I mentioned in the previous Carnival Journal entry that I live only kilometers away from some of the largest fireworks factories on the planet. This is true. Does that proximity to "loud, sustained booming sounds" of another kind give me pause, or cause me to lose sleep? No, these factories are *enough* kilometers away that I would not have to be concerned should they fall prey to Yet Another Human Fuckup.
I had lunch today with two friends who live in the same town as one of the fireworks factories, and their sleep may not be quite as undistubed. That factory *has* blown up in the past, as the result of Yet Another Human Fuckup. When it did, it took out half the town. Fortunately, they live 'way up on the hillside over- looking this town, supposedly far enough away that their sleep need not be disturbed. On the other hand, some of these modern fireworks factories have enough high explosives on their shelves to create a blast larger than Hiroshima. But, even if I lived in that town, would I be concerned enough about the potential danger to lose sleep. Prob- ably not. I lived for six years downhill from and downwind from Los Alamos, New Mexico. Los Alamos was home to the building that the NSA, a year or so before 9/11, defined as the Number One Terrorist Target In America. No shit. It was the building that housed the plutonium. I don't know how much you know about plutonium, but one atom of it, breathed into your lungs, is enough to kill you. Dead. That much plutonium would so poison your body that cancer would become an inevitability and you would die. One atom. So how much plutonium was in this building in Los Alamos? Several hundred pounds of it. The NSA "scenario" that they proposed, before 9/11, was that if someone hijacked a plane from the Albu- querque airport (where the security guards are paid lower wages than the workers at the nearby McDonalds), and flew it, still almost-fully-loaded with fuel, into this building, the resulting firestorm would carry the plutonium high into the atmosphere and into the jet stream. Several hundred pounds of it. The end game of this NSA scenario was that the resulting cloud of radioactive material would kill every human being and animal from Los Alamos, New Mexico east to the Atlantic Ocean. Now *that* is a scenario that could keep you up at night, if you were prone to worrying about shit like that. I'm not. I'm one of those weird guys who could live *in* the fireworks factory, or in an apartment over its bar. And yes, the fireworks factory in the town I was speaking of has its own bar, at which the employees get a discount all day long, even during working hours. So, interestingly, did the building in Los Alamos, until the NSA report came out, and they covered the building with 20 feet of steel- reinforced concrete and closed the bar. Some shit you just can't worry about. This is just the kinda world we live in. Paying my taxes, staying low on bureaucrats' radar, eating right, exercise -- these things I pay attention to, and worry about if I'm not doing it right. But fireworks factories blowing up with the force of Hiroshima? Give me a break. I once lived downwind from Los Alamos.
