Metro ad says we live next to lots and lots of the most powerful death machines in world.
Metro ad says we live next to lots and lots of the most powerful death machines in world. Charles Mudede

It only takes Seattle 20 miles to find its complete opposite, the naval base at Bangor. The city is about life (its growth, its needs, its hopes, its forms of sociality and means of reproduction). This naval base is only about death, the absolute negative that dissolves the vivid variety of everything that is and thrives to be into the one void. The truth is this: Over "1,300 nuclear warheads are deployed 20 miles west of Seattle at the Bangor submarine base." A new ad that appears on a number of Metro buses refers to these world-ending weapons. They are much closer to our city than Mount Rainier.

Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, a group based in Poulsbo, Washington paid of this ad campaign. Its goal is to keep the biggest city of the Pacific Northwest awake on the matter of its negative side. The end of the Cold War did not bring to an end the dangers of nuclear weapons. Indeed, the next commander-in-chief might be a former reality TV star who really believes that many (if not all) of his country's problems can solved with the push of a button.

When I told science writer Jonathan Golob about Bangor, he said, "Oh, yes, I know all about that. In fact, you can actually detect the weapons and the nuclear reactors in the submarines from Seattle with a Geiger Counter. Their radiation is a part of our daily life."