Atomic Suicide: The Tale of the Sailors and the Seals

“Life cannot live without heat. It is created by heat and must have it—it is good for you. It warms you to a normalcy of temperature and expands your body cells in perfect attunement with their compression sequences—it synchronizes with the rhythms of your breathing and your pulse beat. Radioactivity gives you more heat than you can stand. It sends millions of alpha ray bullets into your body which accumulate all of your life and raise your temperature, readjusting your entire metabolism until your body cells explode from their accumulated heat and expand beyond their normalcy. All things in nature die normally by slow expansion. Radioactivity is multiplied expansion—These killers are the invisible metallic death rays which penetrate every cell of your body with ultra-microscopic poison metal bullets at speeds of around 160,000 miles per second.” – Walter and Lao Russell, “Atomic Suicide”

Lindsay Cooper, US. sailor nuked aboard USS Ronald Reagan, Operation Tomadachi

March 11th, 2011 would have begun like any other day for the crew of the USS Ronald Reagan, except this particular day would go down in history, as the world learned of the 9.o earthquake and devastating tsunami that had struck Japan. The ship, which was already relatively close to Japan, would be changing course for the coastline of Honshu to assist in humanitarian efforts needed for the tens of thousands of people now displaced by this enormous disaster. The rest of the 7th fleet would join in the mission as well. In total, 70,000 members of the US military would participate in some way during the course and became known as “Operation Tomodachi”. Tomodachi happens to mean ‘friend’.

Over 1000 miles away, Alaskan ringed seals stretched lazily on ice floes, perhaps aware of a disturbance in the earths’ geomagnetic field, perhaps not. Either way, not much changes from a seals point of view, one day is not much different from another. You wake up, swim around, find food, and go back to sleep. The only time seals deviate from this schedule is if it is mating season, a tsunami is coming, you are being chased by a polar bear or killer whale, or if you have cubs to look after.

In Japan, as the 7th fleet anchored off Honshu, helicopter flights were readied, supplies prepared, gear was checked, and orders received from Naval Command stateside, who were taking their direction from the Japanese government, and later the NRC. What may have first seemed like an in-and-out mission, was immediately and drastically expanded. The widespread damage was much worse than first feared. It would be weeks, even months, that Japan would need help. The sailors prepared themselves accordingly. But it didn’t take long to see this mission may not go as planned. Within the first days, things started going really, really wrong on the ship. You could say, they went rather critical.  As well as a few nearby nuke plants on the coast of Honshu, and especially at Fukushima Daiichi.

Navy sailor Lindsay Cooper knew something was wrong when billows of metallic-tasting snow began drifting over USS Ronald Reagan. She and scores of crewmates watched a sudden storm blow toward them from the tsunami-torn coast of Fukushima, Japan. Lindsay didn’t know it then, but the snow was caused by the freezing Pacific air mixing with a plume of radioactive steam. “As soon as you step foot on the flight deck and went outside you had this taste of like aluminum foil. We thought that we had felt a plume because there was kind of this warm air that went past the ship and you could kind of tell the differences between jet exhaust — we didn’t have any jets going around at the time. It was like 20 degrees outside and you could feel this warm air and you kind of enjoyed it at first and then you’re like, ‘Is that aluminum foil that I taste?’

Senior Chief Michael Sebourn, a radiation-decontamination officer, was assigned to test the aircraft carrier for radiation. The levels were incredibly dangerous and at one point, the radiation in the air measured 300 times higher than what was considered safe, Sebourn told The Post. When I interviewed Mike on Nuked Radio over a year later, he also recalled measuring 60,000 cpm off the helicopter intakes when they came back to the ship. News must have got around to the surrounding countries fairly quickly. Everyone seemed to know the extent of the danger, except the crews involved, who continued to make run after run of food, water, blankets, and supplies to the people on the coast, for weeks on end. They continued their mission, and followed their orders. Eventually, they needed to go into port, for supplies and so forth, and because a large number of people on the ship were now very sick. Cooper stated “Japan didn’t want us in port, Korea didn’t want us, Guam turned us away. We floated in the water for two and a half months [until Thailand took them in] “People were sh -tting themselves in the hallways.”

Within about 5 days of those initial plumes, the seals would have had their first taste of aluminium foil, too.  Some by direct inhalation, more by what landed in the snow and revolitalized later. What landed in the ocean, quickly worked its way through the food chain. Plutonium, Americium, Uranium, and other highly toxic elements were found a few months later in every single organism tested in Alaskan waters, by the US Department of Energy. That’s extremely bad news if you’re a seal, or anything else that eats seafood from the Pacific. Although the fishing industry, various deceitful news outlets, and paid government scientists seem to want you to believe otherwise.

