by John D'Agata
over 340,000 lethal doses: Ibid., pp. 23–24.
“Anything that we saw”: Quoted in The Bomb’s Lethal Legacy, Public Broadcasting Service, Nova, 1990.
over 200 billion gallons of waste: Ginsburg, Nuclear Waste Disposal, p. 23.
“Let me be perfectly frank”: Quoted by Doug J. Swanson in “Cost, Frustrations Soar as Nuclear Project Lags: Backers Admit Problems with Nevada Plan,” Dallas Morning News, May 23, 1993.
“vulnerable to waste”: Ibid.
“Maybe if we can find out”: Quoted in “Environs: Environmental Notes,” Daily Camera, August 2, 1993.
the California Institute of Technology revealed: Solveig Torvik, “Into the Rabbit Hole,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 21, 1998.
running directly through Yucca Mountain: See Ginsburg, Nuclear Waste Disposal, pp. 84–86.
“massive upwelling”: See James Flynn, et al., One Hundred Centuries of Solitude: Redirecting America’s High-Level Nuclear Waste Policy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), p. 23.
About 10,000 years ago: This history is relatively easy to track down, so I won’t detail each of my sources.
living side by side with werewolves: This, however, might be harder to find. It was reported by David McKie in “Researchers Find Werewolf Fears 10,000 Years Ago,” Japan Times, January 17, 2002.
around the time the last dragons in Sweden disappeared: This, too, is worth citation. There’s a wonderfully absurd discussion about the origin of our dragon fantasies in Carl Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Origins of Human Intelligence (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986), and then again (a little less absurdly) in David Jones’s An Instinct for Dragons, (New York: Routledge, 2000). A report submitted to the British Royal Society in 1764 suggested that dragons died off in Europe in the ninth century.
Atlantis was destroyed by a flood: According to Plato in “Critias.”
it’s when 45 percent of Americans believe: As reported by Frank Newport in “Third of Americans Say Evidence Has Supported Darwin’s Evolution Theory: Almost Half of Americans Believe God Created Humans 10,000 Years Ago,” Gallup Poll News Service, November 19, 2004.
The half-life of iodine-131: EPA Facts About Iodine, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., July 2002.
still dangerous enough to kill someone: See Rosalie Bertell, “Nuclear Radiation and Its Biological Effects,” Center for Nuclear Responsibility, Washington, D.C., 2000.
the Yucca Mountain Development Act of 2002: Public Law 200 of the 107th Congress, which was House Joint Resolution 87, is actually only two sentences long. It passed on July 23, 2002.
the Energy Policy Act of 1992: Quoted in “Nevada Court Challenges the Selection of the Yucca Mountain Site,” Nuclear Energy Institute, Washington, D.C., 2005.
“Hi, sir”: My interview with Robert Fri took place by telephone on April 5, 2005.
“The reason for imposing a time frame on the Yucca Mountain project”: As reported by the Committee on Technical Bases for Yucca Mountain Standards in Technical Bases for Standards at Yucca Mountain Standards, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 1995, pp. 55–72.
“What we’re dealing with here”: Interview by telephone with Robert Halstead, State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, March 3, 2003.
Seventy-seven thousand tons of spent nuclear waste: “DOE Calls for Bigger Nuclear Waste Dump,” Associated Press, December 9, 2008.
“Testing to Failure: Design of Full-Scale Fire and Impact Tests for Spent Fuel Shipping Casks”: Delivered by Robert Halstead and Fred Dilger at the 32nd Annual Waste Management Symposium, February 29–March 4, 2004, Tucson, Arizona.
the trucks carrying the nuclear waste: As estimated by Robert Halstead and Fred Dilger in “How Many Did You Say? Historical and Projected Spent Nuclear Fuel Shipments in the United States, 1964–2048,” Waste Management Conference, February 23–27, 2003, Las Vegas, Nevada.
They’ll arrive in Las Vegas: This hypothetical highway accident is described by Matthew Lamb, Marvin Resnikoff, and Richard Moore in the report entitled Worst Case Credible Nuclear Transportation Accidents: Analysis for Urban and Rural Nevada (New York: Radioactive Waste Management Associates, 2001). All details concerning this hypothetical accident have been taken from their report.
rupturing approximately thirty minutes afterward: J. L. Sprung, Reexamination of Spent Fuel Shipping Risk Estimates, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 2000, quoted in Hypothetical Baltimore Rail Tunnel Fire Involving Spent Nuclear Fuel (New York: Radioactive Waste Management Associates, 2002).
