The Runit Dome

~ Is it okay that “the best country in the world” claims no responsibility in a fiasco like this? ~

You live across the pond from your enemy Ivan. Anticipating war, you test new weapons in your backyard. When the fallout from your bombs makes the neighbors sick, you look for a testing site further from home. So you visit Tiare, the Polynesian girl who lives on an island in the middle of the pond.

“I need to bomb your island,” you inform her.

“Bomb my island?” she says, horrified.

“Don’t worry. We won’t blow up your house,” you explain. “We just need to test these weapons that will make us stronger than Ivan.”

“And you have to blow up my island?”

“Only the useless parts. I’ll even pay you.”

You give Tiare a basket filled with sparkling trinkets.

“This is for your trouble. Now sign this.”

You give Tiare a contract and she grimaces.

“I don’t understand this language,” she says. “What does it say?”

“It says you got paid and we can do whatever we want. Now sign it!”

Feeling trapped, she signs. When most of Tiare’s island has been vaporized, the pond community takes notice.

“Stop bombing!” they insist. “Those super-poisons will last more than 20,000 years.”

So finally you stop. Next, you order a young punk to fill enormous tanker ships with super-poisoned dirt from your backyard and move it to Tiare’s island.

“I won’t do it,” the punk says. “It’s not safe.”

You strip the punk of all medals and shame him publicly. When a more submissive punk ships the radioactive dirt to Tiare’s island, you send medals to his family. You also send money to his cancer specialist and a shiny new bugle to his funeral director.

No help, however, is given to Tiare and her family who have suffered much sickness, death and loss of paradise. Her pleas are rejected by your lawyer, who reminds her of the contract she signed.

The pond community prefers not to talk about what Tiare calls “the tomb,” a brittle dome of super-poison perched precariously atop her slender atoll, despite the fact that its skin of concrete is beginning to collapse from rising tides and hostile seas.

“It’s not my problem,” you insist. “I explained all this to Tiare in the contract.”[1]

Atomic bomb image by US Army / Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

Runit Dome. Images by US Defense Agency & Christopher Michel, Wikimedia Commons.

[1] “The U.S. Must Take Responsibility for Nuclear Fallout in the Marshall Islands,” by Hart Rapaport and Ivana Nikolić Hughes, Scientific American, 4 April 2022, www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-u-s-must-take-responsibility-for-nuclear-fallout-in-the-marshall-islands.

“How the U.S. Betrayed the Marshall Islands, Kindling the Next Nuclear Disaster,” by Susanne Rust, Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2019, www.latimes.com/projects/marshall-islands-nuclear-testing-sea-level-rise/?utm_source=pocket-newtab.

“The U.S. put nuclear waste under a dome on a Pacific island. Now it’s cracking open,” by Kyle Swenson, The Washington Post, 20 May 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/20/us-put-nuclear-waste-under-dome-pacific-island-now-its-cracking-open/.