Publisher's Synopsis
'RIG, RAD, RUN' is a scientific and activist retrospective oriented to the world's largest, and ongoing, nuclear disaster. The book examines faulty federal monitoring and critical weaknesses in the EPA's national radiation monitoring network that allowed hazardous plumes linked to the Japanese nuclear disaster to cross into the U.S. undetected--potentially creating radioactive hotspots on land, even farmland. From 'RIG, RAD, RUN': "The key danger to public health from the radioactive materials that landed in the United States from Fukushima in March and April 2011 had to do with a process called biomagnification, which means the amplification of concentrations of radionuclides through the food chain. Put simply, when lots of small fish get eaten up by bigger fish and then those fish get eaten by even bigger fish, the concentrations of toxins ...increase up the food chain. The whole food supply in the United States, particularly items like milk (and fish) affected by biomagnification, needed to be monitored..." Instead, "pitifully meager sampling and analyses" and "testing protocols that were as unimpressive as the layout of the [EPA's monitoring] network" corrupted the EPA's and the FDA's ability to characterize the dangers from Fukushima to Americans and seafood-lovers. While federal agencies were downplaying Fukushima's threats by pointing to dubious radiation protection standards, authorities' actual confidence in the range of contamination values in America's food supply (which in turn had implications for understanding the true impacts to public safety) was quietly being shattered by their own substandard monitoring response to Fukushima. Author Andrew Kishner writes in 'RIG, RAD, RUN': "There is no point in a radiation protection standard designed to limit population exposures during nuclear incidents if you don't also do great monitoring. The two go hand-in-hand."
Drawing on his depth of knowledge as a radiation watchdog and deep library researcher on the nuclear age, Kishner gradually widens the scope of 'RIG, RAD, RUN' beyond Fukushima to explore a set of harsh and unthinkable realities including a historical pattern of nuclear lies and manipulations in society. Fans and followers of the author's former website, NuclearCrimes.org, which Kishner used to chronicle radiation coverups and closed in 2014, will find familiar terrain in his discussion in 'RIG, RAD, RUN' of 'nuclear dystopia.'
In the conclusion to this disturbing, visionary book, 'RIG, RAD, RUN' presents a solution to our nuclear dystopia that will challenge citizens with its revolutionary simplicity.
This book is a must-read for anyone interested in preparing for future or worsening nuclear disasters by learning to deconstruct distortions of truth in radiation monitoring and nuclear communications. Until 'RIG, RAD, RUN, ' and since it came out in 2015, this side of the Fukushima story has not been told. Some understanding of nuclear history or radiation basics is helpful in reading this book.
In 2017, 'RIG, RAD, RUN' was re-released as a Kindle e-book with a new introduction to the original 2015 version.