“a decontamination factor higher than 10”: D. I. Chanin and W. B. Murfin, Site Restoration: Estimation of Attributable Costs from Plutonium-Dispersal Accidents, Technadyne Engineering Consulting, Sandia National Laboratories, Carlsbad, New Mexico, May 1996.
The study’s evaluation: As Bob Halstead explained in “Yucca Mountain Transportation Risk and Impact Issues,” a presentation to the National Academies of Science Committee on Nuclear Waste Transportation, July 25, 2003.
a figure of 1–in–27, 000 odds, thus making: According to Michael Bluejay, the “Wizard of Odds,” who estimates that one’s chances of winning a $16 million Megabucks slot machine jackpot are 1 in 49,836,032. He also estimates that the chances of being kidnapped by radioactive monkeys which then attempt to convert you to Buddhism are approximately 1 in 46 million.
“It’s dangerous to concentrate so much”: My conversation with Lee Clarke took place by telephone on May 8, 2008. See also Lee Clarke, Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. x–xi.
Why
I drove with my mom and a friend: My hiking trip with Joshua Abbey took place on July 15, 2002.
Abbey often claimed on the jackets: See James Cahalan, Edward Abbey: A Life (Tucson: University of Arizona, 2003), p. iii.
“He liked the prophetic suggestion”: Ibid., p. iv.
often left cars to their demise: Ibid., p. 274.
The Shoshone say that Yucca: Interview at his home in Tecopa, California, with Corbin Harney, Spiritual Leader of the Western Shoshone Indian Nation, July 23, 2002.
“Better a cruel truth”: Edward Abbey, Abbey’s Road (New York: Plume, 1991).
Originally, the plan in the U.S. was to recycle our nuclear waste: Each of these plans is detailed by Ginsburg in Nuclear Waste Disposal, pp. 11–17.
“We have a responsibility”: Helga Thue, “The Right to a Future,” Sandia National Laboratories, Carlsbad, New Mexico, 1996, p. 3.
“Why are we assuming”: See Gregory Benford, Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999), p. 45.
thirty-three times more than the United Nations’ budget: See “Proposed UN Budget for 2004–2005 to Reach $2.9 Billion, According to Outline Presented in Fifth Committee,” 57th General Assembly, United Nations, September 12, 2002.
“The problem that we’re dealing with”: Peter C. Van Wyck, Signs of Danger: Waste, Trauma, and Nuclear Threat (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), sections 12.3–14.5.
“Planning a storage facility”: This letter from the Department of Energy is dated July 24, 1990. It is included in Kathleen M. Trauth, Stephen C. Hora, and Robert V. Guzowski, eds., Expert Judgement Panel on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, California, 1993, p. B-3. It is important to note that this panel was originally formed to address the need to mark a site called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a salt cavern in Carlsbad, New Mexico, in which low-level nuclear waste material has already begun to be stored. Because this panel was the first of its kind in the world, the preliminary plans for Yucca’s marker have subsequently relied heavily on the findings of this report.
In his report to the Department of Energy: Most of the details about Thomas Sebeok’s proposal come from his report, Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia, Office of Nuclear W
aste Isolation, Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio, 1984.
Sebeok believed that the universe is in fact composed of signs: See Susan Petrilli, Thomas Sebeok and the Signs of Life (Cambridge, UK: Totem Books, 2001), p. 5.
These days, there are 297 individual companies: As a tour guide explained on an evening bus ride up the Las Vegas Strip, taken during the International Sign Association Exposition in Las Vegas, Nevada, on April 4, 2003.
but even then their canvas sides were covered: See Charles Barnard, The Magic Sign: The Electric Art and Architecture of Las Vegas (Cincinnati, OH: ST Publications, 1993), p. 63.
the city’s first professional sign-making store: Ibid., p. 64.
Today, just the base footings: Ibid., p. 14.
the executive director of the Las Vegas Neon Sign Association: My tour of the Las Vegas “neon boneyard” with Sandra Harris took place on April 2, 2003.
