Chain Reaction Day at Bikini

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 361, 24 May 1946, Page 23

Chain Reaction Day at Bikini

Y Bie comment on preparations tor the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll next month is taken from "The New Yorker’: HE natives on Bikini are being moved to another atoil to make Lebensraum for our scientists on Chain Reaction Day. ‘The account we saw of the eviction said that these Bikini Islanders were an unusual bunch-they lived in peace and didn’t murder one another, Such people, afflicted with an unnatural

lassitude, are out of luck on this up-and-coming planet and it is not surprising that they are having to move on. Presumably nothing much will be left of Bikini when the scientists get through, it will simply be -remembered as the one-time habitation of some quee: dicks who failed to drop things on each other. We like to sit and think about the editorials that would be appearing in the American press this spring if Japan were the nation conducting the A-bomb experiments in the Marshalls. That is one set of editorials we hate to miss. It would be a privilege to watch the fourth estate when its writers, working feverishly and behind closely guarded doors, finally succeeded in splitting the polemic. m % a WO hundred goats, two hundred pigs, an undetermined number of sheep, and thirty-seven hundred rats have been assigned the best seats for the Bikini show. They are going to be placed aboard the target ships. We would like to volunteer to join this plucky crew, as it seerns only right that the human race be represented on so vivid an occasion. As yet it has not been definitely established that an atomic bomb can kill a man if he is standing on the deck of a ship. And until we know that, how can anybody rest easy? outiendtemeniamminiemnes

Before signing on, howcver, we would like to examine the Committce’s permit to drop the new, impraved A-bomb, which, as one scientist put it, "will cause almost unbelievable damage." We feel that the papers of a bomb dropper should be in order, and it isn’t clear wherein the authority lies for unpredictable detonation. Who issues the permit to blow the fishes out of the seu? What bureau of licences places its blessing.on Nuclear Man, who doesn’t know his own strength? Bikini Lagoon, although we have never seen it, begins to seem like the one place in all the world we cannot spare; it grows increasingly valuable in our eyes-the lagoon, the low-lying atoll, the steady wind from the east, the palms in the wind, the quiet natives who live without violence. It all seems unspeakably precious, like a lovely child stricken with a fatal disease. ew * * HERE is one more passenger that ought to be aboard a Navy ship on the great day, alongside the goats, the pigs, the sheep, the rats, and us. We think archy ought to be aboard, archy s lineage is truly ancient; he goes back one hundred million years. We’ve been reading about cockroaches in a book by Edwin Way Teale and we are of the opinion that the cockroach is the creature most likely to survive the atomic age. Sensitive to light and shade, he instinctively seeks the dark (and there should be plenty of that). Furthermore, archy can get along for two weeks without nitrogen, can last many hours without oxygen, and can digest the gold lettering on books. ... Well archy s boss is dead, God rest his untransmugrated soul, but archy himself is probably good for another hundred million years. There will be enough gold lettering from pulverised books to keep him going, and, as we pointed out, his nitrogen needs are small. /