As the Department of Energy opened the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the spring of 1999, and began placing transuranic nuclear waste in salt beds two thousand feet below the surface, Dr. Charles L. Hyder embarked on what he then called "a terminal fast" in protest against what he was sure constituted irreversible pollution of the environment. Dr. Hyder was a distinguished scientist and long-standing whistle-blower concerning the hazards bound to result from the scientific errors and publicity frauds and falsehoods that have been characteristic of WIPP's operation. Dr. Hyder calls WIPP a radioactive waste release program.

For details on these matters see his book, HUMAN SURVIVAL ON A PLUTONIUM-CONTAMINATED PLANET, especially pages 49-59. His intent was to attract enough attention to those errors and falsehoods, to cause the facility to be closed. "Either WIPP dies, or I will die," he stated.

As it came about, neither thing happened. WIPP has not been closed, and the DOE is still placing nuclear waste in wet salt in areas characterized by pressurized brine which in 10,000 years, or in ten years, will very likely bring into being a radioactive geyser. And Charles Hyder did not die. On the 85th day of his fast he fell unconscious and friends took him to a nearby hospital, where Dr. Hyder's instructions not to be resuscitated were not followed. When he regained consciousness, those friends convinced him that since the media was ignoring his fast and his near-death, he would do humanity more good alive than dead.

Three types of "aftermath" to all this can be noted, in Dr. Hyder himself.

[1] Physical results. He was a large overweight man when he began his fast. He lost more than one hundred fifty pounds before lapsing into unconsciousness. Since then he has regained the lost weight. His doctor declares that his circulatory system is "great."

[2] Mental results. Dr. Hyder sensed that he was experiencing mental lapses, perhaps because of the fast. This upset him greatly. It is well-documented that hallucinations can be induced by fasting. Also minor lapses are downright common in persons of Dr. Hyder's age, which is 70. Fasting is not required, and the lapses can be upsetting, if not infuriating. "Your mind plays tricks on you." But for Dr. Hyder it was a crucial turning point. "The one thing I could always do and do well was think. But now I can no longer trust my own reasoning powers, or the conclusions they arrive at. I have caught myself thinking things and then found them to be wrong, in error. I used to think, then decide, then act, but no longer. I must shift to intuition and have started to do so. Now I simply do what I feel like doing spontaneously, with no rational analyses associated."

It needs to be made clear that Dr. Hyder has found no errors in his scientific analysis of the hazard that WIPP constitutes for humanity and the biosphere. His comments about "being wrong" refer to his awareness of his thinking processes since the fast in 1999. "I do what feels right spontaneously. Oh, sometimes thinking kicks in, but I no longer trust it, and I ignore it."

[3] Philosophical results. These range in different directions. Charles feels utterly betrayed by his government. "It is no longer a democracy. The greatest enemy of democracy on the earth is the U.S. government. The people no longer have any say; we no longer matter at all. The government is against the people and is in the process of destroying them."

Charles is also very sanguine about the lack of support for his protest, and the lack of public and media interest in it. He was ignored almost entirely, except for shallow "human interest" angles stimulated by the fast. There was no media or general public comprehension of WIPP and the science entailed in evaluating WIPP and no interest in gaining any real comprehension.

Charles was out ahead of the other organized protests against WIPP -- too far out, and too far ahead. The most active leaders in the organizations dedicated to preventing the opening of WIPP opposed his fast altogether and their own protest was tardy, ineffectual [as his was] and almost non-existent. There was no real civil disobedience and no success at gaining media attention. And Charles, alone at the WIPP site for the first three months of WIPP operation, was ignored, as much by the protestors as by the media.

Since WIPP has opened and Charles has recovered, he has become what I can only describe as a Zen elf. His commitment to Truth and to Fact puts him in a different category from the rest of us mere mortals, who cannot stop weighing personal expedience into the equation of our lives, who cannot stop being "reasonable" and "practical." He put his whole life on the line, and we did not.

Now he has come to accept that which is, in classic Zen fashion. There is no room for wishing that it wasn't what it is, no sugar-coating, no veneer of unreasonable hope. The humans have done it to themselves and to the rest of the larger life forms, perhaps to all life forms. On some days Charles thinks that the bacteria who live inside of buried rocks may survive this disaster, but on most days he thinks all life forms, including all those underground bacteria, are doomed by 3000 A.D.

"It is too late. Humans have created enough plutonium to constitute about one billion human lethal doses for each human on earth today, and now, due to WIPP and Soviet releases, it is no longer contained where it can be retrieved." From WIPP it will go down the Pecos River into the Rio Grande, into the Gulf of Mexico, into the Gulf Stream, to Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, Norway and the Arctic. It is already going from Hanford, Washington, into the Columbia River, down into the Pacific, into the Japan Current and further on. By 1986 the Soviets had put their radioactive wastes in liquid form into sandstone formations in the headwaters of three large rivers: the Ob, the Volga and the Yenisey.

Spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors cannot be contained indefinitely, especially since we as a people are no longer serious about containing them. The Chernobyl disaster has caused the global amphibia extinctions since 1986, and future similar disasters are inevitable, now that the pressure to build even more reactors has been revived. The major impact of a large meteorite striking the earth would be from the nuclear reactors it disintegrated and distributed. An oceanic impact would disintegrate countless coastal reactors by means of a 100-foot to 1000-foot tsunami. Yucca Mountain will be more hazardous than WIPP, given what we know about earthquakes there. Earth movements do not alter the radioactivity of plutonium.

Future technology will not save us from uncontained poison. No future technology will be able to treat successfully the entire planet. Dr. Hyder believes that all humans will be extinct by 2300 A.D., due to radioactive contamination of our planet during the 20th, 21st and 22nd centuries.

"If I were young, I'd be working on some form of exodus from this planet, but it is too late for me to be effective at my age. Besides, there is no plan in place at all now for such a thing, and with the current prevailing attitudes, any future plans would be for the rich only, not for all people. If it isn't for all, I'm not interested."

Charles Hyder exudes a kind of peace that one imagines emanated from Mahatma Gandhi. He smiles. He laughs. He has gained back most of the weight he lost, which means that he is large and round. He has two personal credos now. One is simply, "Do no harm." The other is, "Be worthy of our providers, those who give their lives so that we can eat and live."

He is now reading about Antarctica, a love of his since childhood. His existence is a challenge to thoughtful persons. Mortality has been the lot of individual humans forever. The ultimate extinction of each entire species seems also to have been part of the pattern of life for eons. But now that the mortality of our own species has been deliberately arranged for by us, it makes what is left of our personal lives more precious, more poignant and more bittersweet than ever.