Crazy vs. Really Crazy: Could The Crazies Really Happen?
Since 1991 Rick Hind has been legislative director of Greenpeace’s toxics campaign. He is one of the nation’s foremost experts on a variety of toxics issues, including security issues related to chemical hazards and the chemical industry, EPA regulations pertaining to toxic incineration, the pulp and paper industry, PVC plastics, and toxic pollutants.
He has testified before Congress on multiple occasions and helped lead our successful global campaign to ban some of the world’s most dangerous chemicals and prevent new ones from being marketed.
Through social action site TakePart.com, Dread Central was provided with the following blog from Mr. Hind on the topic of “Crazy vs. Really Crazy: Could The Crazies Really Happen?”
We at Greenpeace are constantly striving to reach out to broader constituencies, so we were flattered when Participant Media approached us with The Crazies script. The first thing we noticed was that it was a remake of George Romero’s 1973 film. Romero’s zombie style sci-fi horror turns this low budget 50s genre into cautionary tales like Night of the Living Dead. These films aren’t literal interpretations of plausible scenarios; they are metaphors for unimaginable real life horrors.
When the original Crazies was released in 1973, Americans were just learning about the ecological impact of “Agent Orange” sprayed by U.S. warplanes to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam. It would be another decade before they learned of the cancer and birth defects it brought to Vietnamese and thousands of American GIs.
The 2010 Crazies depicts the horror of a fictional bio-warfare agent called “Trixie” that poisons the drinking water of a fictional Iowa town after a military plane loaded with “Trixie” crashes in a local wetland on its way to be incinerated.
After the local sheriff finds the plane and deduces that it’s poisoning the local drinking water, he decides to shut off the town’s water supply. But just as in many real life situations, the town’s mayor says no. He tells the sheriff he doesn’t have enough proof and the town’s agricultural economy depends on a constant flow of water.
This was a great example of the film’s commentary on our inability to work together even when lives depend on it. Likewise, the solutions to many of our real life threats pose few technical challenges. Instead we fall victim to a failure of political will.
At Greenpeace our scientific and policy experts are on top of the latest science on ecological disasters, and many of these hazards have been with us for decades. Nationwide 300 of these plants put 110 million Americans at risk of catastrophic accidents or terrorist attacks.
Today, Greenpeace and a coalition of labor unions, public health and environmental groups are urging the U.S. Senate to adopt chemical security legislation at least as strong as the historic bill (H.R. 2868) that passed the House of Representatives in November. We need a law that ensures that the highest risk plants in the country use safer chemical processes.
The real world impact of a massive chlorine gas release is far from hypothetical. Before its widespread use by industry, chlorine gas was the first lethal chemical used in warfare in World War I. According to the U.S. government, by the end of World War I, poison gas had inflicted 1.3 million casualties and 90,000 deaths. What’s really crazy is that World War I poison gas is still stored and used in dozens of major U.S. cities when safer alternatives are available.
The 1984 chemical disaster at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India is another infamous example of how inherently dangerous these substances are. After all safety systems failed, the plant released 40 tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC), killing 8,000 people within days and claiming another 12,000 lives in the years since.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory estimated that a large release of poison gas in a major city could result in 100,000 casualties in the first 30 minutes following an attack: “People can die at the rate of 100 per second.”
Fortunately there are safer alternatives for virtually all of these gases with hundreds of safer processes in use in 47 states, and some businesses recognize these threats. In November The Clorox Company announced that it plans to convert all of its U.S. plants to safer processes over the next few years. In addition the Association of American Railroads said, “It’s time for the big chemical companies to do their part to help protect America. They should stop manufacturing dangerous chemicals when safer substitutes are available. And if they won’t do it, Congress should do it for them…”
The Senate is running out of time to pass a comprehensive bill (H.R. 2868) that truly protects the millions of Americans at risk. They need to start asking themselves what Americans will say the day after a terrorist attack or accident when they learn that safer alternatives could have prevented such a horrific loss of life. What will Americans do when they learn that some Senators put a hold on this legislation? The day after a disaster, we’ll all know who the real crazies are.
Help us by sending a letter to your Senator asking for stronger safety measures at our nations most high risk facilities.
– Rick Hind, Greenpeace Legislative Director
Rick is a go-to source for journalists covering toxics and chemical security issues. He has been quoted in a wide range of national publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, NPR, FOX, and many others. Rick’s work to expose the vulnerability of U.S. chemical plants to terrorism and accidents resulted in a feature story on the CBS program “60 Minutes” in November 2003. He was also the subject of a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal in January, 2004.
Our thanks to Rick Hind, Participant Media, and TakePart.com for sharing the above with Dread Central readers!
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