Nuclear waste, what the actual fuck?

Question

I am better at answering questions than answering asking them, so I get it if this is not a question y'all feel interested in answering, but I live in the general vicinity of the original superfund site, Hanford. I wouldn't be directly poisoned by the nuclear waste that lives there, but I will definitely be poisoned by the nuclear waste that is leaching to the Columbia River as we speak.

I can be all nihilist as fuck about my own life (I've already made enough bad decisions I expect it is somewhat shortened), but what the fuck do we (anarchists) do about these massive, terrible, and seemingly intractable problems that civilization has made for us?

Edit: Better at answering questions than answering them? What the fuck was I on about?

Comments

Nothing and/or something, depending on preference and proximity.  There isn't a great deal tangible you can do, other than general disengagement and resistance -however good you are at that-. If it was effecting me negatively, I would probably move away.
Also I don't think that nihilist necessarily means you don't care, just that you don't believe in any sort of abstracted 'meaning'.  That sounds more depression like.

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technology, yo! if all you damn primitivist hippie vegan commies would stop fighting the inevitable, then the priests of science could easily come up with the technological solution to ALL these overrated so-called "issues" you claim are impacting the environment. nano-tech and drones are the fucking answer to ALL those stupid complaints.

but seriously, i doubt anything short of drastic human depopulation - with everything that entails and implies - will really change anything. while in some scenarios it might be feasible to take some direct action, in that case i doubt you want to, if you desire to enjoy life for however long you have left. doing superfund cleanup would not be on my bucket list. or, i guess you could take action against any individuals you know to be responsible; but that wouldn't really change the environmental situation (though it might feel good as fuck).

the place i lived for many years up until recently, and where i felt more free than anywhere i could imagine in this world, happened to be less than 3 hours from los alamos (national labs). every year, the wildfires that ravaged the region would threaten the labs, and maybe 5 years ago one of the fires was actually on lanl land. while groundwater would not likely be a problem (i was at a much higher altitude), prevailing winds blew almost directly in my direction. i knew that was a risk, but it sounds like your risk is notably higher.

i think i would bail, personally. the yearly wildfire season was absolutely a factor in my leaving there, though that was because of the actual smoke impact on the health of myself and my pack, rather than the risk of los alamos going up in flames.

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i make it known to anyone who will listen how much i hate those massive and terrible things (and, if they keep listening, how i think the ideology of state and capitalism causes them).

i've completely given up on thinking those things will go away (or even change substantially) based on anything that i do.

i try to live in a way that doesn't add to that fucked-up-ness....which mainly amounts to not wanting to feel more pain because of my own actions. i'll watch another oak tree die and fall on the land where i live rather than inject it with poison to kill the beatles.

like funky and skyline, get further away if i feel like i need to for my physical/mental/emotional health....and when all else fails....

scream.......cry.......laugh.....cannabis.....love the one beside you....write or paint or sing about it....break something...

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So I take it that you drink well water ingrate? I only ask because people who drink city water aren't usually effected by these types of things. Regardless, that really sucks. Water contamination and local environmental destruction were the only things that caused me to get passionately interested in any sort of activism, if i was on here 9 years ago i would be telling you to start organizing your community and calling local representatives lmfao...it's all so bad because there's almost nothing that we can do about the process of turning the planet into a toilet bowl. I get really mad about the fact that I live out in the country and i see all this trash just blowing around...i guess as anarcho-nihilists we can just feel a little despair and try to still have fun, despite its total impracticality i don't begrudge eco-terrorists in the moral sense

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"people who drink city water aren't usually effected by these types of things."

i don't know, nihilist, what about flint? that may be an edge case according to the media, but in reality municipal water sources tend to be every bit as susceptible to pollution as rural groundwater, in many cases more so due to centralization (reservoirs, treatment plants, etc).

i see no way to avoid the destruction, overall. i can only make choices about what aspects of the destruction i can try to avoid, and which ones i accept as inevitable (given my desires). fortunately, my priorities allow me to be in slightly better control of that than any urban dweller probably could.

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and of course with city water there are those things that the social planners put in it to "protect people" and keep it clean like fluoride...i was more or less trying to address ingrate, and the fears of nuclear waste getting in his water, not saying that he shouldn't be concerned...

there's the issue of not being in control of any of this, it's frightening but once again it's inevitable, to a certain extent im glad i don't have control over the terror of the human race and all the natural terrors that humans in the past just accepted and worked with

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Nihilist - I am pretty safe. My (muni) water doesn't come from somewhere tainted by nuclear waste, in fact it is some of the best muni drinking water in the country, or so I hear. It is more the larger creeping doom. I do live in the PNW, the Columbia is like a main artery so far as all the related ecosystems are concerned. Yeah, I can't do much of anything to change that. Sometimes the existential dread is more than I can stomach for a day or 365.

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yeah, being born into a world that is slowly being killed can be rather overwhelming at times.  sometimes i wonder if this is how it felt to be on rapanui before the arrival of the europeans

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i've read that the natives on the carribean islands started killing themselves when they understood what plans christopher columbus had in store for them...it's a shame that to look at the human species from a grander picture (existentially) you can't really do anything but cry, i take comfort in the fact that our species is not going to be able to make it off this planet

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" i take comfort in the fact that our species is not going to be able to make it off this planet"

ya as much as i like running water its not worth extincting the species. 

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nihilist, i wish i shared your confidence that humans won't make it off this planet. i hope you are right. the pace of technological development scares me.

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i try not to think about species or humanity or any thing grand like that.  i feel empathetic towards the billions of people who live in this frankly moronic world... but not connected, not really.  besides, they choose to have kids, they chose to work, they choose to keep it all going.  they have their life -which for the majority of people is far, far less fortunate than mine i readily admit- and they do with it what they will.  i have no grand, profound connection to them individually, or as a collective 'humanity', outside some basic physical similarities, and intertwined economic relations.  recently i despair less and less about the fate of humanity; granted its still moronic and horrific, but i couldnt care less 'humans' leave this planet or die out after five more generations, for instance.  my attention goes to what i do now.  well thats not true, my attention goes to pokemon and youtube.  but when i think about the future, i think about my future.  that is the only future that exists for me, after all.

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well going humans going extinct doesnt make me very uncomfortable at all, all life going extinct does, i would love to see humans continue if they could do it without the ecocide, however i completely agree that isnt possible or atleast not on a massive scale.

like someone else said.. depopulation would solve the problem (im not saying that we should exterminate people but that if something did maybe it wouldnt be so terrible in the long run)