Radioactive Wasps, Anyone?

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of one of the better sci-fi, horror movies to ever come out of Hollywood, at least IMHO.   Yes, it was 1986 when David Cronenberg's "The Fly" first buzzed into our lives, giving a glimpse the horrifying realities that could emerge as man tries to master his universe through science and technology.  A young and very fit Jeff Goldblum was experimenting with teleportation ("Beam me up, Scotty."), when a fly inadvertently flew into  his transport chamber just as Goldblum was breaking down to a molecular level for transport.   When Goldblum emerged from the other end of wherever he was being transported, he began to gradually transform into a large fly.

Cronenberg's "The Fly" was actually a remake of a 1958 film of the same name, but nobody (again, IMHO) does psychological horror as well as Cronenberg, especially with Hitchcock no longer among the living.    (There was at least one sequel - "The Fly II - of Cronenberg's film, and it was also far below the quality of his film.)

But my objective today is not to talk about flies, they have been around forever.  My goal today is to talk about wasps, which ahve also been around forever.

There was a story in the news last week about a collision between the waste product of modern science and wasps, and it could, at the very least, become fodder for another great "insect as predator of man" film -  or it could foretell the end of mankind.

Since early July scientists in South Carolina have discovered four or five radioactive wasp nests near a site on the Savannah River, not far from Augusta, Georgia, where parts for nuclear weapons used to be manufactured and where nuclear waste is currently buried.   Some reports indicate that the radiation may have originated in leaks that developed in the old factory, or from the soil surrounding the factory.

The radioactive nests were sprayed and then tested along with the dead wasps who had inhabited the nests.   According to at least one news source, radiation levels in the nests were low, and those of the wasps, even lower.  Uh-huh.  Officials said that radiation could not be passed through the wasps' stingers, though how they know that is unclear.  Officials (presumably the same ones) also said that the only way radioactive wasps would pose a danger to humans would be if they (the humans) were to ingest the wasps - and even then it would have to be several.   They also said that the radiation levels from the wasps and their nests were lower than the levels people are normally exposed to as they go about living their lives.  Again, uh-huh.

With technology and industry becoming increasingly deregulated, environmental protections being rolled back or discarded, science being scorned, vaccines being vilified and made less available, and modern medicine being guided by Facebook posts and kooks, we are entering uncharted territory with regard to our health and the health of our planet, and we are definitely on the precipice of an insane new world.

Maybe thinning the population has been the goal all along, and not the side effect.