In the Name of the Bomb

September 6, 2011

This comic book album is not remarkable for its artwork. On the other hand, its content is very well chosen, illustrative. We live in an era where everyone has reason to fear the effects of nuclear fallout. This album will show you what awaits you, if you do nothing.

For decades, anti-nuclear activists have been agitating as best they can, multiplying demonstrations, in near-total indifference. For you, they have taken blows from the CRS, and sometimes they have lost their lives.

This album deals with military nuclear power, recounts what we, the French, did, first in the Sahara, then in Polynesia. Everything that is told is authentic, documented. Photocopies of the key documents are attached at the end of the book.

Military nuclear power is not pretty, in any country. Cynicism, contempt for human life, it's all there. You will see how de Gaulle sent human guinea pigs to approach "ground zero", immediately after a test firing, to see "how the troops would behave after a nuclear attack".

The Americans had done the same, and the Russians as well.

You will read this account by the wife of an enlisted man, who died "of radiation sickness". A man she has great difficulty finding, in a military hospital in Clamart, where he finishes dying in agony, along with seventeen of his comrades.

• Are you the irradiated man's wife?

A senior officer will have her sign, under pressure, a declaration of honor, condemning her to silence ... for forty years.

You will read with dismay the report of a military doctor, aboard the ship "La Coquille", concerning the mission he carried out in the Gambier Islands, located southwest of Mururoa, which had received abundant fallout, during an aerial nuclear test, on July 2, 1966. Here is the photo of La Coquille, taken from the book "Les Atolls de la Bombe", by Bernard Dumortier, for which I wrote another reading note.

And this doctor puts in his conclusions (see the document entitled "the proof of the lie"):

- Drinking water has a radioactivity 6 times higher than its natural value

• Measured using the ship's instruments, a lettuce taken from the island has a radioactivity level of:

• Unwashed: 18,000 pCie/g

• Washed: 5000 pCie/g

• The Tahitian population is perfectly unaware, carefree, and shows no curiosity

• Father Daniel dreams of his next trip and has no idea what fallout can be

• The post chief (gendarme Cornette) suspects something, showers repeatedly, but without serious concern. We have reassured him, he is a reliable element who, whatever happens, will play along.

...........

• The psycho-political situation does not seem to pose any problems in the immediate future.

...........

This report is signed by a military doctor, Doctor Philippe Millon

Everything, in this book, is in the same vein.

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