“All cities communicate some sort of message”: See Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972), p. 4.
“That’s why I thought”: The opening of the Universal Warning Sign Design exhibition took place on February 1, 2002, at the Marjorie Barrick Museum on the campus of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. All details concerning that show come from observations I made during the reception.
“I wanted to leave my mark on Las Vegas”: Bob Stupak’s efforts to build a new monument for Las Vegas are chronicled by John L. Smith in No Limit: The Rise and Fall of Bob Stupak and Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower (Las Vegas, NV: Huntington Press, 1997), pp. 142–44.
“Well, yeah”: My conversation with Dave Hickey took place in the Fireside Lounge at the Peppermill Restaurant in Las Vegas, Nevada, on December 15, 2002.
In 1996, only two years after: As reported by Ken McCall, “Tower Went Up Easier Than It Could Come Down,” Las Vegas Sun, July 29, 1996.
“Basically, you’d have to fell it”: Ibid.
Initially, Bob Stupak wanted to build: John Galtant, “Stupak Sets Sights on Steel Tower,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 5, 1989.
“But around that time my daughter”: Quoted by Smith in No Limit: The Rise and Fall of Bob Stupak and Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower, p. 143.
Since 1993, the Stratosphere Hotel has received: See “Best of Las Vegas,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 22, 1998, and “Best of Las Vegas,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 13, 2002, as well as Smith’s No Limit: The Rise and Fall of Bob Stupak and Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower, p. xviii.
There have also been eight fires: A fire broke out during the tower’s construction in 1993 (“Stupak Reaches Settlement in Lawsuit,” Las Vegas Sun, Oct. 30, 1999); another one broke out during its opening celebration (“Smoke Strands Guests Atop Tower,” Las Vegas Sun, May 1, 1996); another two months after that (“Stratosphere Fire,” Las Vegas Sun, July 5, 1996); another a year later (“Wastebasket Fire Leads to Evacuation at Stratosphere,” Las Vegas Sun, April 16, 1997); another ten days after that (“Smoke, But No Towering Inferno,” Las Vegas Sun, April 26, 1996); another in 2000 (“Fire Sprinkler Suppresses Fire at Las Vegas Hotel and Casino,” Fire Engineering, vol. 153, no. 3 [March 2000]); another three years after that (“Sprinklers Douse Stratosphere Fire,” Las Vegas Sun, Jan. 13, 2003); and one two years following that (Mary Manning, “Traffic, Lake Deaths Mar Weekend,” Las Vegas Sun, Sept. 6, 2005).
one guest strangled to death: As reported in “Two Arrested in Kentucky Man’s Death,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 1, 2000.
a machine gun fired: As reported in “Police Defend Coverage of Violence-Prone Area,” Las Vegas Sun, March 12, 1997.
a lawsuit involving: John Wilen, “Stratosphere to Honor Stupak’s Vacation Packages,” Las Vegas Sun, April 6, 1998.
the Federal Aviation Administration’s warning: Detailed by Smith in No Limit: The Rise and Fall of Bob Stupak and Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower, p. 198.
the response from the mayor of Las Vegas: Cathy Scott, “Consultant Calls Tower Obstacle to Air Traffic,” Las Vegas Sun, June 3, 1994.
the rumor of an anomaly that locals called a “kink”: Smith, No Limit: The Rise and Fall of Bob Stupak and Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower, pp. 163, 197.
the hotel’s stock price of $14…its price of 2¢: Gary Thompson, “Stratosphere Stock Mystery Explained,” Las Vegas Sun, February 26, 1998.
the $35 million…the $500 million: Smith, No Limit: The Rise and Fall of Bob Stupak and Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower, pp. 171, 214.
the $800 million that it accumulated: Brian Seals, “Stratosphere Creditors Coming Out of the Woodwork,” Las Vegas Sun, May 1, 1998.
the hotel’s bankruptcy: Adam Steinhauer, “Stratosphere Files Bankruptcy,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 28, 1997.
There was the man from Utah: As reported by Joe Schoenmann, “Man Jumps from Stratosphere Tower,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 7, 2000.
The man from Britain: “Man Jumps from Stratosphere Tower,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, February 8, 2006.
The jump by the producer: “Heartbreak Hits ‘Vegas Elvis’ Reality Show,” Casino City Times, April 13, 2005.
