21 Days Later
The chemical dust has settled. Where, how much of it, and what comes next?
Just over a week ago, I issued a warning: everybody on the eastern seaboard of the United States, with the possible exceptions of Georgia and South-Central Florida, needed to evacuate, for at least a couple of weeks, due to the enormous cloud of vinyl chloride and other highly toxic chemicals released in East Palestine. A week later, we have a better idea of exactly what’s happened, and what to expect over the coming months and years. There’s good news, and there’s bad news.
Keeping track of these developments has been very challenging, time-consuming, and slow - with absolutely zero reliable information available from the various local, state and federal governments, I’ve had to employ OSINT and HUMINT to keep track of various developments, affected locations, et cetera. Applying military intelligence methodologies to track a chemical-environmental disaster is a rather novel approach, and it has required a healthy dose of skepticism and cross-referencing of other sources of information, but it has yielded a relatively clear picture of the situation.
Ordinarily, the EPA should be deployed across the country taking tests and measurements, but seeing as we have an administration of incompetent, traitorous clowns running our governments these days, that’s a wish that’s never going to be granted. Given the likelihood that it was a deliberate chemical weapon attack, though, I suppose it’s fitting.
Just lying to our faces.
This will (hopefully) be my last update on this topic for the next few months, until we start to see the casualties. Subsequently, I will be getting back to elucidating on treatments and cures for the various “incurable” diseases that unnecessarily claim so many lives these days (some of which will surely be exacerbated by this.) I hope you’ll join and support me as I do. Thank you for reading and subscribing - read on!
The Good News
With the endless stream of bad news, it’s a welcome change of pace to finally have some good news. Long story short: it’s not quite as apocalyptic as it could have been. It’s still pretty horrifically bad, though. Out of the frying pan and into the smoldering grass fire.
The Mississippi River Is Not Affected
If the fallout was going to have reached the Mississippi, it would have done so by now. The fact that it hasn’t is possibly the single best piece of news we could have hoped for: the regions of the Mississippi River basin constitute a huge proportion of America’s farmland, and their contamination would have severely affected food security and availability not only for the US, but for the numerous countries that rely on our food production.
It’s also good news for some of the southern states to the south of Tennessee. The only way they were ever going to be affected by this was the heavy contamination of the Mississippi; as that hasn’t happened, life goes on.
Only Specific Areas Are Affected
Of the states that are affected, it does not appear that they have been, or will be, entirely blanketed by the various toxic chemicals that were released. This may simply be due to the lesser amount that was released; ~145,000 gallons, while a lot, is an order of magnitude less than millions, and so it appears that as the chemicals entered and flowed into the Ohio River, they have been largely absorbed into the soils and waterways comprising the Ohio River basin. It’s bad news for the East and Northeast, but it’s good news for everybody else. The toxic cloud appears to have been the primary dispersal mechanism of concern.
The Worst Has Passed
The chemical-acid rain was the primary concern, and it is highly likely that we’ve seen the last of any significant rainwater contamination. For those who evacuated, significant exposure to vinyl chloride from this point is unlikely. While the dioxins will persist, in unknown quantities and unknown locations …
If vinyl chloride exposure was your primary concern, it’s probably safe to go home now.
I’ll cover dioxins further in the next section. They will remain persistent and dangerous for a very long time.
The Bad News
With that said, it’s definitely not all sunshine and roses. Tens of millions of people have now been exposed, and millions of them heavily. Over the coming months and years, we should expect to see an unprecedented rise in various sarcomas, particularly of the liver; severe birth defects and miscarriages will be in the news over the next few decades, similar to the horrors experienced by the Vietnamese people in the years after Agent Orange was deployed in the Vietnam War due to the dioxins. The fact that a large majority of them will present concomitantly is going to put an immense strain on our healthcare systems, and practitioners, particularly oncologists, should be preparing now. As for the specifics, though:
The Ohio River Basin Was Contaminated
Without enough having been spilled to contaminate the Mississippi River, the chemicals have permeated the Ohio River basin and surrounding soils. Notably, the initial cloud, which relatively quickly dispersed, was not the only source of contamination: some exposed areas have suffered multiple bouts of contaminated rain, strongly indicating that the dissolved chemicals had entered the water cycle and persisted. It should break down sooner than later - its stability is highly variable, and although it is very stable at a pH of 7 in water, it will also boil out and disperse before being degraded. We’ve probably already seen the last of it, and the major concern from this point forward will be the much more persistent dioxins.
There’s really no avoiding them in the affected areas at this point, and only a determined campaign of soil testing is going to tell us where and just how concentrated they are.
However, it doesn’t bode well for farmland dependent on the Ohio River. A large majority of it is likely to be worthless and unproductive, or at least significantly less productive, for the next year, until the groundwater and river contamination thoroughly disperses and breaks down.
The Acid Rain Is & Was The Worst Of It
Very few people likely took any heed of the acid rain: due to dilution in millions of gallons of rainwater, it was never acidic enough anywhere beyond Ground Zero to have any severe effects. However, it wasn’t just any acid rain; as explained in the last article, the raindrops likely contained highly concentrated vinyl chloride, which has been raining directly on millions of people, and further exposing others to the vapors in the affected areas.
Also a good time to note, for anyone still unclear: it was not a controlled burn, which is the reason that so much vinyl chloride was released directly into the atmosphere:
Those exposed to the rain have very likely suffered a very concentrated exposure; as the residents of East Palestine develop the various symptoms of exposure, those directly rained on will be on a similar timeline to develop cancers and lesions. That’s large parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut (birds), Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, & Virginia, South & North Carolina, Delaware, Washington DC, New Jersey, parts of Wisconsin and Illinois, and other states to the northeast, all the way to Maine, depending on which states and areas suffered rainfall in the days following the disaster. People in the exposed areas, but not directly rained on, may have years before symptoms present.
If you were in those areas, you should definitely talk to a doctor, ASAP, and prepare. An ounce of prevention is a pound of cure, and there are some useful therapies that may be able to get ahead of the cancers before they have the chance to advance.