July 16, before dawn. The first fission device detonates over New Mexico desert. Trinitite — a pale green glass — forms where the sand fused under the fireball. The tide begins.
15 megatons, more than twice predicted yield. Fallout drifts across Rongelap, Rongerik, and the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (第五福竜丸). The Pacific learns a new isotope vocabulary.
September 29. A cooling-failure in tank 14 releases 20 MCi across the Urals. The East Urals Radioactive Trace. Villages erased from maps; the forest keeps counting.
A stuck relief valve, a misread gauge, and a partial meltdown. No immediate casualties, permanent scar to confidence. The Susquehanna carries trace tritium downstream. A country decides to stop building reactors.
April 26, 01:23:40. A safety test becomes a runaway. 30 km exclusion, a new cathedral built of concrete over a molten elephant's foot. The Red Forest turns, then fungi learn to eat the gamma flux. Life adapts faster than policy.
March 11, 14:46 JST. A magnitude 9.1 quake, a 14-metre tsunami, three core melts, and hydrogen blasts at units 1, 3, and 4. The Pacific receives tritiated water for a decade. Wild boar 猪 reclaim the Fukushima exclusion zone; their cesium load climbs and falls with truffle seasons.
Deep geological repositories at Onkalo (Finland) promise 100 000 years of silence. Pictograms, obelisks, hostile architecture — the "Human Interference Task Force" asks how to warn species that will not read our scripts. Half-life outlasts memory.