The New York Review of Science Fiction Issue #296 April 2013
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In real life, disaster training is aimed at triaging patients into strata: who can be easily saved, who needs more invasive but available treatment, and who will not survive without extensive treatment. The goals are to salvage the most patients possible with the available resources. That means not wasting limited equipment, medications, and medical time on patients who are unlikely to survive without extensive treatment. Patients on the verge of death would be identified as such, marked in such a way to notify all medical personnel who pass by, and left to die. Efforts would be focused on helping the salvageable victims. The television show M*A*S*H reasonably depicted triage in some of its episodes. In disaster scenarios, cardiac defibrillators are not useful in the field; more cost effective are stores of occlusive dressings, fluid for resuscitation, antibiotics, pain medication, and simple surgical instruments.
In any disaster or emergency response setting, there are important checklists that the responders must follow. Checklists are boring and spoil the drama in movies or books. But the truth is that without them many vital items during a disaster response would be missed. Rescue personnel always have checklists they must consult before they rescue any individual. Senior leaders are consulted and apprised of the conditions. Without checklists and in the high-adrenaline stressed situation of an emergency response, even the most seasoned clinician or rescue technician can make a simple mistake. A crucial step may be forgotten, or an unjustified procedure may put the rescue team at risk. For instance, Coast Guard search-and-rescue teams check the weather conditions, visibility, equipment batteries, tidal charts, and a dozen other things before they attempt a rescue at sea. Rescues by helicopter at sea have been aborted, leaving the victims seen but abandoned in the water, because the conditions are unsafe for the rescue team to approach them. Paramedics normally don’t rush into burning buildings or locations with gunshot victims until firefighters or police declare that it is safe to do so.
Conclusions
We again hope that authors and readers have learned some of the medical myths, misconceptions, and errors to be avoided and will consider consulting experts for medical matters that are pertinent to the plot. One should beware of Internet sources such as blogs and Wikipedia because the medical information there is rife with errors and myths, having been written in large part by the lay public. If an injury or medical condition is mentioned during the narrative, then the symptoms, signs, and treatment should be reasonably and accurately depicted. If writing about clones, the author should know enough about cloning so that the implications for the characters are correctly and realistically described. When the author deliberately misrepresents a medical or surgical procedure—as Jo Walton appears to do in Among Others—it would be helpful to give the reader some indication that this is intentional, that the wrong procedure is a clue to something else going on. And in the worst case scenario, we don’t want another fiction like Steel Magnolias to adversely affect so many unsuspecting individuals who fear unlikely consequences because of how a disease is depicted in a book or on screen.
Of Blood and Salt and Sea Water
The sodium concentration of human blood is ~140 mmol/l (millimoles per liter); seawater is ~480 mmol/l; fresh water is only ~0.2–1.0 mmol/l. Sodium and the other abundant salts give human blood an overall salt concentration (osmolality) of ~280 mOsm/l (milliosmoles per liter) as compared to seawater at ~1,200 mOsm/l. The maximal urine concentrating ability is ~1,200 mOsm/l, but at this high concentration, 600 mOsm/l is needed for the obligatory excretion of urea and other salts. Therefore, if someone consumes 1 liter of seawater containing 1,200 mOsm of sodium, 1 liter of maximally concentrated urine could get rid of only 600 mOsm of sodium from seawater, requiring a second liter of urine in order to get rid of the other 600 mOsm of sodium. Some sodium will also be lost in sweat at a concentration that is similar to freshwater so it’s not a significant route for getting rid of excess sodium after consuming seawater. If the person is rapidly sweating out water in the sun, fresh water is needed to replace those losses.
Simply put, consuming 1 liter of seawater will force about 2 liters of urine output in order to maintain a near-normal serum sodium, thereby accelerating the dehydration. As the person becomes more dehydrated, the kidneys will no longer be able to excrete the excess sodium, and the blood sodium will rise more rapidly to critical levels. There is no question that exclusively consuming seawater must be avoided. On the other hand, mixing seawater with fresh water in a 40:60 ratio creates a sodium concentration of ~190 mmol/l as compared to the normal blood sodium of ~140 mmol/l. Such a mix of water will taste quite salty but in a well-hydrated person normal kidneys should be able to handle that sodium load without undue fluid loss. And so mixing seawater with fresh water may be a reasonable way of stretching a limited fresh water supply. But a seawater:fresh water ratio that gives a sodium concentration closer to 50 mmol/l would be even better as it mimics the concentration of athletic rehydration formulas. back to main article
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Christopher S. Kovacs, MD, and Susan M. MacDonald, MD, live in Paradise, Newfoundland.
Works Cited
Clarke, Arthur C. “Additional Note.” Imperial Earth. New York, New York: Ballantine Books, 1976.
Barnett, D. “Jo Walton’s Among Others: ‘It’s a mythologisation of part of my life’.” The Guardian, 2 October 2012.
