Jolt: a rural noir places survival questions central to the love story and action. Have you read it yet? If you have, to whom other have you recommended it? Or does talking about survival make you uncomfortable? Well, you're not alone. Talking about survival, especially nuclear survival, makes many people uncomfortable. However, such topics need to be readibly discussed. Not only for our mutual safety, but for our mental health for, in my experience, the better informed one is, the more secure one feels. And the less worried.

The desire to make survival more speakable lay as a major motivation behind my writing of Jolt: a rural noir. Involving a variety of well-developed characters caught in real life conflicts as well as the question of survival, Jolt: a rural noir is an excellent read: There are the lovers, Natalie and Thaw, entangled in the differences caused by their contrasting cultural backgrounds; Dody, the inexplicably complex but impulsive dad; the Matters family, with boys and parents caught in different locations at the time of the terrorist event; and the inhabitants of the tiny lakeside village of Locklee lying high in the distant Tannenbaum Mountains only to be overrun by fleeing forced emigrants.

Because of its rich content and story, Jolt: a rural noir is a great fund raiser or book club selection. Orders of ten or more copies are available at a 30% discount to non-profit discussion groups. To obtain the discount, however, it's necessary to by-pass larger distributors such as Amazon.com and order directly from the publisher of Jolt: a rural noir at Alva Press, Inc. at http://alvapressinc.com. 

Comments and questions are welcome. Just click on the Sign My Guestbook button type located to the right of this blog and enter what you have to say. I'll be sure to get back to you in the next couple of days.

Roberta in Po-Town, Looking forward to hearing from you.

 

Black beach, rocks and jetties. Black sea. Black. No, not the Gulf of Mexico. Rather the Yellow Sea of northeast China.  Greenpeace China's images of the devastation are graphic. An oil spill--as the issuance from a ruptured underwater pipeline is so inappropriately termed--spreads 165 square miles outward from the port city of Dalian, China's most liveable city.

Some 400,000 gallons of the half solid, half liquid, sticky-as-asphalt crude oil inks the sea and beaches. Big. Very big. And in a nation poorly equipped to handle it. Is any nation really equipped to do so? Forced to rely as it is on fishing boats for help. Floating 21-square-foot straw mats across the water to soak up the oil. While on the shores people with plastic gloves and whatever implements thought to be of potential use, struggle with clean up. And somewhat ironically it strikes me, according to the press, it is the government's plan to have the task 'done in five days'.

Bad. Really bad. But nothing compared to the Gulf of Mexico BP spill now estimated at between 94 and 184 million gallons--and therefore two to four hundred times as large.

But the real reason I sat to write today is that yesterday hearings on the Indian Point "once-through" cooling system happened in Cortland Manor, NY. The results at this time remain unknown to me. But under debate was the question of whether or not Entergy was willing to minimize the negative affects on the environment of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant by installing a closed-loop cooling system there. If done, the State would be willing to re-commission the plant past 2014 and 2015 when its different units' licenses expire.

The Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant's current system reportedly draws some 2.5 billion gallons of water from the Hudson River each day only to spill it back with its temperature significantly higher, killing millions of fish and other water forms.  

But the Point's owner, Entergy, says the new cooling towers required by the closed system, at a cost of 1.1 bilion, would be too expensive. 

Entergy went so far as to launch an advertising campaign to suggest that they have another method, a wedge-wire one, that will protect acquatic life at less financial cost.

I guess Entergy thinks this wedge-wire screen will catch and burp back unharmed all the estimated 1.2 billion aquatic organisms the Indian Point Plant currently kills annually.

Nice job! Burb! Here come the larvae! Burp! Now the fish eggs! Whoops! I forgot. And here are the fish! A little warmer perhaps, but not quite cooked, burp!--back into the Hudson you go!

Swim, said the little fishy, swim if you can . . .

Poor Entergy. What with Vermont voting on 2/24/10 to shut down its Vermont Yankee plant in 2012--just because radioactive materials likeTritium and bone grabbing Strontium-90 were spilling--and continue to spill--from its leaks into the Connecticut River! (Not to mention the four other isotopes seeping from underground pipes--pipes first reported as non-existant, only to be identified as existant following the finding of four other radioactive isotopes in the soil around the VT Yankee.)

