Prohibition, the Lie of the Land by Sean Dennis Cashman, 1981
https://www.amazon.com/Prohibition-Land-Sean-Dennis-Cashman/dp/0029057302
Used, 15 available from $5.97.
Read it years ago; well-written, well-researched, and worth having a copy. Mine's in a box somewhere in the garage.
The difference between nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs is only a matter of power plants carefully controlling the rate of fission. Bombs release energy almost instantly; power plants release it over a much longer period, and do so with graphite rods carefully placed and adjusted to control the rate of fission.
Cancer and other harm: Yes, people died of radiation poisoning after the Japanese bombings. Yes, the cities are inhabited now; the levels of radiation are no longer of any real concern. FYI, there is still detectable and in some areas dangerous radiation from the Fukushima disaster in the areas surrounding that plant.
As for chernobyl:
"The health effects of the Chernobyl accident are massive and demonstrable. They have been studied by many research groups in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, in the USA, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. The scientific peer reviewed literature is enormous. Hundreds of papers report the effects, increases in cancer and a range of other diseases. My colleague Alexey Yablokov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published a review of these studies in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2009). Earlier in 2006 he and I collected together reviews of the Russian literature by a group of eminent radiation scientists and published these in the book Chernobyl, 20 Years After. The result: more than a million people have died between 1986 and 2004 as a direct result of Chernobyl. [emphasis added] . . . Joseph Conrad wrote: 'after all the shouting is over, the grim silence of facts remain.' I believe that these phoney experts like Wade Allison and George Monbiot are criminally irresponsible, since their advice will lead to millions of deaths."
~ Dr. Chris Busby, Deconstructing Nuclear Experts, March 2011
Also:
British Journal of Radiology published Rationale for using multiple antioxidants in protecting humans against low doses of ionizing radiation in 2005 (with 85 references). It includes, among other things, the following information:
Vitamin A and NAC (N-acetyl-L-Cysteine) "may be effective against radiation-induced carcinogenesis"
Alpha-lipoic acid "lowered lipid peroxidation among children chronically exposed to low doses of radiation in the area contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear accident"
β-carotene (beta-carotene) "reduced cellular damage in the above population of children"
"A combination of vitamin E and α-lipoic acid (alpha lipoic acid) was more effective than the individual agents"
"β-carotene also protected against radiation-induced mucositis during radiation therapy of cancer of the head and neck"
"A combination of dietary antioxidants was more effective in protecting normal tissue during radiation therapy than the individual agents"
You said "I haven't heard how or why the chain reaction simultaneously ceases" --
It DOESN'T, which is why radioactive (and chemically poisonous as well) waste is an issue from power plants, uranium mining and processing, etc. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than new rods used in power plants but still radioactive enough to be a health hazard to soldiers and civilians alike in areas where DU is used.
As for why the chain reactions in bombs cease, it's because the materials are no longer compressed together in tight contact, which is necessary for the chain reaction to continue. Only a small amount can fission before that happens.
I have a geiger counter -- they function as advertised -- and I'm pretty clear on the physics involved. I have read a good deal about nuclear power plants and am horrified at the severe, global problem of nuclear waste -- which would not exist were it not for nuclear weapons, power plants, medical uses, and so on. The mental contortions required to view nuclear weapons and power plants as functioning via some OTHER mechanism never made sense to me and still doesn't.
For instance: nuclear subs can operate submerged for FAR longer than diesel subs. What's being used to make that possible, if not nuclear fusion (to create heat to generate electricity)?
Good summary of the major points of what's been done to mankind in the past century or so -- and, without the modern tech parts, for millennia.
I'd say the main purpose is to keep the population dumbed down, weak, and under "elite" control, with money as a major side benefit and "human sacrifice" as an added justification to those who actually believe the Satanist religion.
But of course, that's just my guess.
