Climate change, ‘Anthropocene unburials’ and agency on a thawing planet

Three narratives from different historical moments - the US film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), the US/Canadian film The Thaw (2009) and the first season of the British television series Fortitude (2015) - disclose shifts in the imagining of prehistoric creatures emerging from thawing ice, and all three thus intervene in evolving discourses surrounding climate change, nature and agency (both human and nonhuman). Beast was released at what many scientists have declared the very beginning of the ‘Anthropocene’ - that geological era marked by humans as primary shapers of planetary life. An iconic film of the Atomic Age, Beast features a thawed creature from Earth’s prehistory, and the fault-lines are sharply drawn between it and the humans who unknowingly unleashed it. Although the consequences of nuclear testing (along with the notion of the ‘Anthropocene’) were decades in the future, Beast imagines those consequences with startling and destructive clarity. In the twenty-first century, the long-term effects of nuclear energy, and industrial global capitalism more generally, have become strikingly evident. The thawed creatures of both Fortitude and The Thaw have neither the visibility nor the separateness of the ‘Beast’ from 1953, however. Tracing increasingly entangled notions of existence, culpability and responsibility in the Anthropocene era, these twenty-first-century creatures incubate within human hosts, becoming interwoven with the human, and thus complicate familiar notions of agency.

“Post-Quantal Garden” Annotated

The Post-Quantal Garden is a work of speculative fiction based on J.G. Ballard’s short story “The Terminal Beach” first published in 1964. Set within Donna Haraway’s climate-changed Chthulucene, the work is intended as an elliptical rumination on the history of nuclear testing in the Pacific, bio-hacking, tropicality, and apocalyptic narrative. Moving between historical fact and speculative fiction, the story takes the form of a scholarly introduction to and contextualization of fictional passages from an imaginary journal supposedly found during the very real radiological clean-up of Enewetak Atoll. Enewetak, an atoll in the Marshall Islands group, was used by the US for nuclear testing and was the site of operation Ivy-Mike, the first fusion bomb test, and is the setting for Ballard’s Terminal Beach.

The Inevitable Consequences of Nuclear Armament: An Urgent Call for Nuclear Disarmament

Advancement in technology and growth in human wisdom and knowledge has become a boom and at the same time, a bane to the continued survival of mankind. Despite been born free, mankind has become enslaved to the products of their hands. The invention of weapons of human destruction (nuclear weapons), which remains the most destructive form of armory ever created, with the capacity to inflict a large-scale disaster in the shortest time, in just a strike. These weapons and their mass destructive capacity were first experienced in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing in the year 1945, from that moment on the world, have seen an increase in nuclear testing, nuclear armory, and nuclear race among nuclear-weapon states. The mere presence of nuclear weapons poses a serious threat to the earth's environment and its inhabitants. Many islands have become inhabitable or declared a no-go zone due to the high presence of radiation and radioactivity in those places which is a direct result of years of nuclear testing. As a consequence, many people have been displaced from their ancestral lands, while some victims have lost their time to radiation-induced diseases such as cancer and its various variation. This article, therefore, will focus on the global threat to humanity posed by nuclear armament.

Sixty years of forensic seismology at AWE Blacknest

David Green, Ross Heyburn, Jessica Keeble, Alexandra Nippress, Stuart Nippress, Sheila Peacock and John Young review the history of the UK's seismological monitoring of underground nuclear testing

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, a legal anomaly?

