What's Life After Nuclear Disaster? w/ Gundersen & Bohjalian

In the latest video feature from Fairewinds Energy Education entitled: What's life after nuclear disaster?, Fairewinds’ President Maggie Gundersen and award winning Vermont author Chris Bohjalian, discuss what life would be like if a nuclear meltdown occurred at a nuclear power plant in Vermont. In his most recent novel, Close Your Eyes and Hold Hands, Chris uses Vermont as the scene of a nuclear meltdown as seen through the eyes and experiences of 16-year old Emily Shepard, who is orphaned by the catastrophe, Bohjalian’s readers are drawn into the hardships and uncertainty that accompany a nuclear tragedy. With a haunting reality, Bohjalian creates images for his readers of the life currently being lived by the victims of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi triple meltdown, and previously experienced by the victims of the meltdowns at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.

What if a nuclear disaster destroyed your life?

It would not take an atomic bomb laced with lethal doses of radiation to contaminate your homeland, and cause such chaos. When uclear power plants fail and nuclear reactors experience leaks, explosions, and overheat, radiation is carried by the wind and contamination and chaos ensue. Since Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chernobyl in the Ukraine, and now the Fukushima Daiichi triple meltdown in Japan the lives of thousands of innocent people have been turned upside down and destroyed due to nuclear power risks becoming reality.

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands (Vintage Contemporaries) Paperback – May 26, 2015
by Chris Bohjalian (Author)
A Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of the Year

Emily Shepard is on the run; the nuclear plant where her father worked has suffered a cataclysmic meltdown, and all fingers point to him. Now, orphaned, homeless, and certain that she’s a pariah, Emily’s taken to hiding out on the frigid streets of Burlington, Vermont, creating a new identity inspired by her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson.

Then she meets Cameron. Nine years old and with a string of foster families behind him, he sparks something in Emily, and she protects him with a fierceness she didn’t know she possessed. But when an emergency threatens the fledgling home she’s created, Emily realizes that she can’t hide forever.

[MsMilkytheclown]

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