End of Evolution: a Retrospective

November, 2099

The natural evolution of life on planet Earth began to come to an end on December 2, 1942 on a squash court in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The wizard who precipitated this event was the brilliant Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi.

One hundred years later the planet was de facto, bankrupt; thus no longer solvent. At that moment, the natural evolution of species was doomed to end and be replaced by worldwide genetic contamination as mankind could no longer afford to safely maintain or dispose of the countless machines and devices that had been produced since Professor Fermi released the genii by starting the first successful controlled nuclear chain reaction.

There had been opportunity for mankind to neuter the jinn from that day in 1942 until September 16, 1985, the day on which the USA went broke, ceased to be an Empire and could no longer afford to bear the costs and responsibility for the hideously dangerous forces it had released; assuming, which is exceedingly doubtful, it ever had intended to do so.

At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century there were, according to Nuclear Power Today, updated in February, 2011:
"... now over 440 commercial nuclear power reactors operating in 30 countries, 56 countries operate a total of about 250 research reactors and a further 180 nuclear reactors power some 140 ships and submarines. Over 60 further nuclear power reactors are under construction, while over 150 are firmly planned"

" The magnitude of the radiation generated in a nuclear power plant is almost beyond belief ... The original uranium fuel that is subject to the fission process becomes 1 billion times more radioactive in the reactor core. A thousand-megawatt nuclear power plant contains as much long-lived radiation as that produced by the explosion of 1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs." Dr. Helen Caldicott

That huge number of nuclear appliances was dwarfed by the tally, courtesy of ICAN, of 23,300 nuclear warheads around the globe. Add to this the immense volume of nuclear waste which had always defied safe long term storage. This was the situation worldwide a scant three decades before the end of nature's sovereignty. In the year 2011 it was theoretically possible, with a huge expenditure of resources and treasure worldwide, to prevent the catastrophe looming just ahead. The possibility of such action was not open to discussion, let alone implementation. Nothing at all was done.

An example of the mind-set of most humans at that time is the launching of a missile towards Mars in November of 2011 containing scores of ounces of Plutonium regarded as the most lethal substance known. In what must have been the most maniacal piece of uber-hubris in decades that mission, curiously enough called 'Curiosity', was purported to seek signs of Life on that sphere but by sending forth a parcel of Death.

Mankind had prior warning of the consequences of uncontrolled nuclear fission with the experiences of Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima, Japan in 2011. Nevertheless, In the inevitable course of events, the tens of thousand of devices resultant after the early Chicago experiments were left unattended. Without the absolutely precise knowledge for their maintenance, combined with the enormous cost of this critical attention, they were gradually abandoned.

"Ionizing radiation—the kind that minerals, atom bombs and nuclear reactors emit—does one main thing to the human body: it weakens and breaks up DNA, either damaging cells enough to kill them or causing them to mutate in ways that may eventually lead to cancer.
... This ionizing radiation can damage DNA molecules directly, by breaking the bonds between atoms, or it can ionize water molecules and form free radicals, which are highly reactive and also disrupt the bonds of surrounding molecules, including DNA." POPSCI The Future Now

Google
mu·ta·tion/myo͞oˈtāSHən/

Noun:
The action or process of mutating.
The changing of the structure of a gene, resulting in a variant form that may be transmitted to subsequent generations...

Peter Dedon, a member of the Radiation Protection Committee at MIT, explains: “What happens is that the nucleus of radioactive elements undergoes decay and emits high-energy particles. If you stand in the way of those particles, they are going to interact with the cells of your body. You literally get a particle, an energy packet, moving through your cells and tissues.”

"What long-term effects can radiation have?
The effect of the radiation may not be to kill the cell, but to alter its DNA code in a way that leaves the cell alive but with an error in the DNA blueprint. The effect of this mutation will depend on the nature of the error and when it is read. Since this is a random process, such effects are now called stochastic. Two important stochastic effects of radiation are cancer, which results from mutations in nongerm cells (termed somatic cells), and heritable changes, which result from mutations in germ cells (eggs and sperm)."
... ACHRE Report

With all of civilization on the edge of abyss in the middle of the twenty-first century and trying desperately to feed and/or quell the remaining billions of frantic citizens, little effort or funding was directed toward confronting the pending nuclear dilemma. This oversight was critical because without constant attention these neglected devices ultimately began to alter life on the planet. Nature had little ability to cope with the radiation emanating from those thousands of impaired devices and storage facilities and the genetics of living organisms was affected in myriads of ways by the onslaught.

Those lethal ions spewing forth unchecked can bring illlness, death or failing both, blast apart DNA and change forever nature's prior mandate. Species are affected to varying degrees and for all time. Were any Martian organisms doomed as well by man's folly?