Is it any wonder the State of Vermont is now seeking to close the Vermont Yankee earlier than at the date its license expires? (No wonder, earlier in the year, Entergy threw around discussion of moving the VT Yankee and Indian Point to Enexus. When I heard it, I jumped for joy. I wondered where Enexus was. Wrong. I'd misunderstood. Entergy meant moving the plants on paper to a new company to be named Enexus. But I think even they became confused by their own obsfuscation and the idea of the move was soon abandoned.)

And now we have talk of hydro fracking in the Catskills. And scuttlebutt suggests even into the Adirondacks. Can you imagine?!! First our rivers, next our coastline, and now even our inland drinking water! So the issue is bigger than to close this plant or that. Or to drill off shore or not. Or to sell our soul for methane gas or oil. No. The issue, I'm afraid, dear Watson, comes down to that of survival, for without enough potable water, surely we shall perish.

RMR in Po-Town, Stunned by the largess of it all, but awake

I never became a smoker; "Don't do as I do," my parents had cautioned me, "do as I say".  And so I did. But now it's now my turn.

Given all my talk of the importance of preparedness, when the power went down last night here in my run-away home in Port Henry, I couldn't find a flashlight; so in the dark, I crept down the cellar stairs and checked out the breakers in the electrical box. The main one seemed loose, so I locked it into the left. No lights.  

But was the Main really in the ON position? Anyone's guess.

Come daylight, I confirmed that the phones with a direct line to the jack worked. I searched the number for National Grid. When I dialed it, I learned that several towns would be without electricity for an hour or so more. The list included Port Henry. 

Hmm. It remained dark in the cellar, but I had to know. Had I set the Main to ON? 

Stewart's was also without power. No coffee, but I picked up a flashlight and batteries. On my return to the house, once I'd assembled the light, I descended the stairs to the cellar. When I observed I'd set the Main breaker to OFF, I reset it to ON. A nearby dehumidifier whirred. I crossed the cellar to the switch beside the playroom door. I flipped it and the cellar illuminated. 

The only thing I did right this morning was by happenstance: I'd enough cash on me to purchase the flashlight without the use of the charge card machine. 

So to borrow a quote from my parents, . . .

RMR on the Shores of Lake Champlain, Feelin' Better

The bottom line reason I would like us to end the use of nuclear power plants is that meltdowns and nuclear accidents aside, we really can't handle the nuclear waste safely enough nor convert it into a safer reusable form fast enough to prevent a nuclear pile-up of insurmountable size. With Yucca Mountain site closed to further storage of the waste and the continued difficulty with not only storage but transport, the legacy we leave to future generations is unconscienable.

But when activists fear-monger against the use of nuclear power with threats of another Chernoble, I take issue.

Nuclear plants today are designed to collapse inward rather than to explode outward in the event of emergencies. So the 'another' Chernoble threat is not a wise one to use. Through my one hundred hours of study with the military, often as the only non-military-associated civilian in a class of a couple of hundred, that is one thing I learned.

If you doubt what I say, then I suggest you pick up any eighth grade science book. The explanation of the shut-down there can be simple, well-illustrated, and informative. It also can help to allay some unnecessary fears you may have.

But meantime, we have the issue of cracks and leaks and terrorism, nuclear waste transport and storage, education and preparation for the in-case scenarios and just plain old ignorance, lethargy, and fear.

So with so many other real concerns to consider, I wouldn't get too worried when some one suggests we are about to at anytime experience another Chernoble. Instead, I'd study and prepare for mass emergencies. And if I wanted to do it somewhat painlessly on a simpler level, I'd pick up a copy of Jolt: a rural noir which I (Roberta M. Roy) wrote not only to entertain but to inform on how to prepare for and carry out a mass events response safety plan.

And, assuming you do decide to get involved with the colorful Jolt characters as they settle-in to a new, post-melt down way of life, be sure to watch the Matters boys as they react to 'The Event'. There's Jason, the older of the two, coached by his dad who works for The Plant, who has the survival options clear in his mind. As he zips through his decision-making and reaction to the meltdown, he does so with an automaticity that makes it into almost child's play . . . but only because he is both informed and practiced.