 

The Alaskan Dispatch reported in the Fall of 2011: “Indigenous hunters in Alaska’s Arctic noticed ice seals they rely on for food and other uses covered in oozing sores and losing hair. They were sick and some were dying.  As of this month, despite the international group of scientists and researchers the declaration pulled together, no cause has been officially identified for the illness plaguing the ice seals. Walruses and polar bears have turned up with similar ailments. Some of the animals were found to also have bleeding and swelling in their lungs, livers, lymph nodes and other internal organs. Preliminary tests to determine whether exposure from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant accident in Japan have also not revealed any answers. More tests on tissue samples for radionuclides associated with the event are being conducted, but those done so far have not yielded any direct connection.” Later, necropsies would show the seals also suffered merciless diarrhea that burned their fins, and tumors and lesions in their brains, lungs, liver, bones, and other internal organs. Seals with similar symptoms were later reported in China and Russia. And although NOAA has stated several times since that the “Unusual Mortality Event” in Alaska seems to be over, recent local reports are painting quite a different picture.

Meanwhile, Navy personnel began experiencing more severe and mysterious symptoms, including hemorrhaging and cancer. Sebourn, who had been assigned to investigate radiation levels in the air and on American military aircraft, now spends his days going from one specialist to another. After seeing at least 10 doctors and undergoing three MRI’s and two ultrasounds, he still doesn’t know what’s wrong. Sebourn says he very suddenly lost 50 to 60 percent of the power in the right side of his body. This shocked him when he walked into the gym one day and could only do his workout on his left side – he says his right side just didn’t work. Administrative Officer Steven Simmons was on the USS Ronald Reagan too. Simmons suddenly lost 20 to 25 pounds, started running fevers, getting night sweats and tremors, and his lymph nodes started to swell. He can no longer use his legs and spends all of his time in a wheelchair. His weakness has traveled up to his core and arms, and the signals between his brain and his bladder have failed. He uses a catheter every four hours. Other sailors have been diagnosed with immune system failure, blindness and ocular cancers, testicular cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, and brain cancer.

“As for the people who are saying those levels weren’t very high, normal background radiation, I call bogus to that, because I was the man taking the background levels. If you think 300 times higher than a normal day’s radiation level is fine, than I don’t know what to tell you” says Seybourn. Over 150 sailors are now part of a class-action lawsuit against TEPCO, for lying about the meltdowns, and the risk to military personnel that were participating in the mission. “What I’m looking for in the suit is a medical fund, money put aside for a medical fund, some place for all 70,000 people – [Department of Defense] civilians, family members, service members that were exposed to this to make sure that we’re taken care of down the road when we need it. My body is falling apart.”

In late summer of 2011 was when the seals had started falling apart, too. Followed by Alaskan seabirds, Musk Ox, geese, salmon, and bleeding herring. The sardines disappeared. The oysters were sick. Starfish were ‘melting’ all along the west coast of Canada and the US. Many different species showed decreased number of offspring, and what remained of the species, were extremely susceptible to various illnesses. And all this is new, since Fukushima. It will require years of extensive (and very expensive) testing, across multiple affected species, to determine the direct cause, and check isotope analysis in every animal affected. If you’re a human, this would be the perfect opportunity to adopt the precautionary principle. Although if you listen to the fishing industry, various deceitful news outlets, and government paid scientists, there is hardly any problem at all. None of the above seem to want to look at atmospheric transport studies, wind patterns, the timeline, the testimony of indigenous people, loads of data from Chernobyl and weapons tests, the proven fact that no radiation is safe, or that TEPCO has lied their way through every news conference they have ever held, and yet we still rely on them to tell us what is going on at the plant. Some of TEPCOs boldest lies included venomous denials that meltdowns had occurred, which they later admitted, when the Reagan was parked only a mile offshore.

Former U.S. Navy Officer Steven Simmons said: “I don’t understand how you can place a ship the size of a carrier into a nuclear plume for over five hours, suck up contaminants into the water system of the ship, and expect there to be no harm whatsoever to the human life?”

You could go one step further to say: “I don’t understand how you can endlessly dump hundreds of tons of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean for 3 years straight and not expect to have no harm whatsoever to everything that lives in the sea?”

Paul Garner, attorney for the plaintiffs said of the situation: “The TEPCO people certainly knew the severity of what was happening, because now you have radiological releases into the environment. Leukemia’s, bleeding, thyroid problems, polyps, testicle removal, optic nerve removal, the list goes on and on, unfortunately. It’s hard to imagine that all of these people are suffering now when they were all basically in their early 20s, in good health, and looking forward to life. It should really be a situation where the naysayers have to demonstrate that it did no harm to these people.” The US government doesn’t seem to think there is any harm, either. In fact, they cancelled their health registry a few months after the sailors returned from their mission, stating: “After extensive environmental monitoring and analysis, it has been determined that none of the nearly 70,000 members of the [Department of Defense] affiliated population … are known to have been exposed to radiation at levels associated with adverse medical conditions.” Well, if that’s true, then it appears President Obama wasn’t lying when he stated early on that the opinion of the NRC was that no harmful radiation would reach our shores, and the CDC was correct by not recommending any precautionary measures be taken by the public. Right? Wrong.

