I will be in Hawaii when Divine Strake goes off. Before then, I will watch patiently as the Pentagon agency that is planning the test, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, wriggles and writhes through the course of legal, administrative and grassroots obstacles. I will anticipate the announcement in January 2007, following their dog-and-pony show that they will consider our 'public comment period,' that they will go ahead with the test. I won't be surprised of the excuses they will give why an environmental study of the soils at the blast site won't be necessary.
By springtime 2007, I will be checking into airline prices for Maui. I will have to wait until just about the last minute to book the flight since the Nevada Test Site management will be waiting day after day until the winds are just right to conduct Divine Strake. They will be waiting until the winds blow northerly, away from Las Vegas. Just a few days before detonation, I will board my plane and when I arrive in Maui I will watch the news from my hotel room. The news networks will broadcast the plume of the Divine Strake dust cloud, which days earlier they will insist - in full regurgitation of the Pentagon's press releases – is an insignificant danger to people downwind.
In government offices across the world, defense officials will watch the mushroom cloud knowing the purpose of this massive blast. The moving image of the cloud will make its way into the living rooms of downwinders, who will be reminded of the terror that once was and now has returned. The billowing mass of dust will move with the winds and find victims, some old and some new. They will both be part of a new generation of downwinders.
As most of the ash and dust settles and the rest continues to float along the jet stream, I won't doubt what the Pentagon will do next. There will be an analysis and a fancy presentation. This time their audience will be the U.S. Congress. The Pentagon's presentation will create a need, present a solution and ask for acceptance. The need will be that of protection from a growing nuclear threat of select rogue nations. More specifically, the threat will be underground bunkers that are housing nuclear programs or stockpiles. The solution will be a nuclear bunker buster that will conform to the smallest possible size of blast necessary to destroy an underground facility. The proof that the collateral damage from the nuclear blast will be the smallest possible will be the data from Divine Strake. Pictures, data and analysis will show that the 0.6 kiloton blast of Divine Strake was indeed the smallest amount of firepower needed to collapse a limestone tunnel at the Nevada Test Site. A powerpoint slide will show that the limestone tunnel at the test site very closely resembles the geography and bunker characteristics in nations of Bush's axis of evil. The Pentagon will then ask Congress, through one or more of its loyal Republican lawmakers, to approve funding of research into the bunker buster. Most Democrats, likely the same ones who in 2003 approved the repeal of the Spratt-Furse amendment, the ban on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons, will vote for the new measure. Ultimately, a few above-ground tests of the nuclear bunker buster will be deemed necessary. These will be planned for the Nevada Test Site. There will be fallout. There will be lies about exposure. There will more cancers. There will be more deaths.
And the whole nightmare will begin. All over again.
Andrew Kishner is founder of www.Idealist.ws, an online organization dedicated to providing clear, intelligible and insightful information and analyses about the follow-up to the Divine Strake test, radiation dangers and monitoring, nuclear proliferation, and the U.S. military's nuclear simulation activities regularly occurring in the West.
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