Kelvedon Hatch

I've had, for as long as I can remember, a morbid fascination with nuclear war. It is something to do with the terrific yet terrifying beauty of the mushroom cloud combined with the finality of nuclear war really being "it". Chances are that global nuclear conflict would kill you outright. If it doesn't, then you'll probably wish it had done. Don't believe me? Check out The War Game. Or Threads. Or, if you want something lighter in a film genre that is darker than dark, try The Day After.

One of the things that fascinates me is desperate attempts to try to make sure that society survives a nuclear war - as detailed in The Secret State by Peter Hennessy. There are various government bases in the UK designed for the government to run and hide in should the balloon go up. Yep, in the event of civilisation evaporating underneath a mushroom cloud, the government will still be functioning. After all, at the end of the world, it is vital that we have continuity of government. 

Yesterday, via a leaflet in a B&B, I came across Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker. Of course, I had to visit it. Although the "Secret" claim in the title is a little out of date. Secret venues don't tend to advertise in B&Bs. And the road signs around the Bunker looked a little like this: 

Not that secret, then, really. 

Anyway, the "Secret" Nuclear Bunker really is in the middle of nowhere. Which I suppose is the point. But the venue now is simply one of the most curious "tourist attractions" I have ever been to. 

I don't know what the owners wanted to achieve with the bunker, but walking around it was a surreal experience. The entire facility was filled with incredibly belligerent signs, warning that you had to take a tour "wand" (basically a dull as ditchwater commentary on what you were seeing), and that if you left through anything other than the main exit you would be charged £25. This was compounded by signs saying that if you hadn't reached a certain point in the commentary, then you were going too fast. And then, just to make it all a little bit more like The Village, there were constant warnings that "they" were watching you via CCTV.

The signs also warned of very lifelike dummies. This, presumably, was acid irony as the dummies in the building were rejects from Primark and, more often that not, lacked limbs. So you had white dummies with bad wigs sat at consoles or in bed, with no arms or legs. Sometimes, the lack of hands was rectified by rolled up newspapers. Which is about as convincing as it sounds. Perhaps the owners were making  a point about mutations through nuclear radiation. However, I suspect that they were simply too cheap to pay for real dummies. 

The tour ended in a laughable gift shop and canteen. Where you could get a cream tea with a free tea. After all the signs warning that they were watching you, and that bad behaviour was paid for through fines, everything - including the entrance fee - was paid for through honesty boxes. Presiding over the whole thing was a sweet man who also happened to be the oldest and frailest man ever. The whole thing was incredibly surreal, and I was left thinking that those running the Hatch had no idea what they had bought, no idea how to run it or market it, and no money to do anything with it anyway. 

Yet even the piss poor presentation of Kelvedon couldn't detract from its grim power. The place stank of stale air endlessly recycled through a hyperactive air conditioning unit. I can only guess at how bad it would have smelt with the maximum number of 600 people in there. Seriously, 600 people in a venue the size of a supermarket. Living, breathing and shitting (in chemical toilets) with little food and little water. Those ministers who previously ran departments with vast HQs would be reduced to working at a wooden desk with a phone. And the Prime Minister's room was smaller than my room at uni - and just as grotty. In the event of nuclear war the people hemmed in to this tiny little hell would be in a larger than normal coffin. They'd be trapped, living on top of each other, simply postponing their inevitable deaths. 

A nuclear war isn't winnable. Despite its numerous and glaring flaws, the Kelvedon hatch makes that very clear. 

The Underbelly of the Environmental Movement

It happened – third runway, here we come! This can’t be a massive surprise for anyone – after all, the government wanted this bill to pass, and since they have a healthy working majority, it was going to take a lot to stop this proposal from taking on an certain edge of inevitability. I’m quite apathetic on this issue – rather being a NIMBY, I’m more NMFP*. After all, I’m not on the flight path and tend to fly from Gatwick anyway. However, I’m expecting a howl of impotent rage from those who oppose the third runway.

Which leads me back to a point I have already made – just what, precisely, to those who oppose this third runway expect Heathrow to do about all their problems? Yeah, we have Boris’s plans to build airports in the river**, but I don’t hear many of the third runway protestors supporting that idea. Partly because the real nub of the issue isn’t so much the location of the extra runway, but rather the desire to expand air travel. I’d say most of the protestors simply don’t want there to be more air travel for environmental reasons.

However, this makes the question of what exactly is the alternative even more pertinent and urgent. If we want to stop the expansion of air travel, or, indeed, reduce it, then what precisely is the alternative? Because so much of the modern economy is based around air travel. If we stop the expansion of air travel, or even reduce it, it is going to decimate a global economy that is already floundering badly.

And there’s a further point. Air travel is not alone in being a potentially environmentally unfriendly mode of transport. Yet all the modern modes of transport exist for a reason. They are there to meet the demands of the growing global population. And this isn’t just demands for people to take their annual holidays to Tenerife. This is about the mass transit of commodities people need to survive. Sure, you could reduce this mass transit system across the globe a little bit, and impact on the quality of life for some. As soon as you start radically attacking that system, you are going to start hurting people in crucial ways.

The problem, therefore, is the size of the global population. Some environmentalists concede that only a substantial reduction in the number of humans on this planet can actually save the environment. Which leads us to the unsavoury, brutal, extreme underside of the environmental movement – how we reduce the population. And the ideas are not pleasant. This sort of mindset is, for me, best summed up by this old comment from a radical environmentalist character calling themselves Miss Ann Thropy way back in the 1980’s:

If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human population back to ecological sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. So as hysteria sweeps over the governments of the world, let me offer an ecological perspective on the disease (with the understanding that the association between AIDS and homosexuality is purely accidental and irrelevant - in Africa it is a heterosexual disease, and is destined to be everywhere).

