7) NUCLEAR WAR & DETACHED HOUSING

Pickering Nuclear Power Plant in Ontario, Canada

Does detached nuclear single-household planning, building and predominant commercial / industrial economy based living and nuclear power electrical supply contribute to resource-conflict and the likelihood of nuclear war?   Is nuclear living an acceptable standard of lifestyle, given biosphere limits?

How can ‘indigenous’ (Latin = ‘self-generating’) multi-home ‘domestic’ (household) centered economies of clustered living, bring us together in sustainable relationships, inter-generational family and peace?

'Trickle down' is the theory that you feed the rich expensive food & drink, give them lots of toys & activities to play with.  When they have to relieve ('Trickle-down' is another word for 'incontinence') themselves, the public is there to appreciatively carry away the 'water' & 'night-soil' because this after all nourishes the earth.  The problem of TD 'theory' is that they make themselves rich by extracting non-renewable material and energy resources from people and planet rather than respecting the full-cycle of biosphere's living economy restoration.  The money-rich devote themselves to thinking in 2-Dimensions revolving around non-living linear economy.The reason the rich want less regulation is not to have to think about life in its sacred complex 3-D relations.  In 'Trickle-down' economics the dammed rivers are flooded for hydro electric, soil has been removed and the land beneath polluted with toxic complex synthetic chemicals and nuclear isotopes to remain barren for millions of years.  In their regulation free 2-D world, should we all be grateful?

April 2012 update:  Article by Common Dreams called, Radiation at Fukushima Plant Far Worse than Thought    http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/28-1  describes that the outpouring of radiation from the spent fuel rods storage area has now lost much of its water cover and is emitting such high levels of radiation as to make human (radiation dosages) or robot intervention impossible (measurement, adding water or any adjustments) including the dysfunction of controlled 'robots' for measuring, adjusting or mitigating this potential rise to 'criticality'.  The electronic controls of the robots and endoscopes are rendered inoperable by the high radiation levels.  This means the reaction and attempts to bring water into the spent fuel area is completely uncontrolled by human intervention.  Not reported in this article even is the fact that the situation at all three plants were caused by the earthquake only shutting down of pumps way before the Tsunami hit.  It is also impossible at Plants 1 & 3 to get accurate measurements because of the high levels of radiation being released.  Considering the tonnage of highly refined radioactive (bomb-grade) material capable of melting from its Zirconium coated rods as much has already done, we have the possibility of both massive meltdown and explosive criticality.  When enriched bomb-grade spent fuel material in the tonnes including significant portions of Plutonium, melts from its rod enclosures into a now dry spent fuel area releasing massive amounts of radiation as it is doing now but with the potential of going critical.

An Atomic bomb only needs 33 pounds (15 Kg) of enriched uranium to set off the chain reaction enough to blow up a city.  Tonnes of material are presently in the process of losing their cooling water without human or robot  intervention or even measurement possible.

INDIGENOUS MULTIHOME HERITAGE

HUMANS AS SOCIAL CREATURES

This article considers humans as social creatures habituated over our long history to intergenerational living, economic and social interaction among extended family and community, more than the nuclear (mother, father, children) or single parenting family or single person households, which predominate in colonial (imperial) society. Young adults bear children while we are inexperienced and often without financial or physical resources. In the ‘developed-world’ families are having fewer children because of a lack of social and economic supports or relations of mutual aid with elder and fellow generations. Youth thrive on intergenerational contact, yet nuclear-style housing presently requires great amounts of car travel and supervision in order to visit family & friends or to place children as young still crawl-ing tots into institutional day-cares etc. We need privacy of personal space, yet we also need options for interaction on a regular day-to-day basis. Isolation, excessive labour and consumption in nuclear family homes have led to continual ecological and war crises over the past several thousand years.  The isolation and emotional-override of the unorganised extended family and community, lead to economic and political policies (personal, family, community and state) of over-consumption and war.

DETACHED SINGLE FAMILY NUCLEAR HOMES

Most raised in detached nuclear single family designed homes and communities, think such as our: “mainstay”, “coming-of-age”, “right” / “responsibility”  or personal and family “pride” without “downfall”.  Collective living in apartment or townhouse is not part of our colonial pioneer prestige.  We’re falsely taught in ‘exogenous’ (Latin = ‘other-generated’) institutional schools, churches, governments & media that; our collective-living ‘indigenous’ (Latin = ‘self-generating’) ancestors worldwide lived in ‘primitive’ (‘primary’), savage (sylva = ‘tree’) miserable isolation (self-description?). We’re prejudiced against innate indigenous heritage and capacities.  We’re all originally indigenous peoples from every region on every continent, but through linear-thinking of war, hierarchal-control, environmental-destruction and displacement over thousands of years have become ‘exogenous’ (Latin = ‘other-generated’). In conquest and control-societies, the self-concept and land theft of colonial authorities and the people themselves, require that indigenous sovereignty at each location be denigrated, denied and ignored.  This cycle leads to a situation where much of humanity knows little about our long, abundant, well-organised, ecological and resource efficient indigenous heritage.  Even raising questions about our indigenous heritage inevitably raises a sneer from those educated institutionally.

INDIGENOUS MULTI-HOME PLANNING

Indigenous peoples typically interacted in extended family multi-home buildings and local ‘community’ (Latin = ‘com’ ‘together’ + ‘munus’ = ‘gift or service’) collaborating diverse resources & abilities around the world on every continent with remarkably similar architecture, infrastructure & social organisation. Family and individual dwellings were separated with privacy tendencies as today’s apartments.  Pueblo housing is similar to townhouse dwellings today. Pueblo & some Longhouse communities interacted and morphed one to the other. Each provided family privacy and interactions not found in today’s detached nuclear homes. Multihome modular (standard size & design) housing shares walls, floors, roofs, foundations, infrastructure (plumbing, electricity, phone, internet, postal etc), reducing consumption and empowering individuals and families to plan and benefit together with lowered material use, best-performance, low operating costs & environmental capacities over millennia.

PEOPLE OF THE LONGHOUSE (a term of ‘affilliation’)

Along the west and east-coasts of Turtle Island (North America) Longhouse (apartment style) peoples from Mexico to Alaska and from the Canadian Maritimes to Florida lived intermixed or next to pueblo (townhouse style) and the mound-cities of the Mississippi Valley interior, pueblo and pit-house struct-ures of the plains and mountain areas, thriving for tens of thousands of years. The five nation Iroquois confederacy call themselves ‘People of the Longhouse’ (Haudenosaunee or Rotinosaunee) a term of ‘affiliation’, (redundant as a term of distinction at that time) because of widespread Longhouse urban planning practice.  ‘Longhouse’ from the Iroquois means ‘place of the extended rafter’ meaning ‘place of extended welcome’ where group multi-home planning and design allows for extended households to more easily ‘welcome’ others, than single home planning.  Natives saw and remark in documents upon colonial detached single home isolation and lack of ability to collaborate among ourselves as families or communities. Is the appellation ‘Longhouse’ used specifically as a message to European peoples for the most important principle which we can adopt today as our urban-design standard?  Around the world, various forms of Longhouses and clustered ‘pueblo’ style housing was used in Vietnam, Philippines, Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.  Following are a few photos of traditional longhouses from: 1) Atlantic North-east of USA and Canada, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy), 2) Africa, 3) Australia, 4) Borneo,   5) Viking Europe, 6) Vietnam and 7) Pacific Northwest of the USA and Canada:

EAST-COAST ATLANTIC NORTH-AMERICA                   AFRICA                                    AUSTRALIA                                                            BORNEO