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Doctor Atomic: Science Fiction Opera
Maarten Nellestijn
I only get frightened when—and it happens very rarely—I think I have an idea. That is, what people find isn’t frightening. But the understanding of it sometimes has this quality.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer, Wonders Are Many
The opera Doctor Atomic (2005) by John Adams and Peter Sellars deals with, in Adams’s words, “the great mythological tale of our time” (Adams 273). It is about the events leading up to and including the first atomic bomb explosion on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity test site in the New Mexico desert. J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists are followed during the critical moments just before this first nuclear test. While the male scientists and military officials are dealing with technical problems that arise shortly before the test, their women—represented by Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, and their Native American maid, Pasqualita—safely stay behind at the Los Alamos base. They passively reflect upon the destructive potency of the weapon under development, offering oracular visions of the future. During the course of the opera, the initially unconcerned Oppenheimer becomes increasingly aware of the moral implications of the project.
The opera seemingly transgresses the divide between high and low culture. Adams titled it Doctor Atomic because he wanted “something that had more of a populist ring to it” and thought it “resonated with science fiction and the American middlebrow impression of scientific geniuses” (Adams 276). In interviews, he disclosed that he found inspiration in science fiction films of “the late ’40s and early ’50s.” These featured “a nuclear explosion in the desert [which] would result in some disturbing phenomenon, something frightening and threatening” (May 225). In Doctor Atomic “there are moments when the music [conveys] that frisson of 1950s sci-fi movies” (Wilson 30).
But does Doctor Atomic actually refer to science fiction films? What elements in Doctor Atomic make it possible for an audience to hear it as science fiction? Clichés in science fiction film music do exist, but what makes it film music is the fact that it is used in a film. Most film music is based on musical traditions that exist independently of their filmic context. Perhaps the opera’s plot and staging reinforce the association between Doctor Atomic and science fiction.
To answer these questions, I will compare the 2007 performance by De Nederlandse Opera (Sellars) with a selection of relevant science fiction films. I have chosen three films from the ’50s: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953; directed by Eugène Lourié, music by David Buttol
ph), Godzilla (1954; directed by Ishirô Honda, music by Akira Ifukube), and Them! (1954; directed by Gordon Douglas, music by Bronislau Kaper). I will look at musical and plot characteristics but will also discuss a selection of scenes from both the films and the opera that show conspicuous musical similarities. Further, I will also look into staging and sound design aspects of especially the opera 2007 performance, to show how these participate in marking Doctor Atomic as science-fictional.
Doctor Atomic & Mythology
The opera seems to cross the border between mythology and history in a rather intriguing way. The libretto by Peter Sellars is a collage of poetry, extracts from the Bhagavad Gita (part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata), scientific literature, disclosed secret documents, and biographical texts. I consider Doctor Atomic and the science fiction films discussed here as works with mythological elements because they mystify twentieth-century technological developments and fantasize about their consequences for the future. These works each function as a parable concerning the possibilities, responsibilities, threats, and progresses emanating from this modern technology. In 1984 Jacques Derrida argued that, while nuclear arsenals were certainly knowable and existent, the scenario of a nuclear war only “has existence through what is said of it,” and because it is in a way unknowable, “a fable, then, a pure invention: in the sense in which it is said that a myth, an image, a fiction, a utopia, a rhetorical figure, a fantasy, a phantasm, are inventions” (Derrida 23). From this perspective, the atomic bomb and its implications form an ideal basis for a modern mythology.
From the start, the idea was to present the story of Oppenheimer and his scientists in a mythological fashion. Adams found that the early history of nuclear fission was “the great mythological tale of our time” and “was a parable about ecology” (Adams 273). Mankind imagined himself as godlike: “[W]ould we succumb like one of those vainglorious Greek or Norse gods, overcome by our imagined sense of power and unable to measure its destructive potential until it was too late to pull back from the brink?” (273). Oppenheimer, of course, should figure as the personification of this human god. Shortly after the war, Oppenheimer became a “virtual media star, second only to Einstein in the public’s image of the ‘genius’ scientist” (269). In a way the subject was archetypical, able to “summon up in a few choice symbols the collective psyche of our time” (May 235).
Sellars agreed on this mythological perspective and connected it to a moral stance:
John and I have chosen . . . essentially a 24-hour period into the first atomic bomb test, with the audience knowing subsequently there will be Hiroshima. In this case, very much like the Greek dramatists, it’s helpful to take a mythological subject that the audience already knows. They already know what happens later in the story, so it becomes interesting to watch the steps leading up to the conclusion that the audience already recognizes. (Sellars)
In the opera, what signals this mythological dimension to the audience? One example is that on the evening of the test, a thunderstorm breaks out. While this actually happened on the night of the real test, so much stress is placed on this storm that it seems like earth’s warning against the events that will follow. Some of the scientists fear that the explosion will ignite the earth’s atmosphere, a scenario that was actually disproved long before the real test. The conflict of conscience is raised to a conflict between nature and technology. Direct reference to preexisting mythology is made through the apocalyptic chorus “At the Sight of This,” based on an extract from the Bhagavad Gita.
