Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [138]
The point is that when it comes time for us to start taking out dams, I’m not sure I’m the one you want holding the explosives.
That said, here’s what I’m thinking as I look at the cell phone tower. Basic principles. There are, I’d think, maybe six major ways to take down anything that’s standing. You can dismantle it. You can cut it down. You can pull it down. You can blow it up. You can undermine it until it collapses. You can remove its supports and let it fall down on its own. This is all as true for civilization as it is for cell phone towers.
In the (smaller) case before us, I think we can out of hand dismiss dismantling and digging. So far as the former, the tower is constructed of two or three huge pieces, and is obviously not a candidate for dismantling. And the big parking lot (as well as presumably deep footings) would certainly eliminate digging.
Pulling it down can be dismissed just as easily, unless you’ve got some big earthmoving equipment and a hefty cable to attach fairly high up on the tower. I don’t think my mom’s car has the horsepower to move it (and I know mine sure as hell doesn’t). I keep picturing that scene from The Gods Must Be Crazy where they attach one end of a cable to a tree and the other to a jeep, and end up winching their vehicle into the air. Oh, hello, officer. What am I doing up here? That’s a very good question. My cell phone reception has been really crappy lately, and I thought I’d get better reception if I got closer to the antenna. And say, would you mind helping me down?
Cutting would probably work, so long as we’re clear that we’re not talking about hacksaws. In that case I may as well ask my friends the aplodontia to come gnaw it down. This tower is big. A grinder wouldn’t work either in this case. There are lots of cell phone and other towers out in the mountains, and so long as you had lookouts, grinders might work out there, but that much noise here in town seems contraindicated. Oh, hello, officer. What am I doing here? That’s a very good question. . . . But an acetylene torch might do the trick, although once again here in town there’s a good chance it would draw some attention. And so far as me doing it, I have used acetylene torches, but you don’t even want to hear about my experiences in metal shop class (and yes, David, I still remember you from there, too).
Explosives would have the advantage of rendering moot whether anyone notices, because timers are easy enough to make that even I could use them. By the time the tower comes down I could easily be in another state (not quite so dramatic as it sounds since I live about twenty minutes from the border). Additionally, in this case explosives would be safe. Although I’ve been saying that this tower is “behind Safeway,” it’s way behind Safeway, in an old abandoned parking lot. The problem, once again, is that I know nothing about explosives. I was certainly a nerd in high school, college, and beyond, but evidently the wrong kind of nerd for the task at hand. While the science geeks were busy seeing what bizarre ways they could combine chemicals to blow things up and dropping M-80s down toilets in (usually unsuccessful) attempts to get school cancelled (though, being geeks, I was never quite sure why they wanted to cancel school), my friends and I were reading books and playing Dungeons & Dragons (and a hell of a lot of good that does me now: if only a +3 Dwarven War Hammer could bring down civilization, I’d be in great shape).
Ah, the pity of a misspent youth.
This all makes me wish I would have joined the Navy Seals and learned how to blow things up (I probably would have learned how to kill people too: strange, isn’t it, how when the system’s soldiers are taught to kill, that’s banal—the final night at boot