We took one of our 50 gallon rain barrels inside over a month ago, and covered another outside. We heard the rain was going to be coming with poison in it. Not much, not enough to see taste or smell or get sick right away, but that nobody really knows either. One night as I listened to the rain beating down on our tin roof, rain that we drink, that the plants and animals we eat and love drink, there was a sinking feeling in my gut.

After reading that Vancouver rainwater had 100 times the allowable level of radioactive iodine, that a public notice had been issued on Haida Gwaii warning people that rainwater was no longer ‘suitable for human consumption’, I woke up one morning and took down all of my snares, not wanting to kill anything I wasn’t completely excited about eating. Incredibly sad.

I’ve been talking to people about this ongoing nuclear disaster, reactions range from: don’t care/haven’t bothered to find anything out about it/the world is already fucked isn’t it? – to covering their garden beds with plastic in an attempt to keep soil from being contaminated/being extremely concerned. I’m still trying to process it. It’s still spewing radiation into the sky.

Not that one would hear about it over  “WE killed Bin Laden!” “GO CANUCKS GO!”

The scale of these disasters, the scale of how destructive this culture`s mechanisms are is sometimes beyond our ability to cope with, or even grasp. There are 55 active nuclear reactors in Japan alone. A couple of these are in a process of meltdown that has been going on for 2 months, and the humans that erected them have no idea how to stop it. They’ve been pumping ocean water into them and flying helicopters around scooping water out of lakes and dropping it on them like they are getting their directions from local preschoolers (no disrespect to young readers, I’ve just seen how ya`ll pour water on sandcastles and stuff).

A couple weeks ago I had a breakdown, I had spent an hour or so reading some of the latest on the developing nightmare across the ocean, reading about levels of cesium in milk, spinach, strawberries and rainwater on this side of the ocean. About “worse than Chernobyl”, about how many reactors there are in the world, how long this might go on for. My main source of sanity, physical intercourse with a living world, tainted. On my bike ride home I started losing control of my body, felt like my mind was crushing in on itself under the weight of sadness. I got home and curled up in a ball to wait it out till the morning – sometimes the weight of this world feels unbearable.

It’s a bit of a mind fuck – like I said above this is tasteless colorless odorless, so we can choose to ignore it and maybe that would be wiser. Survivalists and others that are deeply concerned are locking themselves indoors, taping up the cracks around their windows, and stockpiling pre-”3/11″ (that’s march 11, 2011) food, water, medicine, toilet paper etc., or leaving for the southern hemisphere where winds are not carrying the fallout. Perhaps they are crazy, or perhaps they actually understand what’s going on, I have no idea. Though I do think they are crazy…

All of these protective measures are only available to extremely privileged humans. Deer and rabbits are still drinking rainwater in puddles and streams, eating fresh grasses and lichen. Being drenched in rain. Those humans at the bottom of this cultures hierarchy are still eating whatever they can, drinking whatever water is available, drenched in rain, possibly unaware anything is different. As I said above, there are many who are preparing to come out of this disaster unscathed by completely physically disconnecting from the earth until it is over and they decontaminate the soil and water. This seems impossible and futile to me – and maybe not worth it.

How much are we willing to disconnect from the land in order to survive? I am asking this question from the perspective of someone who loves the land like family, like a lover, like everything that matters. And my answer, to myself, is that in order to be sane, feel alive, I need to touch the land. I need our bodies to mix.

I heard one person say that Fukushima was that famous coastal city where innocent, beautiful dolphins have been brutally killed for human food – that perhaps this was simply karma punishing those insensate people for their crimes against the dolphins. Why is it that karma only seems to be capable of punishing the poorest humans and non-humans – there is no logic to this karma people speak of that always punishes the poorest and leaves the perpetrators (CEOs, politicians etc) unscathed. If there is a *God* behind these ongoing atrocities of industrial society, *He* is racist, classist, sexist, speciesist and I hate *Him*.

In the end, I think this disaster will *immediately* effect those humans and non-humans living near Fukushima itself, which is incredibly tragic. Radioactive fallout spreading around the rest of the world will probably just give everyone else an extra load of invisible, radioactive carcinogens. That`s the story I am currently buying at least. I’m almost used the idea of radioactive fallout in the rain after nearly 2 months of it, that is to say I don`t think it’s the end of the world – actually that’s not true, I don`t think it`s going to end the end of the world.

MITIGATION

Having said that I need physical contact with the land to stay sane, I also want to mitigate the effects of these toxic chemicals as much as makes sense and isn’t too ridiculous. This includes: not drinking the rain for the moment (drinking stored rain), not drinking fresh milk from pasture fed cows (pretty easy for me), avoiding foods that contain goitrogens – anti-nutrients that block natural iodine absorption and suppress thyroid function – which includes all brassicas (FUCK!), eating seaweed daily and taking plants that help with detox, getting plenty of antioxidants, spending time with people I love, and doing things that make me happy.

Living in a wounded world is nothing new.

Fuck the scumbags at TEPCO.

Fuck the system.