So do yourself a favor. Click in at http://alvapressinc.com and order yourself a paperback copy of Jolt: a rural noir. You won't be disappointed.

RMR in Po-Town

It's so difficult keeping the priorities straight. Let's see:

If we burn coal, wood, and oil, we pollute the air.

Wind, water, solar, and geothermal power are clean, but we need more.

Nuclear power is temporarily clean(er?) until we try to figure out what to do with the spent nuclear fuel (SNF).

(Yucca Mountain is off limits---full.

Do I want it in my backyard? No. How about your backyard. Hmm.

Now some nuclear isotopes are not radioactive, but the half life of the radioactive isotope U-233 is 160,000 years and its long term activity curve is about a million years. How many generations is that?

If we must, I think I'd rather you keep it in your backyard.)

Oh. Now I got it. We chug along with coal, wood, and oil and just stop building nuclear power plants until we can develop more clean energy. Sounds good! 

Until  Obama okays off-shore drilling in the Atlantic. Hmm.

And then the news arrives that the U. S. Coast Guard is putting out oil-absorbent containment booms and doing a controlled burn to take care of the 42,000 gallons of oil spewing forth daily from the site of the wrecked oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico as the pelicans do their dance of death to avoid the crude oil slick that laps the shores from the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana to Florida.

The question is complex and probably easier to decide on the basis of emotions and immediate personal priorities than on reason.

Nonetheless, for now, I'm hoping that no off-shore drilling is begun in the Atlantic; that Vermont Yankee actually does close completely; and that no new nuclear plants are being proposed or built.
 
Meantime, let's: celebrate the proposal for a new water-powered power plant in Middlebury, VT; thank the citizens of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard for learning to live with wind turbines; and join me as I replace my light bulbs with the more energy efficient curly kind.

RMR

In 1956 Howard Hughes brought to fruition his passion for the story of Ghengis Khan: Through RKO he produced the film The Conqueror. By now, its failure and the fate of its cast and crew members is common knowledge, so I’d like to share with you some of the details about it, picked up through perusing the net.

Apparently the unlikely John Wayne as Kahn was the result of Twentieth Century Fox’s refusal to loan Marlon Brando to RKO for the part. Wayne didn’t want it, but Hughes recalled an unfulfilled contract Wayne had signed in 1939 so Wayne had no choice.  As a result, the unlikely giant found himself draped in flowing mustache and, in his usual paced and laconic manner, delivering the already wooden lines of the poorly scripted marauding vandal, Kahn. Cinema graphically, the film was doomed from the start while the story of its cast has become epic.

The film was shot in the 120 degree heat of the Yucca Flats, Nevada, 137 miles south of the United States Testing Site, Operation Upshot-Knothole. There, three years earlier, eleven atomic tests had been conducted, two of which were of exceptional size and resulted in a radioactive cloud covering the Flats for days and poisoning the area with its ash in the form of radioactive fallout. So we find photos of Wayne in the middle of the desert walking around with a Geiger counter. Unlike today’s dosimeters which can measure radioactivity as it accumulates over time, a Geiger counter measures radiation levels only at a point in time. So while Wayne was on the right track he was ill-equipped to make the point. Instead, time would do it for him.

Among a typical population some estimates suggest that before the age of sixty-four, about one in two hundred or a half of one per cent of the population is likely to die of cancer. Then there's a big jump in incidence between the ages of 60 and 70 with an end result that eventually as many as some twenty per cent of the population may die of cancer.  But the cast and crew of The Conqueror were by and large well younger than sixty years of age. Nonetheless, of the 220 persons among them by 1981, twenty-five years after the filming,  already 91 had developed cancer and 46 had died of it.  Estimates suggest that these rates were at least three times the expected rates. When compared to certain reports of average incidence, however, the percentage is much higher.

Among those taken by cancer were John Wayne (lung cancer), Susan Hayward (brain cancer), Agnes Moorehead, and Director Dick Powell. Today, some fifty years hence, their cautionary tale lives on with that of the rest of the cast and crew, a tragic reminder of the need to carefully tend our fragile environment.

RMR

It takes a cowboy to know one. Still, the better cowboy wears his gun in view and employs it only to end the suffering of an injured animal or when threatened by snakes or gun carrying rustlers.

