Toxic Drums

The Farallon Islands are a small group of islands off the coast of San Francisco, some 27 miles outside the Golden Gate. These islands are officially part of the city and county of San Francisco, California.

From 1946 to 1970, the United States routinely dumped 55-gallon drums of nuclear waste (plutonium, uranium, strontium) off the Farallon Islands on a regular basis. The drums that failed to sink, which had no protective linings to prevent seepage, were riddled with bullet holes by U.S. Navy gunners until they sank out of sight.

In all, 47,500 drums containing radioactive material were dumped into the waters off Farallon Islands.

You don't have to be a hard-core Tree Hugger to realize that dumping nuclear waste into the ocean is incredibly irresponsible and highly dangerous to the survival of Planet Earth and the Human Race.

Other nations dumping nuclear waste into oceanic waters include China, Russia, Japan, New Zealand and nearly all the nations of Europe.

Which begs the question -- "Is the entire human race nuts?"

In March of 2011, an earthquake and tsunami ripped through northern Japan rendering several nuclear power plants into a state of dire emergency (nuclear meltdown). Radioactivity is deadly to living creatures, including people. As I write this piece, nuclear scientists are scrambling feverishly, trying to prevent a nuclear disaster of monumental proportions.

Thousands of people died in the initial magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami, and the area near the damaged nuclear power plants has been evacuated for scores of miles in all directions from the power plants.

A tragedy like this doesn't build character, it reveals it. On March 17, 2011, CNN announced that actress Sandra Bullock donated $1 million to the Red Cross toward relief efforts of this disaster in Japan. Perhaps there is hope for the human race after all.

There are no passengers on the Planet of Wounded Souls -- we are all crew.
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Quote for the Day -- "Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think we are -- the tree is the real thing." Abraham Lincoln
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Bret Burquest is an award-winning columnist and author of four novels. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a dog named Buddy Lee and where Mother Earth will mess with you if you mess with her. His blogs appear on several websites, including www.myspace.com/bret1111
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