@bojacobs@hcommons.social
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bojacobs

@[email protected]

Nuclear historian at the Hiroshima Peace Institute. Book - Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha - Yale 2022. I work on the global human & ecological harm from nuclear production, nuclear weapon tests, reactor accidents. I examine the impacts on communities, families & emotions; long-term ecological presence of fallout radionuclides; the legacy of our nuclear waste to 1,000s of generations of our descendants.
#histodons #nuclear #Hiroshima #peace #STS

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bojacobs, to histodons
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

Gifted article:

"New Evidence That Ancient Footprints Push Back Human Arrival in North America

Following up a on study in 2021 of tracks found in New Mexico, researchers used more methods to bolster the claim that the tracks are up to 23,000 years old."

@histodons

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/science/footprints-tracks-new-mexico-age.html?unlocked_article_code=0PXbfeHq57BgXF6MDjrrin0Rkgi2YIVmfOc9vBS9-PoRA_LfgcU85R_81CG2hiHEC7JSZK2aFTpkZglMqm5O13Ukwc218D9YAgAN9ECzaNZu_dXY9pyDcVpSroQV4aDzYs3OQlfpZgQfAUxefTbcWOLjQabeyte8Ioa6xXimP8c1I1Qh4LXe95XTfjDhezMVF3WoqU_DFJhnhT5wFm9oFReXsA1Dv4ln0p30cDcV1l8XW3G_Y4ltdfg0VGsO47qSPn7cZdUfWomcgVKz0t-UOae50cD_db6KcoMO3ptexhk5AZblif3T8KVHQtkwUU-aFUuWPxaTlvsvVQrgvmbLibj8eQGoZ9s8CEY&smid=url-share

bojacobs, to sts
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

Wild boar in Eastern and Central Europe have remained highly radioactive since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Scientists have determined the ongoing high levels of radiation relate to the boar's preference for deer truffles. This article details how the dynamics of deer truffles and the they are in enhances the contamination of the , and their ongoing threat to health.

So these truffles are not just increasingly absorbing , but also fallout that spread globally from nuclear weapon testing.

As the old saying goes, we know when disasters start, but not when they end, because they don't end.

@sts

https://www.tuwien.at/en/tu-wien/news/news-articles/news/das-wildschwein-paradoxon-endlich-geloest

bojacobs, to sts
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

New nuclear testing?

Colonialism is an essential part of nuclear testing by Nuclear Weapon States (NWS), whether that test site is domestic or in the edges of empires.

Two NWS did not test even one weapon within their own national borders (UK & France). The 3 NATO nuke states tested all of their massive H-Bombs in the Pacific (empire).

Domestic sites are always located near minority ethnic or religious communities. China tested all its weapons in Uyghur territory.

Read my paper, "Nuclear Conquistadors: Military in Nuclear Test Site Selection during the Cold War," (updated version in my recent book, Nuclear Bodies).

@histodons @sts

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280775319_Nuclear_Conquistadors_Military_Colonialism_in_Nuclear_Test_Site_Selection_during_the_Cold_War

bojacobs, to histodons
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

Excellent critique of the politics of the #Oppenheimer film by esteemed historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa.

Two key takeaways:

-the film makes the production and use of the weapons seem "inevitable"

-it reinforces the illusion that the nuclear attacks "ended the war" (Hasegawa's work on this elsewhere is definitive)

The article is far more detailed that this and worth a read:

@histodons #nuclear #Hiroshima #Trinity

https://apjjf.org/2023/10/Hasegawa-Oppenheimer.html

bojacobs, to sts
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

Map showing major nuclear waste sites in the Russian European Arctic

@sts

bojacobs, to sts
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

I spoke on TRT World News again yesterday on the, now active, dumping of radioactive waste water into the Pacific Ocean in Fukushima.

I make the point that when money was allocated for the construction of the underground pipeline, that was making the decision, the last few months have been a "performance" of decision.

#Fukushima #NuclearPower #NuclearWaste @sts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=tvoZiwCR9ug

bojacobs, to sts
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

To learn more, read Kate Brown's Plutopia

"Mayak: The secret nuclear power plant that poisoned Russians for decades"

#Mayak #NuclearPower #NuclearWaste #Russia #ColdWarHist @histodons @sts

https://bigthink.com/the-past/mayak-secret-nuclear-plant-poisoned-russians-decades/

bojacobs,
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

@CitizenWald @histodons @sts That's following behind Kate's work in Plutopia, which explicitly compares the two plutonium production sites and the releases and cultures in both. She argues that they reflect each other eerily across the Cold War divide.

Private
bojacobs,
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

@sts This is a study that tracks the long-term low-dose exposures of industry workers, and their later health problems, with over 300,000 participants in the study.

It is a contrast to the Life Span Study of the ABCC/RERF which studied the single high-dose exposure of those exposed in the nuclear attacks in & .

2/2

bojacobs,
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@JosetAEtzel @sts Yes, although these are much larger and span decades, so they are more comprehensive. Many of the local studies Kate uncovered also focused on internalized radioactive particles, while this study is entirely external exposure. It can counter the claims, for example, that low contamination villages near Fukushima are safe to return to, especially for children.

bojacobs, (edited ) to histodons
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

My last word on the film is a quote from Leo Szilard (a fleeting presence in the film, but a key historical figure who wrote the “Einstein letter” re-enacted after the war in the photo below).

