Ninth grade novel meets world news headlines...

When I was in ninth grade, we read the novel On the Beach by Nevil Shute. It's a post-apocalyptic story of what happens on Earth after a nuclear holocaust. All life in the northern hemisphere dies because of the massive impact (both instant impact and nuclear-fallout impact) of the bombs, and the only people left are in the extreme southern hemisphere. Yet even they aren't safe. The air currents are carrying the toxic radiation slowly southward, and  the survivors are simply waiting die from radiation exposure. The novel centers on how individuals handle the finite time they have remaining before the fallout arrives and what they do when it does finally descend on their part of the world.

Who on earth makes ninth-grade kids read this stuff?  I lived for weeks with the undercurrent of mortality running through everything I did. It was scary and very, very weird. I mentioned that I was 14 years old, right? Yeah.

Then last week I was talking to a good friend about Japan. It was a timely and relevant conversation not only because of the crisis that island nation is experiencing, but also because my friend's husband is a nuclear engineer. He specializes in nuclear fuel, and he works for our local power company. And he's really, really smart.

He's been on the professional blogs, reading about events at the Fukushima nuclear facility. I asked her what he thought about the situation, and I knew it wasn't good by the way she stopped everything she was doing, got a deadly serious look on her face and took a deep breath.  "He says it's bad. He says it's really, really bad." Understatement. That's never good from someone with the inside scoop on a crisis.

The bottom line (because I am not a nuclear scientist and don't understand the ins and outs of the whole thing) is that they have the most brilliant nuclear experts in the world over there working on the problem, and no one knows how to stabilize the situation. For the most part, the radiation is contained for now, but they if they continue to release pressure from the reactors, more radiation will escape into the air. Each release sends out radioactive particles that have to land somewhere.

"So what does he think will happen?" I asked.
"Japan is gone," she said.
"So it's as bad as Chernobyl?"
"Worse. Chernobyl had one reactor meltdown. There are six reactors in danger in Japan. Six. They should never put more than two or three reactors at a site. This one has SIX."

Now I admit I am one to go from A to Z in a hurry, so I took that to mean the whole nation, not just a few kilometers surrounding the facility. The irony is that the nuclear facility was built to withstand a 10.0 earthquake and 25' tsunami.  It did well through the 9.0 quake, but the tsunami was 30'.  The 30' tsunami ... less than my height more than the safety measures accounted for ... caused the nuclear crisis.

I read Thursday that Americans were advised to leave Japan. I read yesterday that the Japanese government has warned that they detected unsafe radiation levels in spinach and cow's milk from that region, so the food supply is already tainted. I read this morning that they are going to have to release more gases from reactor #3 today. They're trying to run it through suppression pools first, to lower radiation levels before it hits open air, but it that doesn't work and they have to release it directly into the open air, it'll increase the radioactive iodine level in the air 100 fold. It doesn't take nuclear brilliance to conclude that increasing radiation in the air is bad. It's not like the air goes into a container; it floats around the world, dropping radioactive particles in the lakes and streams and oceans and soil along the way.

As the events of On the Beach come to mind in pondering the magnitude of this disaster, I realize two things: 1) The events of Revelation 6 (or Matthew 24, for that matter) are quite fathomable; and 2) God is big enough to handle this crisis. It's an odd thing to witness something potentially apocalyptic. On the one hand, there's "Even so, Lord Jesus, come."  On the other hand, there's the knowledge that the end is The End, and there are no more chances for those who don't know Him.

So what's left to do? Pray and keep going. And that's where I've found myself this week... praying and going. Praying for wisdom for those in authority, for divine revelation of solutions to the nuclear crisis that our subduing-the-Earth efforts haven't discovered yet. Going with the tasks Jesus gave us before He left... go and make disciples, love one another as He has loved us, forgive as we have been forgiven, feed the hungry, heal the sick, be holy, etc.  I've been way too distracted from the game plan for way too long. You?