I don't expect ANY woke crap in Dune 2; didn't notice any in Dune 1, which is an excellent film, although despite covering only a portion of the novel feels a bit rushed to me. The Dune story is a vast canvas, and the movie does it justice in many ways but there is too much plot crammed into one film to not feel a bit cramped.
Yes. A large number of cities both in Europe and in Japan -- including Tokyo -- were incinerated by saturation bombing with incendiary bombs.
As you probably know, Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five was inspired by his experience as a POW in Dresden. From Wikipedia:
On December 22, Vonnegut was captured with about 50 other American soldiers.[23] Vonnegut was taken by boxcar to a prison camp south of Dresden, in the German province of Saxony. During the journey, the Royal Air Force mistakenly attacked the trains carrying Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners of war, killing about 150 of them.[24] Vonnegut was sent to Dresden, the "first fancy city [he had] ever seen". He lived in a slaughterhouse when he got to the city, and worked in a factory that made malt syrup for pregnant women. Vonnegut recalled the sirens going off whenever another city was bombed. The Germans did not expect Dresden to be bombed, Vonnegut said. "There were very few air-raid shelters in town and no war industries, just cigarette factories, hospitals, clarinet factories."[25]
On February 13, 1945, Dresden became the target of Allied forces. In the hours and days that followed, the Allies engaged in a firebombing of the city.[22] The offensive subsided on February 15, with about 25,000 civilians killed in the bombing. Vonnegut marveled at the level of both the destruction in Dresden and the secrecy that attended it. He had survived by taking refuge in a meat locker three stories underground.[8] "It was cool there, with cadavers hanging all around", Vonnegut said. "When we came up the city was gone ... They burnt the whole damn town down."[25]
"Proof of concept" could have been done by dropping the bomb on an uninhabited forest area, but I think you're right that anti-Japanese propaganda combined with actual reports of Japanese atrocities aided American acceptance of the bombings. My guess is that two civilian populations were targeted to show the world that A) we HAD such weapons and B) would use them callously to impose our will on the world -- so every nation would know we were the global hegemon.
I think EVs are interesting and have a good use case for some situations, but several factors make them a very bad choice -- untenable, really -- as full replacements for the entire vehicle fleet (or anything close to that).
The government / WEF / etc is FORCING the replacement of internal combustion vehicles with electrics instead of letting the market decide what level of EV saturation makes sense. That's why we're seeing so many bizarre and sometimes deadly problems with EVs, and why manufacturers are losing billions trying to sell EVs to a population that mostly doesn't want them.
Here's one that might get her to consider not vaxxing the little one:
https://kirschsubstack.com/p/vaccines-cause-autism
Best wishes waking your wife up on this topic.
The words you quote are from Charles Hugh Smith, the author of the article.
I'm in a similar situation to what you describe, and my family too seem like "normal people with money." That's largely, I think, because we were well-off but far from wealthy in childhood; our parents were conservative and our father was a hard-working engineer who moved often for new career opportunities and earned enough that we lived in "slightly nice" neighborhoods but were expected to do chores, to get jobs in our mid-teens if not before, and so on. We weren't coddled, and our childhood friends mostly came from lower-to-middle class homes. Most of the other folk I know with money are similar: decent, "normal" people, not clueless rich people living in wealthy enclaves. Then again, we live far from any metro area and small-town values are still typical here.
EDIT: My wife and I lived in Southern California for awhile, and we did know people in THAT area who were a lot like what Charles Hugh Smith describes.
The "where no shots were fired" factor highlights something I never hear talked about: Having a gun is often the only NON-VIOLENT way to end a potentially deadly (or otherwise violent) confrontation.
Sounds like it'd be a leftist talking point, if their brains were in gear . . .
Here's a collection of video clips of nuclear test blasts. Plenty of other such videos exist.
They were taken decades ago, before modern special effects. I'm old enough to have seen most of them in the '50s and '60s; they're real. And they're NOT anything that could be duplicated by chemical explosives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWQ5KnP2W3k
Enjoy.