How
The life span of black ink, etc.: All of these details appear in Frank Kendig and Richard Hutton, Life-Spans: Or, How Long Things Last (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979), pp. 194–96.
the laser-encrypted plastic: See Benford, Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia, p. 61.
A color photograph: As estimated by Kendig and Hutton in Life-Spans, p. 200. See also pp. 189, 188, 198, and 91 for the details that follow.
“It’s the medium’s fault”: My conversation with Vic Baker took place in his office at the Department of Hydrology on the campus of the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, on November 21, 2005.
In a report entitled Durability of Marker Materials for Nuclear Waste Isolation Sites: Warren Berry’s report, published by the Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation at the Battelle Memorial Institute in 1983, is quoted by Gregory Fehr, Thomas Flynn, and William Andrews in Feasibility Assessment for Permanent Surface Marker Systems at Yucca Mountain (Washington, DC: Department of Energy, 1996), p. 9.
The society broadened its study: Ibid., pp. 19–21.
Synroc, on the other hand: “Synroc,” Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper, no. 21, Uranium Information Center, Melbourne, Australia, 2005.
This is an idea that was first proposed: See “A Review of Department of Energy’s Radioactive High-Level Waste Cleanup Programs,” Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., July 17, 2003.
Defense spending in the United States increased by 60 percent: Martin Calhoun, U.S. Military Spending, 1945–1996, Center for Defense Spending, Washington, D.C., July 9, 1996.
“This is a project about faith”: My conversation with David Givens took place by telephone on August 27, 2002, and was supplemented by several e-mail exchanges about the panel’s design process over the course of the following year.
“But the best thing to rely on”: My conversation with Louis Narens took place at his home in Del Mar, California, on July 24, 2002.
According to administrators of the Thematic Apperception Test: As detailed by Lon Geiser and Morris I. Stein, “An Overview of the Thematic Apperception Test,” in Evocative Images: The Thematic Apperception Test and the Art of Projection, ed. Lon Geister and Morris I. Stein (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1999), pp. 3–5.
“The Thematic Apperception Test: A Paradise of Psychodynamics”: This report was written by Edwin S. Shneidman, and can be found in Evocative Images: The Thematic Apperception Test and the Art of Projections, eds. Lon Geiser and Morris Stein (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1999), pp. 87–98.
“probably the most profound psychological”: Ibid., p. 88.
“Yeah…except languages have the unfortunate habit”: My interview with Fri
tz Newmeyer took place in the student union building at the University of Washington, Seattle, on August 26, 2002.
Linguists estimate that there are currently 6,700 languages: See David Nettle and Suzanne Romaine, “Where Have All the Languages Gone?,” in Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 5–10.
American linguist Morris Swadesh: See Joel Sherzer’s profile “Swadesh: From the First Yale School to Prehistory,” in Morris Swadesh, The Origin and Diversification of Language, ed. Joel Sherzer (New York: Atherton Press, 1971).
to construct a template of basic vocabulary: As Swadesh explains in “The Progress of Babel,” in ibid., pp. 213–26.
He developed a list of 200 such words: Ibid., p. 283.
“If we can show by means of comparative linguistics”: Ibid., p. 224.
“This is not a place of honor”: Quoted in Trauth, Hora, and Guzowski, eds., Expert Judgement Panel on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, p. F123.
“Nis weorðful stow”: This Old English translation of the panel’s warning message was composed by Jon Wilcox, professor of English at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.
“This is not an honorable place”: This literal translation of the Old English warning message was also composed by Jon Wilcox.
Why
It’s estimated that only 40 percent: Research findings in the field of suicidology are dramatically inconsistent. I catalogue these findings merely to make that point.
Recently, Dr. John Fildes: As reported by Christopher Hagen in “Suicide Watch,” Las Vegas Life (April 1999).
Sergeant Tirso Dominguez: My conversation with the sergeant took place by telephone on September 27, 2002.
“‘no comment’ is not a productive response”: See Reporting on Suicide: Recommendations for the Media and Public Officials, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, 1994.
Eric Darensburg: My conversation with Eric Darensburg took place by telephone on October 11, 2002.
Bob Gerye: I attempted twice to get a comment from Bob Gerye, once by telephone and once by fax.
