last evening, i finally finished watching the film “Oppenheimer” — a biographical film centered primarily on two forces of physics:

J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb

in the film, the cohort of physicists involved in the development of the atomic bomb postulated that the force and heat of the nuclear explosion could trigger a runaway atomic chain reaction by igniting atmospheric nitrogen —- thus, engulfing and destroying the entire planet — their confident mathematical conclusion: “near zero” — but not absolutely zero;

that infinitesimal quantum potential was apparently played to over-dramatic effect for the film — curious about the validity of this apocalyptic concern, i learned that this was never more than a scenario that required elimination in early mathematical and scientific due diligence;

still, the possibility instantly struck me as a parallel for the runaway greenhouse effect — where the greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere trigger feedback loops that indeed ignite and fuel further feedback loops — causing abrupt climate change, planetary inhabitability and then mass extinction — where no adaptation, mitigation or survival is possible and plants, animals and humans die en masse —

conditions of which, we are on the cusp right now — an anthropogenic-caused-and-accelerated global temperature event horizon that is postulated as a very real probability by climate scientists and evolutionary/conservation biologists across the globe even as it’s played out as something that could occur over the next centuries or millennia rather than in this or the next decade or two —

yet, that more-than-zero-possibility scenario was detailed in a January 2024 article in Popular Mechanics based on a published model in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics

i write today to pay my belated respects and sympathies and to process my retroactive and present grief and rage:

i mourn for the undepicted devastation in the New Mexico desert — all the animals – hummingbirds, coyotes, javelinas, elk, lizards, and snakes and the People on their sacred lands not knowing what happened that awful night and what would happen — to them and their descendants from the fall-out of the Trinity nuclear test – to this very day — and what the Manhattan Project ignited forevermore;

last October 2023, i drove past the public boundaries of the Trinity Testing Site, and in my misinterest, ignorance and haste, i did not pay proper respect to that history — to the gravity of it all — i was there to see, trek and slide the stunning White Sands and then immediately on to Albuquerque.

i mourn again for the undepicted Japanese People — the dead, the maimed, the survivors, the slowly-dying — and all the animals there too — life and then mass death in an instant — their lasting suffering and trauma.

there is a visceral real-time analog of the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki found in Israel’s acute decimation of Gaza and the genocidal carnage unleashed on the Palestinian People and all the animals there too — and the widening fall-out which has ignited the US and Israeli to attack actively sympathetic nations — testing the potential to engulf the entire World in war.

i cried last night and then began to sob uncontrollably — at the immense violence, horror and trauma — historical and ongoing — a retroactive, present and future, grief, rage and empathy pouring out from of me.

thermonuclear bomb or atmospheric boiling — they stole fire from elemental and fossilized gods and will soon destroy the Earth, our only World.

We are all in planetary hospice.

It is February 8, 2024, still winter here in Southwest Michigan, and the temperature is expected to be at least 55°F .