I work nights. I'm a security guard at a hospital. I see all kinds come and go. All the time, different ailments and injuries. There's no sense at all to it except for the fact that it's easier for one reason or another to travel to the hospital. Good Weather, the right time of the week or the right time of the month.
It seems that some times it's crazy busy, and other times it's not. Two weeks ago there was a huge earth quake that shook Japan, followed by a devestating tsunami that damaged a nuclear power plant on the island.
The reports of radiation levels kept changing between being lower to being too high, every few hours it was different. I was in the middle of the continental United States, so I felt safe. I was east of the Rocky Mountains.
Last night I noticed that there was an unusual haze around the moon. It had color. Normally at night it seemed devoid of color, but moisture in the upper atmosphere gave the ring a slight reddish hue. Normally this is attributed to a refraction of light through moisture, creating a rainbow effect, but for some reason at that moment, I had an extra count of rods on my retina that received the lower frequency of light that allowed me to perceive the red light emitted from the haze.
In other words, I was able to perceive the red end of the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) because stress had activated the extra rod receptors in my retinae that are reserved for perceiving light during the day. Normally, cones would be activated for perceiving shorter wavelengths.
I was seeing a reddish hue around the moon, days after the nuclear particles were released into the atmosphere in Japan, and all I could wish for was that it didn't rain down on me.
I only now wonder what it might be like to have been lying in bed one moment, and then poured over with sea water, mud, broken boards, cement, crumpled vehicles, or other debris. I take a breath and remember where I am, then I look up and wonder what kind of air I'm breathing.
I imagine what I read about Hiroshima, and I remembered what happened to those who long after the initial radiation exposure, were rained on by black drops of poison. The horror of what we all face right now is so much that governments are working to supress it, only to prevent panic.
