Back to Basics

It’s official, President Barack Obama’s “Misery Index” has now exceeded President Jimmy Carter’s rate that peaked during 1980.

Then Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan, used that index to pound home the malaise America had fallen into and leveraged the dissatisfaction it measured to ride an electoral and popular vote tidal wave into the Oval office.

The well-known Misery Index didn’t always exist. The index was cobbled together from two other major indices by presidential economic advisor Arthur Okun during the LBJ presidency. It combines the unemployment rate and rate of inflation.

This economic index amalgam tracks the impact rising unemployment and an inflated dollar has on Americans’ pocketbooks and—by implication—their outlook on the future.

The rise and fall of the index makes the assumption (born out by observation), that a low Misery Index finds most Americans optimistic about their future and the future of the country. Conversely, a high number on the index reflects a growing pessimism and uncertainty about the future.

A high Misery Index can reflect lower production, less consumer spending, and a general wariness about the prospects for prosperity. A high number reveals underlying economic and social costs.

Economist John Williams at Shadow Stats [see "Behind federal government's lies: Real economic numbers prove US in Great Depression"] has spent time and resources calculating the Unemployment Rate and Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate using the accepted, real methods the government worked with prior to 1990.

From Williams’ website: “Have you ever wondered why the CPI, GDP and employment numbers run counter to your personal and business experiences? The problem lies in biased and often-manipulated government reporting.”

After 1990 the federal government began playing a shell game with the numbers to hide certain adverse economic trends and downplay the actual rate of the nation’s inflation.

Since Williams’ numbers not only reflect the real US economic picture, but are also using the exact methods used to arrive at the Misery Index during the historic 1980 Presidential race, apples can be compared with apples.

As of September 2011, the ratesbased on the way the federal government once calculated them (which presents a fairer and more accurate picture of the economy), the nation’s Unemployment Rate is about 24 percent and the CPI a whopping 11.5 percent. That compares to the Fed’s Bernancke numbers touted as low to zero inflation, or

to the numbers released the middle of October 2011 that pegs the annual inflation rate at 3.9 percent.

The Carter years versus the Obama years

President Jimmy Carter’s administration was marked by upheavals and—in retrospect—some disastrous decisions. The Carter Administration’s policies, more than any other factor, contributed and extended the negative economic period that eventually was termed “stagflation.”

President Carter’s Misery Index peaked in June 1908 at a miserable 21.98 percent. Most agree today that Carter’s presidency was a dismal failure, at least from an economic standpoint.

Looking at the cold, hard numbers—and not the numbers being massaged by federal government bureaucrats—the Misery Index is worlds worse under the Obama Administration. Each tenth of a point march upwards piles more misery on American households-especially the middle class.

As of summer of 2011, the Index reached an historic high above 25 percent. Fall of 2011 has not seen any significant movement, although some analysts believe the Index can only go up during 2012.

Fears that a mega-thrust quake like the type that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 are mounting among leading American geologists.

A killer superquake is long overdue in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and when—not if—it hits it will trigger a massive tsunami that will virtually wipe out many of the cities on the northern West Coast. The tsunami may be so powerful it could even reach as far as eastern Japan, warn scientists.

New data revealed by intensive research undertaken by the Active Tectonics and Seafloor Mapping Laboratory at Oregon State University has raised awareness of the horror that awaits the Northwest when a 9.0 or greater earthquake slams the unprepared population of such cities as Vancouver, Seattle and Portland.

Hundreds of thousands could be killed

The potential devastation is so great it seems unreal. The most terrifying Hollywood disaster movies barely begin to scratch the surface of the death destruction and smoldering aftermath of ruins left in the wake of the coming superquake.

Like the Pacific plate thrust that decimated northeastern Japan, the greater portion of the sprawling Pacific seaboard faces a similar catastrophe.

The Pacific Northwest is at the mercy of a huge tectonic plate known as the Juan de Fuca plate. When it is eventually forced beneath the titanic North America plate on the Cascadia fault line Doomsday will have arrived for the people along the northern coast.

Energy released by quakes of that magnitude are literally off the chart. The Japanese mega-thrust quake has been estimated by seismologist David Wald to have released energy about equal to all the energy the United States uses in an entire year.