I might buy that line of BS, if I didn’t know better. If I hadn’t paid attention for the past 3 years. If I hadn’t ever read the list of toxic elements that blew out of Fukushima. If I hadn’t watched TEPCO executives crying on TV right at the beginning, an unheard-of display of emotion in Japanese culture. If I hadn’t watched simulation after simulation of various isotopes blow over the Pacific Ocean, the United States and Canada. If I hadn’t tasted metal myself for a week straight in the midwest, that last week of March. If I hadn’t read the NRC FOIA transcripts detailing how those lying-bastards operate. If I hadn’t witnessed TEPCO being caught in lie after lie after lie since this whole thing started, including all the ‘cold-shutdown’ garbage than ran on over 300 mainstream media sources. If I hadn’t read how sick things become when they are exposed to radiation. If I hadn’t read the increased mortality study from the US, or the sick baby study from Iodine 131 exposure in the 5 west coast states.  And, if I hadn’t ever read the Plutonium Beagle dog study, which on some days, I wish I never had.

 

“This study was conducted to determine the biological effects of inhaled 238PuO2 over the life spans of 144 beagle dogs. The dogs inhaled one of two sizes of monodisperse aerosols of 238PuO2 to achieve graded levels of initial lung burden (ILB). The aerosols also contained 169Yb to provide a gamma-ray-emitting label for the 238Pu inhaled by each dog. Excreta were collected periodically over each dog’s life span to estimate plutonium excretion; at death, the tissues were analyzed radiochemically for plutonium activity. The tissue content and the amount of plutonium excreted were used to estimate the ILB. These data for each dog were used in a dosimetry model to estimate tissue doses. The lung, skeleton and liver received the highest alpha-particle doses, ranging from 0.16-68 Gy for the lung, 0.08-8.7 Gy for the skeleton and 0.18-19 for the liver. At death all dogs were necropsied, and all organs and lesions were sampled and examined by histopathology. Findings of non-neoplastic changes included neutropenia and lymphopenia that developed in a dose-related fashion soon after inhalation exposure. These effects persisted for up to 5 years in some animals, but no other health effects could be related to the blood changes observed. Radiation pneumonitis was observed among the dogs with the highest ILBs. Deaths from radiation pneumonitis occurred from 1.5 to 5.4 years after exposure. Tumors of the lung, skeleton and liver occurred beginning at about 3 years after exposure. Bone tumors found in 93 dogs were the most common cause of death. Lung tumors found in 46 dogs were the second most common cause of death. Liver tumors, which were found in 20 dogs but were the cause of death in only two dogs, occurred later than the tumors in bone and lung. Tumors in these three organs often occurred in the same animal and were competing causes of death. These findings in dogs suggest that similar dose-related biological effects could be expected in humans accidentally exposed to 238PuO2.” How about seals? Polar bears? And walruses?

Thank you, National Institutes of Health, for posting that horrific study. Otherwise I might have remained willfully ignorant that there is any connection, in any way whatsoever, with the Plutonium that blew out of Fukushima, the sick sailors,  and the sick seals. Especially considering that they all suffer from the same pathology. After exposure to the same nuclear substances. Not to mention, everybody else downwind that was exposed and may develop pathology later, from levels we still haven’t been told the truth about. It’s just a great misfortune for some who were a little closer to it all, namely the sailors, the seals, and 30 million people in Tokyo.

Within the last week, there is something new on the seals to report. Nevermind that it’s 2 years past due of when it was promised by NOAA. However, I would like to point out that this study is being presented as a scenario and not in any way a certainty, or admission of any kind. To do so, would reflect poorly on all those government agencies who have been telling us all along there’s nothing to worry about. And that way, it allows the much-needed wiggle-room for the fishing industry, various deceitful news outlets, and government paid scientists to continue to skirt the fact that no one in their right mind should still be eating Pacific seafood, unless they want to chance ending up like the beagles did.