Speaking in Cincinnati in January 1947 Szilard said:

“Mass murderers have always commanded the attention of the public, and atomic scientists are no exception to the rule”

@histodons @workingclasshistory

bojacobs, (edited ) to sts
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

Selecting the irradiated (one of the chapter titles of my book):

The US conducted 1,054 nuclear weapon tests.

88% were conducted inside the US at the Nevada Test Site.

8% were conducted in the Marshall Islands.

This chart shows that the US concentrated the much larger hydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands, and that the 8% of tests there released far more blast, heat and radiation than the domestic tests.

This is a form of nuclear colonialism.

@histodons @sts

bojacobs, to sts
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

New Global Hibakusha blog post:

New post on the Global Hibakusha blog that includes audio for both of my two part interview on the Nuclear Hotseat podcast.

I talk about medical models of harm from radiation, how we have selected the irradiated (chosen test sites), pathologized anxiety about radiation and distributed fallout around the planet and into deep time.

Waste @sts @histodons

https://globalhibakusha.com/page/page-2/?permalink=nuclear-hotseat-interview

bojacobs, to histodons
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

This is Enola Gay Tibbets.

Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the plane that carried out the nuclear attack on Hiroshima 78 years ago this morning, named the plane that carried the nuclear weapon after his mother.

@histodons

bojacobs, to sts
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

New Global Hibakusha blog post:

Nuclear Hotseat Interview

@histodons @sts

https://globalhibakusha.com/page/page-2/?permalink=nuclear-hotseat-interview

bojacobs, (edited ) to histodons
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

"Domesticating Hiroshima in America in the Early Cold War"

How Americans came to see The US as perhaps the "real" during the early Cold War. Even in the 21st century describing the idea of a terrorist nuclear detonation in the US as an "American Hiroshima."

@histodons

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317011937_Domesticating_Hiroshima_in_America_in_the_Early_Cold_War

bojacobs, to sts
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

The first of my two-part interview on the Nuclear Hotseat podcast with Libbe HaLevy.

We talk about my book Nuclear Bodies and issues of radiation exposure, nuclear testing and accidents and the legacies of our #nuclear waste.

#NuclearPower #NuclearWeapons #ColdWar #hibakusha #Hiroshima @sts

https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/hiroshima-nagasaki-radiation-atomic-bomb/

bojacobs, to histodons
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Everywhere Oppenheimer's quoting of the Bhagavad Gita is presented as showing how deep and cool he was. An analysis of the quote and its implications in the Gita reveal something less cool.

As James Hijiya shows in his paper, "The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer," he shows how Oppenheimer's invocation of the quote was eerily similar to the "I was just following orders" of those who killed for another WW2 nation.

#Oppenheimer #MED #Hiroshima #BhagavadGita #IAmBecomeDeath #ManhattanProject #Trinity @histodons @sts

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1515629

bojacobs, (edited ) to random
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

Today is the 78th anniversary of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on Earth, the Trinity Test in New Mexico in 1945, three weeks before the nuclear attacks on Japan.

There will be many images posted of the mushroom cloud today, but here is what mattered more, the fallout cloud. Dozens of homes and communities were blanketed with fallout, which which also contaminated fields as far away as Illinois and Indiana.

They have always known about radioactive fallout.

@histodons @sts

1/2

bojacobs, (edited )
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

The fallout from the Trinity Test that landed in Indiana led to the contamination of strawboard boxes, some of which were used by the Kodak Company to ship film. The radiation from the fallout fogged the film, making it unusable. The story made newspapers after the news of the nuclear attacks on & .

When nuclear testing started at the Nevada Test Site in 1951, Kodak was given top secret information about the scheduling of tests so that they could protect their products.

The people who lived downwind from the Nevada nuclear tests were not given the same consideration as the products of the Kodak Company.

2/2

@histodons @sts

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a21382/how-kodak-accidentally-discovered-radioactive-fallout/

bojacobs,
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

@zbecker @histodons @sts Air bursts cause radioactive fallout unless they are detonated high in the upper atmosphere. There was a lot of radioactive fallout in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many people in the areas where the fallout came down developed a range of diseases.

Here in Hiroshima their exposures have finally been legally recognized and those who were exposed to the fallout (called Black Rain here) have been given special rights to medical care specifically focused on radiogenic diseases.

See the article below about the lawsuits:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/30/asia/hiroshima-black-rain-verdict-intl-hnk/index.html

bojacobs,
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

@JamesBazan Thanks for sharing James. Upstate NY was particularly hit with Nevada Test Site fallout because of the higher levels of precipitation. Rain and snow strip particles from the air and bring them down in higher quantities, hence some parts of the Eastern US received levels comparable to those closer to the test site. See this map for example:

@histodons

bojacobs,
@bojacobs@hcommons.social avatar

@antipode77 @JamesBazan @histodons The map was produced by a US organization, so that is what it assesses. But you are absolutely right, atmospheric dynamics do not abide political borders.

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