The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson [131]
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the US government had recently admitted that plutonium had been found to be leaking from one of the storage facilities on the site and was working its way downward through the ground to a giant subterranean reservoir, which supplies the water for tens of thousands of people in southern Idaho. Plutonium is the most lethal substance known to man – a spoonful of it could wipe out a city. Once you make some plutonium, you have to keep it safe for 250,000 years. The United States government had managed to keep its plutonium safe for rather less than thirty-six years. This, it seems to me, is a convincing argument for not allowing your government to mess with plutonium.
And this was only one leak out of many. At a similar facility in the state of Washington, 500,000 gallons of highly radioactive substances drained away before anyone thought to put a dipstick in the tank and see how things were doing. How do you lose 500,000 gallons of anything? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that I would not like to be the real estate agent trying to sell houses in Pocatello or Idaho Falls five years from now when the ground starts to glow and women are giving birth to human flies.
For the time being, however, Idaho Falls remains an agreeable little city. The downtown was attractive and still evidently prospering. Trees and benches had been set out. A big banner was draped across one of the streets saying ‘Idaho Falls says NO to drugs’. That’s really going to keep the kids off the hard stuff, I thought. Small-town America is obsessed with drugs, yet I suspect that if you strip-searched every teenager in Idaho Falls you would come up with nothing more illicit than some dirty magazines, a packet of condoms and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels. Personally, I think the young people of Idaho Falls ought to be encouraged to take drugs. It will help them to cope when they find out there’s plutonium in their drinking water.
I had an excellent dinner at Happy’s Chinese Restaurant. The room was empty except for one other party consisting of a middle-aged couple, their teenaged daughter and a Swedish exchange student who was simply radiant – blonde, tanned, soft-spoken, hypnotically beautiful. I stared at her helplessly. I had never seen anyone so beautiful in a Chinese restaurant in Idaho before. After a while a man came in who was evidently a passing acquaintance of the family and stopped at their table to chat. He was introduced to the Swedish girl and asked her about her stay in Idaho Falls and if she had been to the local sights – the lava caves and hot springs. (She had. Zey were vairy nice.) Then he asked The Big Question. He said, ‘Well, Greta, which do you like better, the United States or Sweden?’
The girl blushed. She obviously had not been in the country long enough to expect this question. Suddenly she looked more child than woman. With an embarrassed flutter of hands she said, ‘Oh, I sink Sweden,’ and a pall fell over the table. Everyone looked uncomfortable. ‘Oh,’ said the man in a flat, disappointed tone, and the conversation turned to potato prices.
People in middle America always ask that question. When you grow up in America you are inculcated from the earliest age with the belief – no, the understanding – that America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth because God likes us best. It has the most perfect form of government, the most exciting sporting events, the tastiest food and amplest portions, the largest cars, the cheapest gasoline, the most abundant natural resources, the most productive farms, the most devastating nuclear arsenal and the friendliest, most decent and most patriotic folks on Earth. Countries just don’t come any better. So why anyone would want to live anywhere else is practically incomprehensible. In a foreigner it is puzzling; in a native it is seditious. I used to feel this way myself. In high