War inflicts cold casualties whose deferred toxic effects rival hot-battle deaths
Evidence
What Naughton acknowledges openly here is a two-speed lethality, the difference between what I call coldand hot-war casualties. Here, as is typically the case, the immediate risk in the heat of battle trumps the violence of deferred effects. But as Carol Picou, Doug Rokke, and veterans in their thousands—not to mention far greater numbers of Iraqis—already knew in their soft organs and in the marrow of their bones, you can become a postcombat war casualty in well under forty years. As Major Rokke explains:Four years after the first Gulf War I was blowing 432 micrograms of uranium per liter of urine. That’s 5,000 times the permissible level. I was pissing fire … My immune system is fucked up. I get endless rashes, open sores that bleed, renal problems. My kidneys are gone to crap, my lungs have gone to crap, my bones are crumbling. My teeth break off and fracture. Uranium replaces calcium. Chemistry 101. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 645
Categorization
- DEFINE: Introduces the cold-war versus hot-war casualty distinction central to the chapter’s argument.
- SEED: Nuclearizing/radiological ‘two-speed lethality’ as a framework could extend a treatment of slow violence to militarized environments.
- XREF: connects to: Precision-warfare rhetoric masks the long-term toxic deaths it causes — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 587; Counting war dead fails to capture ecological-time casualties like genetic damage — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 626; Uncounted slow-violence casualties skew how wars are remembered and planned — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 44 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Uncounted slow-violence casualties skew how wars are remembered and planned
#expands(0.85) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 44 - Deferred war deaths blur the line between survivor and casualty.
#expands(0.80) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 707