So whatever the response of North Korea and Iran, there remains the option on the table that neither to my knowledge have yet discussed: Join Russia and the USA in ratifying and upholding the START agreement. And take steps to adopt a plan similar to Barack Obama's more civilized graded options one. The purpose? The world needs to move as quickly as possible toward reducing nuclear proliferation to the extent that nuclear weapons become obsolete. 

Bad enough that on the way we'll be drilling for oil now off the coast of Virginia. Bad enough that a humanist like Obama rightfully sees the notion of the use of graded options among potentially devastating conventional military choices as a move toward a safer world. Bad enough that we even need to consider how we might respond in the event of an invasion.

Cheers for a United States of America willing to point its Intercontinental Balistic Missiles (ICBMs) away from Europe and toward the open ocean . . . in case of accidental firing . . . and by so doing to move them from the category of constant direct accidental threat to that of constant ready-to-respond defense mechanisms. Cheers for a President advocating further negotiations with Russia even after the signing of the START treaty today.

But the next thing is to trust the US Senate to ratify the new START treaty. From what I've read it's somewhat iffy that they will. But it becomes much less iffy if we all contact our Senators and remind them that we really want it passed. Not only for ourselves, but for our sons and daughters. And for future generations.

RMR in Po-Town

A question came into the site pertaining to how one can cleanse nuclear fallout from canned goods. It's a great question and suggests the need to clarify several probabilities. First, given the canned goods are likely to be stored within a house or some kind of a structure and therefore covered, it is very likely that fallout would not have reached them. 

Which brings us to the question of just what fallout is. Well, it's ash. And because it is particulate, if per chance one were to be close enough to a nuclear event to have it visited upon you in the first day or two following an event, in all likelihood there would be at least some aspect of it that would be visible. Which would mean you could see it and sweep it away.

But a good rule of thumb might be that when in doubt, decon the can as you would your own body: wash it with soap and water and rinse thoroughly. Once you feel comfortable that the can is clean, treat it as you have treated all previous cans of food: open it and eat the contents. You'll be fine.

As for water, people worry that their emergency bottled water might go bad. Worse yet, they could conclude tthat he water from a nearby running stream was safer. To clarify those bits of misinformation, in general, unless the bottle of water has been tampered with in some way, it is not going to go bad. As for the stream, that's were the radioactive fallout is likely to have been washed after rain or may even have fallen originally.  Drinking it in the vicinity of a nuclear disaster at best puts one at risk for cancer and at worst could mean certain death. To make the point, there have been stories of people on the outskirts of Hiroshima who might have survived had they understood the streams were radioactive and chosen to survive on water from jugs at home. But at that time, how could they know?

So if you have concerns related to food and water and have faced the possibility that at sometime you might have to hunker down for seventy-two hours while waiting for the level of radioactivity in the fallout around you to drop, store enough canned foods--and a can opener--and enough water for you and your family to manage as you wait in your home for the all clear message from the local authorities to be announced on your battery-powered radio.

And while your visiting the question of preparedness, throw some handkerchiefs and a bottle of water into you glove compartment for emergencies of any kind that might require the use of a Hepa mask. Wet and folded in four and covering your nose and mouth, a man's handkerchief will get you through the worst of fumes and smoke relatively well.

So not to worry. Just to be informed. And by being informed, to be better prepared.

And it wouldn't hurt to order a copy of Jolt: a rural noir. It's a good story. You'll like the characters. And it is chuck full of scientifically accurate information related to post nuclear survival. Its companion sci-fi novel, Too Close, will treat the question of surviving at home with radiation sickness. I'm just working on the outline for it at this time; the pair are designed so that part of part of it occurs in time parallel to that in Jolt while part of it runs as its sequel.

Roberta in Po-Town, Researching

9/11 did many things, but who'd have expected it would change the tenor of the local St. Patrick's Day parade? However it has. 

The parade we attended today was the Dutchess County St. Patrick's Day parade in Wappingers Falls, New York. And where once the parade featured a vintage fire wagon and a couple of fire engines, today there was a long line of emergency reponse smaller vehicles and trucks. Lettered clearly on some was the emergency call number, 911, or the letters EMS. 