And it released all that energy in a handful of minutes.

According to the London Times, the cracking Juan de Fuca plate slips about every 240 years generating a megaquake of magnitude eight or higher.

The last superquake along the Cascadia fault occurred more than 300 years ago, so following the average the Pacific Northwest is 60 years overdue for a major to great quake.

Infrastructure risks

The potential disaster zone sweeps downward from Vancouver Island to the northern region of California. Experts worry about the infrastructure as many skyscrapers at at risk, thousands of schools, and thousands of coastal cities.

All could be inundated, swept away by a roaring tsunami pushing a wall of water towering five stories or higher hundreds of miles an hour along the coast.

The surging tidal water would act like a merciless blade scraping the coastal regions clean as far as several miles inland.

Odds increasing

Scientists believe the odds of such an event occurring in the near future have now reached the proverbial 50-50 range.

In essence, that means they just don’t know. But all agree that a mega-thrust quake will hit the region, it’s not a question of if, but when.

“We don’t know how to tell you, ‘Hey, next week, you know, get out of town there’s going to be a big earthquake,’” said Tom Jordan, the director of the Southern California Earthquake Center to the Times.

Could a superstorm generated by the sun destroy civilization as we know it in 2012?

No less than NASA thinks it’s a distinct possibility. In a remarkable move the normally conservative US space agency has taken the extraordinary step of warning the world.

The headlines reverberating around the world speak volumes: ‘Leaks discovered in Earth’s magnetic field,’ Solar storms to wreak havoc,’ ‘The end of life as we know it,’ ‘Magnetic shift to cause global superstorms.’

Can such things really happen?

NASA and the European Space Agency say yes.

2012 and the rising specter of doom

Among all the countries with exposure to the solar devastation, the United States is the most susceptible.

As The Daily Telegraph recently observed: “National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power…”

Experts on the sun are very concerned as they see the sun awaking from its unusually long slumber with a violence unseen for generations. That violence could be in the form of mammoth magnetic storms. Those storms hitting the Earth will be like a giant’s fist slamming into the fragile electronic technology that runs the world. Hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis pale by comparison.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of NASA’s Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. “It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigation, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world. “

A menacing electronic Doomsday

A giant solar superstorm would lead to martial law, mass starvation and eventual societal collapse.

“Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightning bolt. That is the solar affect,” Fisher added.

Since the sun’s last upheaval caused worldwide disruption and destruction in 1859, civilization has rapidly advanced a society based on a technological infrastructure that can be whisked away in moments by a severe geomagnetic storm.

During 2008, the National Academy of Sciences issued a dire report: “Severe Space Weather Events—Societal and Economic Impacts.” The report outlined, in excruciating detail, the potential demise of America’s 21st Century technological base—and the resulting havoc to the economy and society.

The US would be slammed into an electronic Doomsday.

That gloomy report went under-reported and unheeded by the governments of the world. Now NASA is desperately trumpeting the danger and still most politicians turn deaf ears towards the warning and blind eyes towards the angry sun.

How severe is the threat?

People in the first world countries rely heavily upon technologies at risk from solar storms—a technology that runs financial systems, electrical power grids, water plants, air travel, farming, transportation, GPS navigation of aircraft and sea going vessels…even the daily operation of government at all levels.

During a solar superstorm most communication will be blasted out of existence; power will fail.

The dangerous supervolcano that once destroyed much of what’s now the USA is much bigger than vulcanologists previously thought.

That’s the disturbing information confirmed by an important new study published in the prestigious journal of Geophysical Research Letters.

The volcano has been producing ominous warning signs the past several years and an area near what used to be a large lake is now sealed off to the public.

The lake boiled away and all the fish died. Since that time sulfuric fumaroles have opened in the earth and the ground has become so hot shoes melt into it.

Although most scientists claim there’s no reason for concern, some do express worry that a huge lava bulge has been steadily rising. The hotspot that heats geysers, springs and bubbling mud, has been growing larger for more than 36 months.

