Despite the warnings of history, mankind seems to be oblivious or wilfully amnesiac to the devastating effects of their own actions. We have signed up projects that are prophesising our own doomsday, yet we seem to be negligent of the choices we are making regularly. We have invested millions of dollars in making better ways of killing people than healing people, surely isn’t something wrong with the human project?
Of the many serious threats that we are facing as a global community, is the risk of nuclear radiation that can be the most detrimental. The rate at which nuclear armaments are rising, we are making way for our own apocalypse.
Although the scientific studies have suggested the wide reaching effects of nuclear radiation, we seem to be mocking the statistics. The world has already witnessed some massive nuclear radiation catastrophe, the most prominent being the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Chernobyl disaster. It led to not only mass slaughter over night but also genetic mutations that were passed on to several generations of offspring, causing permanent deformation in different parts of the body.
Studies suggest that regular exposure to radiation can cause long term irreversible effects including cancer, hair loss, infertility, skin problems. As the world is still grappling with high tech gadgets, we are somehow coming in contact with some levels of radiation, every day. Radiation has become part and parcel of our lives to some extent and there seems to be no escape too.
With those affected with cancer, physicians often prescribe radiation therapy to combat cancer. What it often also included was a series of health side effects among the patients and in the worst case scenario, a recurrence of cancer among some patients. The methods were often obsolete but with the recent development in radiation therapy, the effects of the treatment can be curtailed with proper support and care by the concerned physician and is called as palliative care.
However, what is more alarming is how instead of minimizing the effect of radiation, we are turning a blind eye to the long term hazardous effects of radiation. In fact, exposure from radioactive iodine from the Chernobyl accident caused an increased risk of thyroid cancer. The mutations caused in the DNA are so complex in such scenarios that they cause permanent damage. Those sitting in positions of power know it very well that after two world wars; we cannot afford a third world war- that it is nothing but a self fulfilling prophesy, signing our own death sentence. However, recent news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the lurking danger of Russia attacking Ukraine’s nuclear power plants will cause mankind to cease. If the photographs of nuclear radiation disaster and scientific studies do not haunt you still, we don’t know what will?
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” ― Albert Einstein