This conflict between nature and rationality is expressed in gendered terms. Pasqualita and Kitty Oppenheimer seem to represent a kind of otherworldliness and function as the work’s conscience. Pasqualita evokes a Tewa religious setting through her text, and Kitty’s ominous “Easter Eve 1945” (after a Muriel Rukeyser poem) gives us a glimpse of the world to come. This is not just reminiscent of das ewig Weibliche of the Faust legend—for which Adams himself argues (Adams 285)—but also evokes a certain earth-motherly notion, reminiscent of the Greek myths of Rhea and Gaia.
Paul Williams argues that especially during the 1980s some scholars discussed the Cold War arms race in terms of sexual difference and gender theory. Nuclear arms were manufactured and managed by male-run institutions, while women were seen as the most important leaders of the protest against increased nuclear arms supplies. The Women’s Peace Movement could be seen as an example of such female resistance (Williams 247). Doctor Atomic reflects a similar binary division between male aggression and female oracularity or providence.
’50s Science Fiction as a Popular Mythology
In The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction, the films The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla, and Them! are mentioned as archetypical examples of films depicting apocalyptical nuclear scenarios made during the ’50s (Bould and Vint 93). Apocalyptic science fiction flourished in the period’s climate of great changes in capitalism and consumerism. The heightening of the Cold War conflict—with increased nuclear testing, stockpiling, and policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)—brought on anxiety about the possible end of civilization (82). Bould and Vint largely follow Bruno Latour in their definition of science fiction, according to which “the separation of science from the social world is complex and reciprocal.” Bould and Vint, in accordance with Latour, state that it is impossible to maintain a “separation of science from the social world, politics from nature, subjects from objects, humans from non-humans, and the linguistic from the material” (4). Science fiction comes about through “a process that translates the heterogeneous world of things into systems of signification” and the formation of “a rhizomatic network of connections with other human and non-human actants” (5). This characterization of science fiction as a mediating genre proves practical for both Doctor Atomic and my selection of films because it similarly implodes the barrier separating science and nature, human subjectivity and scientific objectivity.
Beast, the first film, features an atomic test on Antarctica that awakens a frozen dinosaur, which sets a destructive course for New York to return to its prehistoric nesting grounds. The film’s plot conflict between nature and technology has been mirrored many times. It featured a deserted location with a nuclear explosion, nature taking revenge in the form of an angered or mutated monster, a binary division of alarmed and curious scientists accompanied by beautiful female assistants, and natural hindrances seemingly preventing the monster’s destruction.
Perhaps the most iconic example of the ’50s nuclear monster genre is the Japanese film Godzilla. It is about a mythological dinosaur-like monster living under sea, angered and mutated by nuclear radiation due to American bomb testing, and wreaking havoc by setting Tokyo on fire. The natural balance is upset by the nuclear explosion, leading to nature avenging itself in the form of the monster, Godzilla. The opening scene depicts a fishing boat witnessing a distant nuclear explosion, after which some of the fishermen fall ill. This refers to an actual incident. In March 1954, the Japanese fishing boat The Lucky Dragon was accidentally exposed to fallout from a thermonuclear bomb test on Bikini Atoll. This sickened several crew members, one of whom died six months later (Swenson-Wright 152). In the film, after defeating Godzilla, one of the scientists involved warns that “if they keep experimenting with deadly weapons another Godzilla may appear somewhere in the world” (Honda).
Them! actually uses the New Mexico desert as its locus, and its story takes place a few years after the Trinity test. The 1945 explosion’s fallout led to the mutation of common ants into gigantic and ferocious monsters. In the end, the army saves the day, but there is a warning message: “When man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world. What we’ll eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict” (Douglas).
There are many more examples of monster films from the ’50s concerned with one form or another of nuclear arms criticism. In many respects, they fit Adams’s description of the type of science fiction film he found inspiratio
n in. Doctor Atomic does not deal with the bomb in a metaphorical way, using a monster. It deals with the actual bomb, but it similarly offers a critical perspective wrapped in a shroud of myth. Perhaps Doctor Atomic’s monsters live in the imagination of the scientists, who fear for the moral and potentially apocalyptic consequences of their experiment. While the science fiction films talk in metaphors about the myth of the creation of nuclear weapons, the opera deals with what perhaps is the ur-myth.
However, there are also some obvious differences. Doctor Atomic makes explicit use of classical mythological archetypes, and this not the case with these science fiction films. The films express a strong hierarchy between men and women, something that is perhaps to be expected of ’50s cinema. In Doctor Atomic, gender is less clearly linked to the binary division between nature-technology and aggression-providence. In the case of Them!, the male-female and aggression-providence binary becomes even more problematic, as the male-run army in the end saves the world from the radiated ants.
Nuclear Arms Criticism
Adams and his long-time collaborator Sellars have had previous experience with operas dealing with politically charged twentieth-century historical subjects. Their collaboration led to the acclaimed Nixon in China (1987) and the controversial The Death of Klinghoffer (1991).