A survey in 2009 conducted by scientists gathered past seismic wave data from earthquakes in the region to create a 3D image of the subterranean hotspot. The actual ancient caldera, now mostly a shallow impression in the ground, spans across three states: Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

All experts agree that if another massive eruption occurs the concussion, lava, superheated gas and ash fall would effectively destroy almost half of the US and be the greatest single catastrophe in recorded world history.

New survey differs from old

The new Yellowstone survey analyzed the gigantic volcano with a much greater degree of accuracy using a geoelectric approach.

The researchers measured subtle differences in the underlying rock and complied data on their electrical conductivity. They used the natural geography of the volcanic structure—superheated salty water and melted silicate rocks—that naturally produce electrical currents.

Describing the procedure to the BBC News, Michael Zhdanov, a co-author of the study said, “It’s like comparing ultrasound and MRI in the human body; they are different imaging technologies.” Zhdanov is a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Zhdanov’s co-author on the study is Robert B. Smith, from the same university. Smith revealed that the plume is larger than past measurements indicated and that infers more liquids are present in the underground volcanic plume.

He went on to say that, “this body that conducts electricity is in about the same location with similar geometry as the seismically imaged Yellowstone plume.”

The last eruption at Yellowstone occurred about 70,000 years ago. Some experts have been saying the next major one is long overdue.

Geophysicist Richard Aster from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology is concerned—very concerned.

Evidence he’s amassed leads him to the inescapable belief that the Earth has plunged into a terribly dangerous period of huge, devastating earthquakes.

The prominent scientist—the current president of the Seismological Society of America—sees more mega quakes: bigger, more widespread, and more deadly.

Cluster quakes

Some researchers believe that non-local earthquake cascades occur in clusters and point to graphs depicting energy release versus time. They argue that the charts don’t lie and the numbers prove that historically most of the energy released by major earthquakes results in several very large quakes globally—a chain of destructive dominoes collapsing one upon the other.

While it’s true the energy released by gigantic quakes creates life, they also mercilessly crush out life.

The Sumatra 9.3 magnitude earthquake and tsunami snuffed out the lives of some 300,000 people and the Japanese 9.1 quake and tsunami may have killed 25,000 or more before exposing the world to an ongoing nuclear catastrophe.

Currently, the theory of cascading is accepted by most seismologists, geophysicists, and geologists. The cascade theory of fault rupture argues a quake has a tendency to spread across one part of a fault to a neighboring fault rupturing the crust like a crack spreading on thin ice.

Ideally, all earthquake activity ceases when the energy that produced the rupture ceases.

Ideally.

Yet, that may not be the case. As Aster admits, earthquake researchers really have little hard science revealing how a mega quake initiates another in a completely different region of the globe.

It’s known that mega quakes can trigger far distant aftershocks. For instance, the Sumatra quake seems to have triggered another in Afghanistan and then Iran. And seismologists believe the March 2011 Japanese 9.1 quake created tremors in several distant regions including one recorded in Nebraska and another in Arkansas.

Random occurrences

Andrew Michael, a Menlo Park, California geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey dismisses the idea of cluster quakes.

He told Inside Science News Service during an interview, “Overall, the pattern is random.”

Michael explained he investigated the theory and researched the patterns of mega quake incidents. After eliminating all recorded aftershocks, he asserts, cluster quake incidents are simply “flukes” and cannot be relied on for future earthquake prediction. “Random doesn’t mean evenly spaced out,” Michael explained.

Giant quakes may signal doom for some cities

Although some geophysicists and seismologists doubt that mega quakes probably aren’t harbingers of more catastrophes to come, Aster pointed out the reality that “it’s undeniable that we’re becoming more and more vulnerable to the effects of earthquakes in general.”

The 21st Century world is much more susceptible to potential disasters that carried far less risk in the past. As urban sprawl spreads and technology, economies and distribution networks become more globally interconnected, the damage from large quakes and mega-quakes grows exponentially.

“We just have more people in precarious places,” Aster said. But he believes that researchers like Michael have it wrong.

The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is under fire…again. Groping complaints in the name of security continue to plague the agency. The latest controversy has erupted over the groping of a 6-year-old girl by the TSA at the New Orleans International Airport (MSY). [Video]

The issue of airport security “pat downs” is one that hounds the federal security agency—and one that doesn’t seem to go away.