The pdf reads as follows:
Alaska Marine Science Symposium , Jan. 20-24, 2014: 2011 Fukushima Fall Out: Aerial Deposition On To Sea Ice Scenario And Wildlife Health Implications To Ice-Associated Seals. Within five days of the accident atmospheric air masses carrying Fukushima radiation were transiting into the northern Bering and Chukchi seas. During summer 2011 it became evident to coastal communities and wildlife management agencies that there was a novel disease outbreak occurring in several species of Arctic ice-associated seals. Gross symptoms associated with the disease included lethargy, no new hair growth, and skin lesions, with the majority of the outbreak reports occurring between the Nome and Barrow region. NOAA and USFWS declared an Alaska Northern Pinnipeds Usual Mortality Event (UME) in late winter of 2011. The ongoing Alaska 2011 Northern Pinnipeds UME investigation continues to explore a mix of potential etiologies (infectious, endocrine, toxins, nutritious etc.), including radioactivity. Currently, the underlying etiology remains undetermined. We present results on gamma analysis (cesium 134 and 137) of muscle tissue from control and diseased seals, and discuss wildlife health implications from different possible routes of exposure to Fukushima fallout to ice seals. Since the Fukushima fallout period occurred during the annual sea ice cover period from Nome to Barrow, a sea ice based fallout scenario in addition to a marine food web based one is of particular relevance for the Fukushima accident. Under a proposed sea ice fallout deposition scenario, radionuclides would have been settled onto sea ice. Sea ice and snow would have acted as a temporary refuge for deposited radionuclides; thus radionuclides would have only become available for migration during the melting season and would not have entered the regional food web in any appreciable manner until breakup (pulsed release). The cumulative on-ice exposure for ice seals would have occurred through external, inhalation, and non-equilibrium dietary pathways during the ice-based seasonal spring haul out period for molting/pupping/breeding activities.

So there you have it, that’s the official word on the seal scenario. Interesting, that the meaning of the word scenario is a written outline of a movie, novel, or stage work giving details of the plot and individual scenes.

So, what ever happened to the ships that were exposed to these highly radioactive plumes for weeks and months? Garner, when interviewed by Voice of Russia in early January of 2014, stated: “They were considered to be too highly radioactive. The Reagan sailed around for weeks before they could find a friendly port to land in. By that time the people on board were pretty well toast. And the Reagan itself became contaminated. After that the Reagan spent a year and half in Bremerton, Washington for what they considered to be routine maintenance, but it was anything but routine. They decontaminated the vessel as best they could, and they shipped the contaminated debris over to Hanford.”

Decontamination of radioactivity is an almost pointless task. Especially on such a large number of enormous vessels, where every nook and cranny of the ship would have been exposed. As Dr Ernest Sternglass wrote in his book “Secret Fallout“, following the Simon atomic test in Nevada whose comparatively low level radioactivity rained out 2,500 miles away in upstate New York: “It would not be necessary to filter the drinking water or decontaminate the streets and rooftops by means of elaborate and costly scrubbing procedures, a monumental task in view of the tenacity with which the radioactivity had been found to cling to rough surfaces such as pavement, asphalt shingles, and burdock leaves, and especially to porous materials like paper and cloth. Dr. Clark and his students found that even treatment with hot, concentrated hydrochloric acid — an extreme method — was only partially effective in removing the radioactivity from the objects to which it clung,”

The USS Ronald Reagan has not outlived its usefulness. Following its disastrous mission and sick crew members “sh -tting themselves in the hallways” for two and a half months while it tried to find a port, someone decided it would be nice to get it back out into the public eye. In fact, they held a football camp on it for 100 little kids of military families, in August of 2013.

“As part of our salute to the military, we were working with folks from the Reagan and they wanted to do something for the families as well,” said Director of Public Affairs & Corporate/Community Relations Kimberley Layton.  “So we decided to hold one of our camps to help the kids get active and stay healthy.  Of course that is a big thing in the Navy, so we started to put together the plans for this camp.  This is amazing to have it on board this ship.  And the children are military children so they are amazingly respectful.  They are having a great time.  This is amazingly unique. We’re working today with members of the Navy family who are helping run the drills.  But just to be out here on a ship like the Reagan is truly an amazing experience.  We don’t often get a chance to put on camps in areas like this!”

And so we move blindly forward through a radioactive haze, obscured by liars with total disregard for human health, who ignore the obvious and twist the science around to suit their agenda, and protect their interests. The Tale of the Sailors and the Seals will continue, and undoubtedly include many others, on our path to Atomic Suicide.

IMPORTANT BROADCAST: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 at 10:00 a.m. Alaska Public Radio show will discuss LIVE the recent seal findings with Professor Doug Dasher, Environmental Oceanographer, University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Science and Dr. John Kelley, Professor Emeritus, University of Alaska Fairbanks, former Director, Naval Arctic Research Laboratory — Post your comment before, during or after the live broadcast (comments may be read on air).

Website where you can post questions: http://www.alaskapublic.org/2014/01/24/radiation-from-fukushima/

Thanks to Lindsay Cooper for use of her personal images, and Crystal Clark for the Atomic Suicide excerpts.