I take it as axiomatic that the only real hope for the continuation of diverse ecosystems on this planet is an enormous decline in human population. Conservation, social justice, appropriate technology, etc., are great to discuss and even laudable, but they simply don't address the problem. Furthermore, the whole economy of industrial affluence (and poverty) must give way to a hunter-gatherer way of life, which is the only economy compatible with a healthy land.

Of course, such a decline is inevitable. Through nuclear war or mass starvation due to desertification or some other environmental cataclysm, human overpopulation will succumb to ecological limits. But in such cases, we would inherit a barren, ravaged world, devoid of otters and redwoods, Blue Whales and butterflies, tigers and orchids.

Barring a cure, the possible benefits of this (AIDS) to the environment are staggering. If, like the Black Death in Europe, AIDS affected one-third of the world's population, it would cause an immediate respite for endangered wildlife on every continent. More significantly, just as the Plague contributed to the demise of feudalism, AIDS has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crisis.

None of this is intended to disregard or discount the suffering of AIDS victims. But one way or another there will be victims of overpopulation - through war, famine, humiliating poverty. As radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS not as a problem, but a necessary solution (one you probably don't want to try for yourself). To paraphrase Voltaire: if the AIDS epidemic didn't exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one.

Now, I’m not trying to imply for one moment that every environmentalist is like that evil fucker quoted above, but this does point out a fundamental problem at the centre of the environmental argument. The human population needs to decrease, not increase. Making the environmental movement anti-human. And how is this reduction in the human population going to be achieved? The quote above – as odious as it might be with phrases such as “the possible benefits of this (AIDS) to the environment are staggering” – shows that something radical needs to happen. The problem is that any radical solution that fundamentally reduces the human population is, against the parameters of nearly any ethical or moral code, staggeringly evil.

A seismic reduction in the human population – or a radical contraction of the world economy (which would probably cause the former anyway) – may well be the only way to truly achieve these environmental objectives, but it is also worth revisiting why these objectives exist anyway. Some environmentalists argue that the planet is already beyond the point of no return. Which does leave me wondering why we would want to do anything to stop what is now inevitable. Or, as Mr Eugenides puts it:

“…on the "urgent need" to combat global warming (though if it's irreversible, where's the fucking urgency?)”

And if the status quo is reversible, then I think it is still worth challenging some of the fundamental assumptions of the environmental case. DK takes a look at some of the facts around climate change for a US Senator:

Yes, yes it is. Still, here are some facts for you, Senator Cardin:

 The world may or may not be warming. Honestly, we don't really know.
 The world may or may not be warmer than at any time since the last ice age. But, honestly, we don't really know.
 If there is some warming trend, man may or may not be contributing to it. Honestly, we don't really know.
 Ah, fuck it—you get the idea...

So, we don’t know whether we are causing some of the environmental damage to this planet. Therefore, we don’t know whether pursuing an environmental agenda would actually stop that damage. Culling the human population, or fucking with the global economy, is problematic even if you think it will do some good. When we are lacking in any real evidence that it would make a blind bit of fucking difference anyway, it becomes even more nonsensical.

Digging into the environmental and ecological movements shows that there is far more to both of them than a bit of fashionable airline bashing – and I dare say some environmentally minded people would be surprised where the extremes of their movement are at, ideologically speaking. However it also sums up nicely why I could never be an environmentalist – I refuse to sign up to an ideology that, deep down, is anti-human. And I’m also happy to be called a climate change sceptic*** - because, although conclusive proof will be next to impossible to come by, I would like something a little more concrete than the incoherent and utterly inconclusive “evidence” of the climate change lobby.

*NMFP – not my fucking problem.
**Can’t help but think of recent events in New York here, but I know I am being deliberately obtuse.
***Not denier, please not. Sceptic. Climate change happens; it is the causes of it and what we can do about it that I am sceptical about.

Election 2008: Bring Me War!!

We’ve had Obama threatening to attack Pakistan. We’ve had John McCain threatening to “Bomb Iran”. To the tune of “Barbara Ann”. To date, Hillary Clinton’s solitary selling point for me was her failure to make bellicose, hawkish statements about attacking other nation. So it is pretty depressing to see that she has jumped on the attack bandwagon, and joined McCain in proposing the bombing of Iran. Albeit in a much less musical way:

A row erupted when Mrs Clinton was asked how she would respond if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel. She replied that: "If I'm the president, we will attack Iran... (if they attack Israel) we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic."

Hmmm. I’m no nuclear strategist, but I can’t help but think that nuking one state in response to them nuking another state is pretty much how things slip out of control and we end up with a nuclear holocaust. And, y’know, there are no real winners from a nuclear holocaust.

Ok, ok, we are talking about a fairly extreme scenario here, where Iran would be the first to push the button and Israel has been destroyed. But it is worrying both that the US voters seem to expect their Presidential candidates to take part in this sort of sabre rattling, and that the presidential candidates seem to be A-Ok with meeting these expectations for sabre rattling.

One of these people – McCain, Obama or Clinton – will have their finger on the proverbial button come next January. And yes, they may, conceivably have to push it. But, fuck me, can’t they be a little less happy to discuss the prospect of global nuclear annihilation? And can’t they, in the case of McCain, anyway, be a little less gleeful when discussing that prospect?

When blogging previously about the US campaign, the song “Bad Moon Rising” popped into my head. Reading this story, this afternoon, the DJ has changed the track. It is now “Don’t Fear The Reaper."

Come on, sing with me! One, two, three, four – “All our times have come/Here, but now they’re gone…”