Despite attempts during late 2010 to quell growing public anger at the policy, the TSA and Homeland Security officials seem intent on reigniting the debate by intimidation and virtual molestation of underage girls and boys at security checkpoints throughout the nation.

During February 2011 outrage erupted over TSA officials’ handling of a 9-year-old boy at a Midwestern train station. A video made of the incident was labeled as outright molestation by some privacy advocates. The video made its way to Youtube and went viral. Even the mainstream media picked up on the story. [Video]

Has the screening process become legal molestation?

Selena Drexel, the mother of the young girl subjected to federal pawing, told ABC’s popular “Good Morning America” that “We struggle to teach our kids to protect themselves, to say ‘no, it’s not okay to touch me in this way in this area. Yet here we are saying it’s okay for these people (TSA workers).”

Drexel, whose husband is a medical doctor, was clearly concerned and upset. “If we don’t find other ways we’re making them more vulnerable,” she explained.

But the Drexel’s are certainly not alone. Many thousands of parents flying with their children have watched—helplessly—as their children, some as young as toddlers, have been subjected to what in any other circumstance would be a criminal molestation case.

One child during 2010 burst out crying when a TSA agent slipped a hand into his pants.

But it’s not just children. Adults too feel they have been molested. A few women have gone on record complaining the process was demeaning and felt “dirty.”

Rebellion

The powerful pilot’s union rebelled against the new TSA procedures introduced during 2010. The pilots steadfastly refused to be subjected to the terahertz radiation scanners or full body pat downs. Shortly afterward the flight attendants joined the pilots in protest. [ABCNews]

Homeland Security rushed to give them all waivers.

The case of John (“Don’t Touch My Junk”) Tyner—a passenger who vociferously rejected a TSA pat down—became national news and ignited fresh arguments concerning passengers’ rights. [ABCNews]

Privacy rights versus security protocols

Once again, the TSA has responded to allegations of intrusiveness, physical and sexual molestation, and outright emotional abuse of small children by issuing a carefully worded, politically correct statement. It seems calculated to merely incense Constitutional and privacy advocates. [TSA response]

Titled “Screening of 6 Year-Old at MSY,” the TSA defends the incident as adhering to “the current standard operating procedures.”

The agency then refers to the video in question. TSA does not, however, provide a link to the video, nor any links to the scores of videos on the web that document what amounts to virtual molestation of fearful and sometimes crying children.

What if a super-quake set off other super-quakes around the world in a cascading cacophony of catastrophe?

Since the mega-thrust quake that struck northeastern Japan during March 2011, that question is on the lips of many.

Clusters of earthquake cascades

Some researchers believe that non-local earthquake cascades occur in clusters and point to graphs depicting energy release versus time. They argue that the charts don’t lie and the numbers prove that historically most of the energy released by major earthquakes results in several very large quakes globally—a chain of destructive dominoes collapsing one upon the other.

Observers, familiar with the theory, immediately turned their focus to a long overdue region that sits within the so called “ring of fire”—a zone that follows the perimeter of the Pacific rim where the Earth’s gigantic tectonic plates sometimes brutally collide with each other.

Could quakes like the Japanese 9.1 magnitude really precipitate a worldwide calamity of biblical proportions?

Geological evidence from the past proves it has happened—and what once was will be again.

The P- and S-waves

Where tectonic plates meet they create and destroy the crust.

Although the energy released creates life, it can also mercilessly crush out life. The Sumatra 9.3 magnitude earthquake and tsunami snuffed out the lives of some 300,000 people and the Japanese 9.1 quake and tsunami may have killed 25,000 or more.

According to some theorists, cascading quakes are triggered by great quakes. The trigger may be the initial waves of intense energy that are released. one of the two types of seismic waves is suspected of causing cascading.

The first wave is known as a “P” or “primary wave.” It releases an explosive burst of titanic pressure that propagates through the crust.

The second wave, called the “S” or “secondary wave” creates a turbulent horizontal shaking called shearing.

The P-wave is thought to be a triggering mechanism that can travel through the mantle and trigger other faults if it’s carrying enough energy in the wave. Although the S-wave causes most of an earthquake’s destruction locally, the P-wave may well be the initiator of cascades nearby and perhaps globally as well.

