[news] How Star Wars Came to the Arctic

[Mostly Water - mostlywater.org = news.resist.ca]

(T)here's a grim irony in the fact that Alaska, the most frigid of states, has been one of the most ravaged battlegrounds of the Cold War. Over the past 55 years, Alaska has witnessed: early warning radar erected onto the fragile tundra in the early '50s; the intentional irradiation of more than 100 unwitting Alaskan native peoples in 1955 to test the acclimation of humans to sub-zero temperatures; Project Chariot, a mad scheme to excavate a naval harbor at Cape Thompson by exploding five nuclear bombs at the mouth of a coastal creek (the bombs were never detonated, but the site was left in a toxic and radioactive mess); and the Cannikin nuclear test in 1971, one of the largest ever, which permanently contaminated Amchitka Island and continues to ooze radioactive debris into the Bering Sea.

URL: http://mostlywater.org/node/4558