And as an especially large contingent of volunteer firemen in uniforms passed, I was reminded of how much more intensive their training was today when compared to ten years ago (part of the reason I have become a Fan of the Firemen's Association of the State of New York. 

FASNY has been training New York firefighters since 1872-- some one hundred and thirty eight years--all the way back to the horse-drawn wagon and just a step past the days of primary reliance on the use prayer and a bucket brigade.

But firefighters now have to study everything from fires and emergency situations associated with the use of matches to those involving alternative energy sources, chemicals, gas leaks, explosions, hazardous wastes, and radiactive materials (including those resulting from nuclear meltdowns).

And they do it all with so little fanfare. 

So when next you talk to a firefighter or EMS person, do thank them for the understated way in which they dedicate themselves to us and community needs. And while your at it, try asking them what they have been studying about most recently. Although answers will vary, if you also take the trouble to inquire more specifically about the course content, you're likely to find it quite eye-opening, even fascinating.

RMR

By chance he mistook me for someone else. I was just at the point of giving a neighbor a bookmark celebrating, Jolt: a rural noir. A slender, alert man in his seventies, I thought, with well-cared for teeth, a ready smile, a perky cap, and a leather-like jacket with the logo of his place of work on it.

I told him he was just in time to receive a bookmark. He accepted it graciously and commented on Jolt, adding, "I was there, you know. Walked all over it. Hiroshima. Nakasaki."

My sister, W. was with me and I mentioned my interest in radiation sickness. I told him I wanted to include it in my next book.

We talked a bit, and then he said, "I got it you know. They didn't tell us anything. We just walked over everywhere. Terrible sights. Charred bodies all around. I still can't get over it. It's not a sickness. It's a disease."

Asked if he would talk about it, meaning the radiation sickness, he understood me to mean the scene. He said I was the second to ask him to do so. He wouldn't then. He wouldn't now. Too painful.

No, I told him. I meant the sickness. Like, how did he feel?

Well, there were times like now when he felt great. But then every month or so he had to go for chemotherapy. After that it was not so great.

He continued. "I have a lethal form of cancer," he stated. "I'll live about two more years . . . I wouldn't tell everyone that. But since you're writing."

So this was radiation sickness. In its aftermath. Its latermath.

I admired the man's courage. I admired his style. I took him for much younger, but as it turned out he was eighty-two year; he read the writing on the wall yet knew how to whistle.

I thought of the timing of the second World War. 1945. He would have been seventeen at the time. Probably had jumped up, signed up, and gone off to the save the world at sixteen. Perhaps his father signed for him. Or his mom.

Maybe he was one of the young sailors my dad brought home during that time to whom my mom fed hamburgers and fruit cake and coffee. Strangers they were. But my mom said they were really just kids and my dad brought them home to lessen their homesickness. And here was one of them. A Hiroshima survivor with radiation sickness turned lethal cancer and a few more years left and smiling.

It had not occurred to me that among the Hiroshima survivors were young Americans in the military, how many I couldn't guess. And probably nobody really knows. Or tells.

Later, in the Mall, walking along, we saw a young woman soldier in desert camoflage. Probably just back from Iraq on a visit.

Like an endless continuum it proceeds. Only the faces change.

RMR

In preparation to write my next novel, Too Close, I am researching the potential effects of nuclear power plant criticality accidents such as might result in someone being irradiated. To understand what would occur in such rare instances, I am reading, A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness, NHK-TV "Tokaimura Criticality Accident" Crew, Translated by Maho Harada. It discusses the events in the life and care of Ouchi, a critically irradiated man, injured in a probably preventable accident that occurred on September 30, 1999, at a nuclear fuel processing plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki, Japan. It was the first of its kind in that country.

The first concept I needed to understand was that criticality occurs when fission chain reactions occur continuously. When it happens, a blue light known as the Cherenkov light is generated at the site of the fission when criticality is reached. At that moment neutron beams, the most powerful form of radioactive energy, are released that convert the sodium in a nearby person's body into radioactive substance Sodium-24.

The second concept I had to understand is that while the substance Sodium-24 irradiates the cells of the affected person's body, it does not irradiate those who come in close proximity to or touch the person. This contrasts with what one finds when a person is covered with nuclear fallout. Nuclear fallout is made of substances such as Strontium-90 and Cesium-137. They do give off radiation causing the risk of radiation exposure when those attending them touch or breathe in the radioactive materials from a patient's body or clothes.