Currently, the theory of cascading is accepted by most seismologists, geophysicists, and geologists. The cascade theory of fault rupture argues a quake has a tendency to spread across one part of a fault to a neighboring fault rupturing the crust like a crack spreading on thin ice.

Ideally, all earthquake activity ceases when the energy that produced the rupture ceases.

While there is a high degree of statistical correlation between the P-wave’s initial propagation of wave and the earthquake’s final magnitude, there is little hard data (other than anecdotal) to support the P-wave as a triggering mechanism causal to cascading quakes occurring within hours or days at other far flung locations across the Earth.

The ringing bell hypothesis assumes that the high energy waves—slamming into already weakened faults—act like the initial high explosive charge that triggers a hydrogen bomb explosion.

The Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading the effort to determine who sent 25 letters to people across the nation warning about nuclear bombs in America.

Contacted by CBS News in Chicago, Illinois, FBI Special Agent Andre Zavala confirmed the story was true. “Yes, they alarmed a lot of people.”

One letter, received in the regular mail by Chicago attorney Tracy Rizzo, warned: “The Al-Qaeda organization has planted 160 nuclear bombs throughout the U.S. in schools, stadiums, churches, stores, financial institutions and government buildings.”

The attorney was thunderstruck by the letter.

“This is a suicide mission for us,” the warning claimed.

The suitcase nuke scare

Almost a decade after the collapse of the USSR, former Russian National Security Adviser Aleksandr Lebed created a nuclear panic in America. Lebed told the CBS news magazine Sixty Minutes that the Russian military had misplaced over 100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs.

CBS aired the story on September 7, 1997. They claimed any one of the portable nuclear weapons were capable of killing up to 100,000 people.

Authorities rushed to assure the public that the claim wasn’t credible.

Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST)

Although the public believes that the FBI is the agency responsible for dealing with terrorist weapons of mass destruction, when nuclear devices are involved another agency takes over.

The semi-secret federal agency NEST is responsible for finding and disarming nuclear bombs that have been planted by terrorist organizations in the United States, its territories or foreign assets and bases.

On October 11, 2001 NEST was activated and the nuclear bomb squad was tasked with following up on NSA intelligence that al-Qaeda may have planted a live nuclear device in New York City.

Nothing was found.

Another scare erupted just before Christmas 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Again NEST was activated. Assisted by the FBI, the two agencies quickly determined that the no real threat existed.

Did Osama Bin Laden write letters?

The author of the 25 letters claims to be Osama bin Laden. The “terrorist mastermind” warns that the 160 nuclear devices are remote-controlled and can be detonated at the terrorist organization’s convenience.

Intelligence officials are skeptical. Some believe bin Laden is long dead.

“It was clear the writer wanted to scare me,” the Chicago attorney told CBS news. “Yes, it frightened me.”

According to other news organizations FBI offices in California, Florida, Oregon, and Texas confirmed they also received the letter. All 25 were mailed from Chicago.

“There are items in the letter that lead us to believe it is a hoax,” said Zavala. “There are several demands documented that aren’t fully coherent.”

But even a hoax must be investigated. “The FBI investigates every element. We can’t take that chance.”

When the author of the letters is found, Zavala said, the hoaxer could face from five to ten years in jail for each letter—up to 250 years in prison.

Geologic records show that Ice Ages are the norm, punctuated by brief periods of warming. Now one of the most highly respected paleoclimatologists has weighed in and is warning everyone to prepare for a new Ice Age.

A new Ice Age? Then what’s all the brouhaha about man-made global warming over the past 20 years?

George Kukla, 77, retired professor of paleoclimatology at Columbia University and researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory responds, “The only thing to worry about global warming is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid.”

The “Earth has experienced an ongoing cycle of ice ages dating back millions of years. Cold, glacial periods affecting the polar to mid-latitudes persist for about 100,000 years, punctuated by briefer, warmer periods called interglacials,” Kukla says.

Co-author of an important section of the book “Natural Climate Variability on Decade to Century Time Scales,” Kukla asserts all Ice Ages strat with a period of global warming. They are the the harbingers of new Ice Ages. Actually, he explains, warming is good. Ice Ages are deadly and may even kill millions.

