On The Beach

Sorry For This Not Being Stuffed Full Of Goodwill

I cannot help how the old mind works, only that it works (after a fashion) in it's own way, and whilst I was watching the latest vlog to come from Jake Broe on his eponymous Youtube channel, inspiration struck me.  Then I took a stroll into Lesser Sodom and later walked Edna The Entitled Elkhound, which again allowed Thinking Time.  So - Art!

     That upper image is as light-hearted as you're going to get with this film, because it's from Nevil Shute's post-apocalyptic novel of the same name, which Your Humble Scribe has, inevitably, read.

     The 1959 film, which I have also seen, sticks closely to the novel, making it a very depressing experience by the end.  Allow me to provide a synopsis of the novel.

     Three years previously, a general nuclear war broke out in the Northern Hemisphere, initiated between Albania and Italy, which requires a bit of explanation, as neither are nuclear powers nor have they ever been.  Art!

     One of Shute's characters made a comment that, prior to hostilities breaking out, an atomic weapon weapon could be obtained for as little as £50,000, which might be compared to ten times that today.  Still cheap at twice the price.

     This is an example of what we call 'Horizontal' and 'Vertical' proliferation, where more countries join the nuclear weapons club, and then expand their arsenals in terms of numbers.  So, in Shute's world, most of the world's nations have a nuclear arsenal, and lots of bombs in said arsenals.  Art!

     I recalled this scene from "The Man From Nowhere", because at the time cobalt-salted nukes were very much a flavour.  This means a nuclear weapon with a cladding or tamper of Cobalt-60, which creates oodles of very long-lived fallout when detonated, and what does Ol' Nev inform us about?  Why, that lots of the nukes thrown around with gay abandon were cobalt-salted.  Art!
     

     So, as background, Ol' Nev informs us the audience that deadly fallout from the now lifeless Northern Hemisphere is working it's way south, and that only Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the lower portion of South America contain any life.

     By sheer happenstance, and the author's intent, a South Canadian nuclear submarine is harboured at Melbourne when the rest of the world falls apart, and is sent to investigate mysterious Morse messages coming from the Seattle area of South Canada.  Only a submarine, you see, and a nuclear-powered one at that, could make the journey without encountering lethal levels of radiation.

     The trip is a bust in every sense of the word, as the submarine's crew confirm radiation levels in South Canada have not decreased at all, as a hopeful scientist had predicted, and the Morse message is an utter fluke.  Bummer.  Art!

I'll let you work it out from this

     Both novel and film end with the end of Hom. Sap. in Australia, as people resort to suicide pills freely doled out by what's left of government, in order to avert death by radiation poisoning.  What, did you expect it to end with sunshine, rainbows and happy fluffy bunnies?

     This being BOOJUM! of course - obviously! - that's not where our Intro ends.  I just wanted to create a sense of dread, fear and inevitability.  Art!

     Welcome to the now-black beaches of Anapa, which used to be a tourist resort on Ruffia's Black Sea coast.  The people you see here are local volunteers, who have taken it upon themselves to shovel the 'mazut' into bags.  Might take a while, there's apparently 8,000 tons of the stuff floating around.  

     

     The local serfs have done the usual Begging Mighty Putin to solve their crisis, which is far too large for the oblast to manage itself.  However - O my beloved word again! - The Little Tsar isn't interested in anything as minor and merely irritating as an ecological disaster that threatens the local's livelihood.  Local management, shamed into action, did send some heavy plant to 'solve' the problem.  Except in Modern-day Mordor, 'solve' is not the same as understood in the world outside.  Art!

      So, these council workers have diligently scooped up tons of mazut-infused sand, bagged it and then buried it.

     ON THE BEACH.

     I did say "dread, fear and inevitability".  Art!

     The orcs in charge seem to have confused 'clean-up' with that standard Ruffian response to any misfortune, 'cover-up', because this is not a solution.  That covering sand will wash away, the bags will rupture and the problem resurfaces.  Which is why these people above are trying to recover the filled bags in order to move them, you know, OFF THE BEACH.  Because they don't want them ON THE BEACH.  A simple concept yet seemingly verrrrrry hard to grasp by officials.  Art!

     Perhaps this summer they could sell tickets at the Feya-3 waterpark for people to come look at the mazut ON THE BEACH?

"The War Illustrated Edition 199 2nd February 1945"

At the date of publication, the war in Europe had just over three months to run, and it was not looking good for the Third Reich.  Instead of a thousand years it looked set to roll over and die in twelve.  Art!

     Clearly, the Nazi's interest in Greenland justifies the Orange Land Whale blathering on about it.  Perhaps.  In a parallel universe.

     ANYWAY what you see here is an unsuccessful attempt by the Teutons to establish weather stations on the Atlantic coast of Greenland.  That they were pretty desperate can be judged by the fact that they tried three times, all unsuccessfully.  They lost all three armed trawlers involved, and 60 crew were captured by the South Canadian Coast Guard.  Having to resort to armed trawlers just goes to show how low the Kriegsmarine had fallen by mid to late 1944, when these actions took place.

     Why set up remote weather stations in such a location?  Because the Teutons otherwise had nil meteorological capability in the North Atlantic.  Sitting behind the River Rhine doesn't give you any forecasting ability.

"Shattered relic of Rundstedt's Offensive"

     Feld-Marschall Gerd Von Rundstedt, an old, able and experienced officer, hated hated hated that the 'Battle of the Bulge' also an appellation that involved his good name.  He had nil involvement in the planning of the offensive and had long suspected that the best thing to do was surrender in the West.

     The gun here looks like a Flak 36 88 m.m. anti-aircraft gun that has become bogged down.  Without engineer vehicles to winch it free, and with the threat of Allied air attack, the crew have blow out the muzzle and left it.

Merry Christmas To Modern-day Mordor!

Just a quick recap for you, in order to establish an air of dread, fear and inevitability.

     Surprisingly, the Ruffian Central Bank did not raise interest rates again on 20th December, leading some economists to wonder if Elvira Nabuillina, the RCB head, has just given up.  After three years of helping the Ruffian economy to keep going, and now becoming a political scapegoat, she may have just flung her arms up and decided to let The Little Tsar appoint another victim. Art!

     Dropping ₽6 overnight is not the sign of a healthy currency.  There are another 4 days before their moratorium on purchasing foreign currency expires, which is time enough to lay in more popcorn.

Curse The Suits!

Conrad was ahead of the field in watching and enjoying the Sork thriller series "Squid Game", which is partly because he watches a lot of Sork genre stuff; they make a lot of it and Netflix only shows the good ones.  Art!

     There was entirely NO NEED for a second season!  Unless you were a greedy executive in a corner office who wanted to move up a floor to a bigger office with a potted palm.  May the Curse Of Conrad smite you*.

Finally -

Dog Buns!  I walk all the way into Lesser Sodom and - 'Sweet Deals' was shut.  I shall have to console myself with a snifter or ten of gin.  Bah!

*  This may not be quick but it is horribly effective.