OK, so it just occurred to me that most of the communities along the coasts of the great lakes probably take their water from the lake. The one example I'm sure of is Milwaukee. Now, Milwaukee hasn't always been able to keep micro-organisms out of the city supplied water. What the hell would they do if a bio-weapon were dumped into Lake Michigan? Or worse yet, if nuclear waste were dumped into the lake? We'd be f*cked! And not only that, but don't the lakes all drain, one into the other? Would radioactively poisoning Lake Michigan also screw up all the downstream lakes (all except Superior, I think)? The sheer number of cities that would be disrupted is staggering. Add in the damage to aquafers too, since the Lake Superior aquafer, for instance provides water to much of wisconsin. You could wipe out an entire region along the US Canadian border, simply by
sneaking radioactive material in through Canada. Rochester, Buffalo, Toronto, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago, Duluth... what a mess it'd be. I hope there's a plan in place to deal with this scenario.Maybe it's time to get those moisture vaporators up and running!(Seriously, though. This scares me. Anyone have any thoughts on what we'd do if this happened?)
4 comments:
I hope there aren't any crazy terrorists reading your blog. I'm glad I left WI so I don't have to deal with that fear.
Hey, how's water testing??
I really don't think you need to worry. The Great Lakes hold 5500 cubic miles of water, 18% of the world's supply of fresh water. I may be off on the math here, but that's about 8 * 10^14 cubic feet. With the average shipping container being well under 5000 cubic feet, I think someone would notice thousands (more likely millions) of shipping containers loaded with toxic material being dumped into the lake.
Ok, obivously a single person (or even a reasonably sized group of people) can't poison the great lakes. But it wouldn't take that, would it? All it would take was to put enough in for people to know it was there. City water supplies would be shut down within the day. We're talking politics and public opinion, not reality.
I still think this should be filed with the worry of being hit by space junk, it could happen but there are bigger risks out there. Like getting into a car. Speaking of space junk, you do know that DEVO is playing in Green Bay this September? How many tickets should I put you down for (Me, Mrs and JTZ are going so far)?
You're doing a very good job with the blog so far. It's becoming one of my favorites. Be careful not to become to mentos-centric.
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