Can Mankind stop it? No. Just as humanity cannot affect the long term climate of the planet, neither can it stop an Ice Age from happening. The climate is primarly driven by the sun.

“I feel we’re on pretty solid ground in interpreting orbit around the sun as the primary driving force behind Ice Age glaciation,” he says. “The relationship is just too clear and consistent to allow reasonable doubt. It’s either that, or climate drives orbit, and that just doesn’t make sense.”

Human influence

Ultimately, Kukla warns, human activities may have an impact more on water vapor in the atmosphere than any real affect on global temperatures. Neither does the activity have any real impact over climate cycles. He does admit, however, that the current level and type of human activity may have some impact on a transition towards encroaching glacial conditions, increase the polar water flow and accelerate the coming Ice Age.

He explains that glaciation during an Ice Age comes from the icecaps. The poles only account for about 14 percent of the entire Earth’s surface. The Ice Age begins at the poles and ends at the poles and is fed by water vapor moving to the extreme north and south from the tropics.

During a lengthy interview with Gelf Magazine, Kukla explained: “What is happening is very similar to the time 115,000 years ago, when the last glaciation started. It is difficult to comprehend, but it is really so: The last glacial was accompanied by the increase of a really averaged global mean surface temperature, alias global warming.

“What happened then was that the shifting sun warmed the tropics and cooled the Arctic and Antarctic. Because the tropics are so much larger than the poles, the area-weighted global mean temperature was increasing.

With six reactors failing in Japan and at least two undergoing partial meltdown, concern has been raised about a massive radioactive cloud escaping and sweeping over the West Coast of the U.S.

As the crisis continues and the Japan Islands are being rocked by hundreds of strong aftershocks, the probability of a Chernobyl-like disaster escalates.

If such an event does occur what can you do to protect yourself and your family?

Historically, after the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during 1945, many survivors of the blast died of exposure to radioactive fallout. But the vast majority of Dr. Tatsuichiro Akizuki, the Director of the Department of Internal Medicine at St. Francis’s Hospital in Nagasaki, survived. Despite being less than a mile from the epicenter of the atomic explosion, the doctor, his staff and his patients avoided radiation sickness by consuming a simple diet of natural brown rice, miso soup, sea vegetables and salt. Akizuki strictly prohibited the consumption of any sugar-based foods and candy. ¹

Whole grains fight radiation poisoning

Because natural whole grains are simple foods they don’t have concentrated contaminants often present in meat and fleshy fish. They’re less likely to contain radioactive contamination too.

High fiber and phosphorous contents in grain help protect against radiation poisoning. The substances bind with toxins—including radioactive ones—and help eliminate them from the body. Plus the “bulking factor” of grains reduces the time that the toxins stay in the gut and eliminate the poison faster.

Studies have shown that middle-range pH increases resistance to radiation poisoning. Grains are naturally not too acid or alkaline.

More reasons that grains can help you avoid radiation poisoning: their calcium content diminishes absorption of radioactive strontium; contain significant vitamin B6, critical for the thymus; and provide vitamin E and selenium that helps prevent cellular damage caused by the free radicals created by exposure to radiation.

Foods to avoid

If you’re in the footprint of a radiation cloud, by all means avoid these foods, they can increase any damage done to your body by exposure,

Steer away from all refined and processed foods. Stay clear of any fatty foods such as dairy and meet products and by-products.

Do not eat or drink anything with sugar in it. The reason why you must avoid sugar is it robs your body of calcium and the body will replace it with radioactive strontium that has a similar atomic structure to calcium. If that happens it’s only a matter of time before you develop bone marrow cancer. ²

Radioactive fallout

The fallout from a nuclear reactor accident is not the same as that generated by a thermonuclear blast.

Nuclear reactors will contaminate the atmosphere with highly radioactive dust-like particles. That deadly debris will be carried on the prevailing winds for hundreds or thousands of miles. When it falls it often combines with water vapor and contaminates rain. Dust can also fall on the ground, cars, roofs of building—and people.

The radiation is odorless and invisible. The dust however, can sometimes be detected as a fine grit.