignoring it, (I really don’t want to be worried) I gave it a listen.
Brian Toon looks like a more academic, less Mormon Mitt Romney. He has a slight lisp, but a strong baritone. If he were a Looney Tune, he’d be Daffy Duck.
And yet, despite his light affect:
https://youtu.be/M7hOpT0lPGI?t=308
The above is a description of how nuclear bombs kill people, in case you don’t want to hear about that.
So, yes, if a nuke were to hit lower Manhattan, skyscrapers would tumble, a fireball would kill anyone within a hundred feet and approximately 500,000 people would die, including those who died in the weeks following, having been exposed to radiation.
Super chill, super cool.
So, I’m sure we’re all having the same thought. As Vanessa Hudgens would say, “Yeah like, people are going to die, which is terrible, but like inevitable?” I mean, thinking about the last nuclear attack, sure, Hiroshima was destroyed, and Nagasaki was ash, but Tokyo Disneyland was fine. (Tokyo Disneyland wasn’t built until 1983, but you get the point.) It’s totally ok if you just don’t live in any metropolitan area or any city that has any military presence.
And I wish that was the case. I sincerely wish that I, as a New Yorker, could live with the angst for you. I wish it would ONLY affect us.
I think we’d take it in stride. I know a couple of guys in Brooklyn who’d play Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” while holed up in their neighbor’s basement apartment. I feel like the construction dudes on 7th Ave could seriously survive the blast, based on their can-do attitude, alone. And let’s be honest, all of the UESiders would be safe. I have to imagine at least a few apartments east of the park have some weird nuclear fallout shelter that doubles as a sex dungeon. The image of a UES family, including the maid, cook, mistress, and family labradoodle crammed into a dimly lit, red-velvet room, actually makes me really happy.
But sadly, that is not the case. No, as Brian Toon so aptly put it, we have to “Remember the dinosaurs.”
He asserts that even a limited drop of nuclear explosives, like that on the scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the new Hydrogen bomb, our planet would be destroyed.
Immediately after, adjacent cities would catch fire and burn. Radioactivity would wreak havoc on local ecosystems. People would get sick. Just two weeks after the attack, the world would be covered in smoke. It would rise to 20 to 50 miles above the earth’s surface, a part of the atmosphere where it never rains. The smoke would stay with us for years, lowering temperatures and limiting sun exposure. Food production would be decimated. Brian Toon estimates that 90% of the world’s population would starve to death.
I wonder if Einstein laid awake at night. Tossing and turning.
“Had I known, had I known.”
The world, for humans, would cease to exist. Just like the dinosaurs.
I wonder if we’ll evolve.
Sorry, I’m gonna put on a character for a second. This character is a caricature of a person, or rather an archetype, I interact with more often than I’d like to admit.
Imagine me if you will, as a 5”10,’ white man. I have great hair, but a crooked nose, from the time I broke it trying out for lacrosse in the eighth grade. I wear a Seinfield-ian sweater. I claim to wear wired headphones for the sound, but in actuality, I lost my AirPods back in ‘21 and my Dad won’t buy me a new pair.
Ok:
Wait! Also, Tarantino is the best filmmaker of all time.
OK:
Yeah, I mean this ever-escalating “situation” in the Ukraine, which they call it like it is, it’s a full-ass invasion, it’s just an, erm, extension of Cold War politics. But Putin has wayyyy heftier balls then Kruschev, or even Gorbechev ever did. What he’s doing in the Ukraine is far more destructive than any occupation prior, like in Ir–
Reader, these aren’t my opinions, I am a vesselforthiswhiteboydemonpleasedeargodhelpme–
–like I was SAYING. I think there’s a real threat of nuclear war here. I know, it sounds crazy. But I welcome it, y’know. Let it burn. No, like–no stop smiling like that–me included! I think you know we’ve fucked up the planet enough as is, might as well give it a few years of peace before it’s absorbed by the sun. Or the ocean, whichever comes first. I mean, with the way nuclear dust will clog our atmosphere, and with oceans rising and shit, I really think –it’ll be a renaissance for aquatic life. Think about all those deep sea creatures in the Mariana Trench? It’ll be their time now. And really, y’know when the apocalypse comes, everyone says they’ll just kill themselves but really, don’t you think most of us will just keep living and like you know, scroll? Like mindlessly check and check and check the news, and TIKTOK and pray to God we’ll make it through this? Right…we won’t kill ourselves? No, if you were gonna kill yourself because you were afraid of the apocalypse, you would’ve done it by now. Wynn Bruce burned himself to death on the steps of the Capitol, a radical act of Climate Activism, and nothing changed. Nothing is going to change. So we just cross our fingers and hope that voting and re-tweeting and donating will do something. That they’ll ban nuclear weapons, or at least stop producing them. That someone will enact long-standing, wide reaching climate law. That someone, somewhere will burn their body on the steps of our nation’s capital and it will save us. But someone has, and they haven’t and they won’t. Which is why I initially invested in bitcoin–
–Woah! FUCK! Phew, that was–that was really scary, if I’m being completely honest. I’m glad to be free of that demon. I mean, yes, I would totally make out with him, but letting him use my body as a host? Not ideal. No.
I am afraid of death. I am afraid of not dying. I am afraid of surviving Nuclear Armageddon. I am afraid of dying in a Nuclear Armageddon. I am afraid of the world. I don’t want to die. I want to be released. I want to be a kid again before anyone I knew had died. I wish I didn’t have to know death. I wish I could’ve cried when my Grandparents died, instead of sighing with relief.
“At least she went before..”
“You know she was in a lot of pain, she’s in a better–”
I wish life didn’t feel like a battle.
“She fought cancer, and she beat the battle. When she died, she was declared cancer free.”
I wish the world wasn’t pressed on exacting revenge. Slowly, but surely.
“When do you think the world will end?”
It already has.
It already had.
I’m sorry. Hug the ones you love. Don’t die.
And as our turtle-necked friend would say, “Get inside. Stay Inside. Stay Tuned. You’ve Got This.”