Were the irradiation to have been caused by fallout therefore, before unprotected treatment could begin, the person so affected would have to be decontaminated by a thorough washing with soap and water. But in Ouchi's instance, this strong, healthy-looking man who was, so to speak, dying from the inside out, from the first was safely both approachable and touchable. The fact there was no risk was a reality many of the staff had to struggle to accept. Nonetheless, they did, and Ouchi's care was relentlessly of the highest medical and personal quality. 

As the criticality accident was the first of its kind in Japan, no one in the country had other than a theoretical knowledge of the best treatment protocol for Ouchi. Because of this, an enormous team composed of all kinds of medical specialists was gathered to collect data on Oushi's condition daily and to determine the best course of treatment. This they did out of a combination of disbelief, untried hope based on what they knew theoretically, and humanism facing the edge of life with inadequate experience. 

The case had had no precedent on which to build a protocol. They did what they could with what they knew. But from the beginning, the odds were against them.

From previous study I know that the most important information in treating radiation sickness is the exposure level experienced by the patient. According to this book, radiation levels of above 8 sieverts (8 Sv) result in a mortality rate of one hundred per cent. Ouchi's exposure level was estimated as being at about 20 Sv, approximately 20,000 times the amount of exposure we can individually tolerate in a year. The telltale symptom of almost immediate vomiting and passing out following Ouchi's exposure would have been a first alert to any informed doctor. 

Well, I shall continue reading the story of Ouchi and his treatment for the purpose of better understanding the most severe effects of radiation sickness. However, as the numbers of persons likely to be so affected in a nuclear meltdown would be small, I have decided to write about one or more persons who are irradiated less and to an extent that permits them to survive. In that way, I hope to tell not only a more gentle story, but also an informative one that might help the reader understand what he or she might do in the way of home care for a loved one less severely affected were the necessity ever to present itself. I want to do this because were there ever a larger, real event in which radiation from any cause--meltdown criticality, dirty bombs, or other--it would be likely the hospitals would be overrun and those who survived and were in need of help would best be tended to at home.

RMR

A couple of weeks ago I met a woman realtor who lives within ten miles of a nuclear power plant. We talked about my book Jolt: a rural noir and the information regarding nuclear survival in it. 

Before writing Jolt, I spent a lot of time studying survival, but I did it from the point of view of person who lives beyond the five to ten mile area most likely to be affected either directly or indirectly by a meltdown. So the realtor had many questions I could not answer. Like how far out would the fission reach? And the associated ionizing radiation?

All I know about meltdown fission is what an oncologist and ionizing radiation expert told me he had learned from a woman scientist who had witnessed such fission: It gives off a blue light. 

Well, so much for that. 

Then I explained to the realtor that power plants today are not constructed as Chernoble was. Chernoble kind of 'blew.' Today's plants would be more likely to collapse inward. She accepted as reasonable.

I told her there would be no plume. She knew that.

We talked about the spent fuel risk. She seemed less aware of that.

I did not tell her about the night emissions from the plant so I'm not sure if she knows about them. Or the problems with spent waste.

Well, since that night, I have ruminated a bit on point of view . . . the author's point of view . . . mine . . . in the writing of Jolt.  And what I decided needed be said is that Jolt is about survival after a nuclear event, whether it's a meltdown, explosion, or just a plain old misleading, upsetting, but not really so awful, dirty bomb.

In other words, I wrote Jolt for those of us who following the assumed nuclear event, would walk out uninjured. So, you see, I wrote it for most of us.

Also, I assumed there would be two prongs to survival thereafter. One would be to prevent or escape the effects of ionizing radiation. The second would be related to aspects of protentially becoming a forced emigrant. I just did not write Jolt for the families who would not be able to get out, probably because they live not more than a stone's throw from the affected nuclear plant or explosion. 

Now the realtor is buying a copy of Jolt for her husband. (He loves sci-fi and thought Jolt looked promising.) So after it becomes available, probably near the end of this month, maybe I'll get to learn from him if the difference in point of view for people who live near a plant in comparison to all the rest of us is real or just my imagination.

Roberta M in Po-Town