It is well-recorded that nuclear attacks happened twice in history, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it is often overlooked that nuclear explosions were more frequent, with over 2,000 tests taking place in more than 60 locations worldwide. These special circumstances prompted the General Assembly to adopt a comprehensive ban treaty (CTBT) in 1996, which has yet to enter into force. Borrowing from Kelman’s social conformity theory, this article explains how and why states chose to conform to a non-binding agreement. It argues that, as interested parties developed an anti-testing narrative that seemed simultaneously hopeful and realistic, they stabilized actor’s reaction and catalyzed a shift in attitudes towards nuclear testing from forbearance to an authoritative global moratorium, which accounts for the complete eradication of the atmospheric experiments. C’est un fait bien établi que l’histoire a connu deux attaques nucléaires, à Hiroshima et Nagasaki. Ce que l’on sait moins, c’est que les explosions nucléaires étaient bien plus fréquentes, avec plus de 2 000 tests effectués sur une soixantaine de sites de par le monde. Ces circonstances particulières ont poussé l’Assemblée générale des Nations unies à adopter, en 1996, un traité d’interdiction complète des essais nucléaires (TICE), qui n’est pas encore entré en vigueur. S’inspirant de la théorie du conformisme social de Kelman, cet article explique comment et pourquoi des États ont choisi de respecter un accord non contraignant. Il avance que, à mesure que les parties intéressées développaient un discours anti-essais nucléaires qui paraissait à la fois réaliste et porteur d’espoir, elles ont stabilisé les réactions des acteurs et déclenché un changement des mentalités à l’égard des essais nucléaires, passant de l’indulgence à un moratoire général faisant autorité, ce qui explique la disparition complète des essais atmosphériques. Het is algemeen bekend dat er in de geschiedenis twee kernaanvallen zijn geweest, in Hiroshima en Nagasaki, maar vaak wordt over het hoofd gezien dat er nog andere kernexplosies hebben plaatsgevonden, met ruim 2000 proeven op meer dan 60 locaties over de hele wereld. Deze bijzondere omstandigheden hebben de Algemene Vergadering ertoe aangezet om in 1996 een alomvattend verbodsverdrag (CTBT) goed te keuren, dat nog steeds niet in werking is getreden. Aan de hand van de sociale-conformiteitstheorie van Kelman wordt in dit artikel uitgelegd hoe en waarom staten ervoor kiezen zich te conformeren aan een niet-bindende overeenkomst. Het betoogt dat, naarmate de betrokken partijen een narratief tegen kernproeven ontwikkelden dat tegelijk hoopvol en realistisch leek, zij de reactie van de actoren stabiliseerden en als katalysator werkten voor de verschuiving in de houding ten opzichte van kernproeven van gedoging naar een wereldwijd officieel moratorium, wat de volledige uitroeiing van de atmosferische experimenten verklaart. Está bien documentado que los ataques nucleares han sucedido dos veces en la historia, en Hiroshima y Nagasaki, pero en ocasiones pasa desapercibido que las explosiones nucleares han sido más frecuentes, con más de 2.000 ensayos llevándose a cabo en más de 60 emplazamientos a escala mundial. Estas circunstancias especiales llevaron a la Asamblea General a adoptar el tratado de prohibición completa (TPCEN) en 1996, el cual aun no ha entrado en vigor. Basándose en la teoría de la conformidad social de Kelman, este artículo explica cómo y porqué los Estados eligieron conformarse con un acuerdo no vinculante. Se argumenta que a medida que las partes interesadas desarrollaron una narrativa anti-ensayo que parecía esperanzadora y realista a la vez, ello mismo llevó a apaciguar la posible reacción de los actores y a catalizar un cambio en relación a los ensayos nucleares que fuera de la tolerancia a una moratoria global fidedigna, lo cual equivale a una completa erradicación de los experimentos atmosféricos. É ben noto che nella storia siano avvenuti due attacchi nucleari, a Hiroshima e Nagasaki, ma è spesso trascurato che le esplosioni nucleari siano state molto più frequenti, con oltre 2000 test che hanno avuto luogo in più di 60 sedi nel mondo. Queste circostanze speciali hanno indotto l'Assemblea generale nel 1996, ad adottare un trattato di messa al bando globale (CTBT), che deve ancora entrare in vigore. Prendendo spunto dalla teoria della conformità sociale di Kelman, questo articolo spiega come e perché gli Stati hanno scelto di conformarsi a un accordo non vincolante. Sostiene che, dato che le parti interessate hanno sviluppato una narrativa anti-test che sembrava allo stesso tempo speranzosa e realistica, esse hanno stabilizzato la reazione degli attori e catalizzato un cambiamento negli atteggiamenti nei confronti dei test nucleari dalla tolleranza a un'autorevole moratoria globale, che spiega la completa eliminazione degli esperimenti atmosferici. Es ist bekannt, dass es in der Geschichte zweimal zu nuklearen Angriffen kam, in Hiroshima und Nagasaki. Es wird aber oft übersehen, dass es häufiger nukleare Explosionen gegeben hat, mit über 2.000 Tests an mehr als 60 Orten weltweit. Diese besonderen Umstände veranlassten die Generalversammlung 1996 zur Verabschiedung eines umfassenden Verbotsvertrags (CTBT), der noch nicht in Kraft getreten ist. In Anlehnung an die soziale Konformitätstheorie von Kelman erklärt dieser Artikel, wie und warum Staaten sich dafür entschieden haben, sich einem unverbindlichen Abkommen zu fügen. Er argumentiert, dass je nachdem die beteiligten Parteien ein Anti-Test-Narrativ entwickelten, das gleichzeitig hoffnungsvoll und realistisch erschien, diese die Reaktion der Akteure stabilisierten und eine Verschiebung in der Haltung gegenüber Atomtests von der Duldung zu einem autoritativen globalen Moratorium herbeiführten, was die vollständige Abschaffung der atmosphärischen Experimente erklärt.

Charlie Brown's America

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts was an unexpectedly political comic strip. While many people have come to identify Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Peppermint Patty, and Snoopy with childhood and innocence, Peanuts regularly commented on the politics and social turmoil of Cold War America. From nuclear testing to the civil rights movement, from the Vietnam War to the feminist revolution, Peanuts was an unlikely medium for Americans of all stripes to debate the hopes and fears of the era. Charlie Brown’s America is the story of how the creation of one Midwestern man became one of the most influential pop-culture properties of the twentieth century and what its popularity reveals about the character of the United States.

14C INTERCOMPARISON EXERCISE ON BONES AND IVORY SAMPLES: IMPLICATIONS FOR FORENSICS

ABSTRACT The application of accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) dating in forensics is made possible by the use of the large excursion of the 14C concentration in the post-WWII terrestrial atmosphere due to nuclear testing as a reference curve for data calibration. By this approach high-precision analyses are possible on samples younger than ∼70 years. Nevertheless, the routine, widespread application of the method in the practice of forensics still appears to be limited by different issues due to possible complex interpretation of the results. We present the results of an intercomparison exercise carried out in the framework of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) CRP-Coordinated Research Project between three AMS laboratories in Italy, Hungary, and Switzerland. Bone and ivory samples were selected with ages spanning from background (>50 ka) to 2018. The results obtained allow us to assess the high degree of reproducibility of the results and the remarkable consistency of the experimental determinations.