The cabin was silent. After a time we simply flew away.
We soon found ourselves over the town of Yoakum, Texas, which showed on our charts as a population area of approximately eight thousand people.
There were two tent communities to the south of the town. The fields roundabout were planted in corn and various vegetables, but looked to be in poor condition due to post-blast weather effects.
There were numerous horses about, many of them hitched to cars and pickup trucks from which the engines had been removed to lighten them.
Our appearance caused a great deal of excitement in the town.
People rushed out of houses and buildings waving sheets or articles of clothing or just their arms. We were able to land on State Highway 77 on the outskirts of town. There was a local airfield, but the runway was too cracked to justify the risk of using it, and the road seemed solid.
The first to meet us were a man and a woman on horseback.
They had rifles in holsters on their saddles, and as they came to a stop they drew them. I’ll never forget the first question, from that lean, bewhiskered man with the hollow eyes: “Y’all from Russia?”
They thought they had lost the war. This was, we were to find, generally the assumption in isolated populations. I explained that we were British. We were at once escorted into town. We had various emergency medicines, and our orderlies soon set up an aid station with the equipment we had brought. Our station was placed in the showroom of a local Ford dealership, the Wendell Motor Company. This offered us a large floor space and limited access via two doors. At the same time, the people waiting outside could see for themselves that we were working as quickly as we could. Ampicillin, keflex, and tetracycline were our main supplies, along with morphia and heroin for pain sufferers. We also carried cyanide and copies of the euthanasia rules. Cultural resistance to this program is very strong, especially in rural America. But people usually come to understand that truly unspeakable suffering ought to be relieved by death if the victim has no scruples of conscience, or is indeed begging for it.
On that first day in Yoakum, our three doctors and six medical orderlies treated 211 of the thousands who presented themselves.
The actual local population was approximately fifteen thousand at that time. In my estimation, there were no able-bodied individuals.
It was fortunate that we brought the four soldiers, because violent disagreements kept breaking out among the patients, especially as to whose dying children were to have the first chance at the antibiotics.
On that day we performed sixteen pediatric euthanasias, for the most part on children suffering both pain and brain damage from radiation or other poisoning.
We found numerous cases of mental breakdown. Paranoia, schizophrenia, catatonic withdrawal were all present in the population. Our psychological pharmacopoeia consisted of a little Thorazine and Valium. We dispensed what Thorazine we could to the schizophrenics. We recommended that the mentally ill who were unable to function be euthanized, with the consent of their families. Nobody volunteered their psychotic relatives at first, but the prospect of being free from the burden of their presence caused people, as is usually the case, to come to us in the night to get the cyanide capsules.
We also faced numerous cases of partially stabilized radiation sickness. These individuals were usually covered with sores from secondary infections and were in great agony. Upon being told of the hopelessness of their situation, most of them willingly accepted the death alternative.
Because of their oaths or religious objections, many British doctors have refused to dispense euthanasia treatment, so this aspect of the program was left to me. I spent my days living out tragedies with the victims, and my nights in dreams of indescribable horror, where I heard them calling me from the grave, and imagined that I had accidentally buried them alive. But it wasn’t true, I was not the shadow of death. To these people, with their burns and their sickness and their tormented bodies, I was mercy.
Among the problems with which we could not cope were the various parasitic diseases. They are not much of a problem in Britain, and we simply failed to anticipate their presence here. Hookworm, tapeworm, ascaris, and giardiasis were the most serious of these. These diseases were in adults unattractive and debilitating, but in children they were devastating. The acuteness of the problem can be realized when one reflects that these people, forced to live on a below-starvation-level diet, one almost absent of proteins, were being consumed from within by their own worm loads. We instructed on the use of saline enemas, developed by the CDC as a means of temporarily reducing infestation, especially in the cases of hookworm and tapeworm. But the only real relief, namely proper medication and a good, clean source of food and water, simply was not available at this time.
Our contamination specialist surveyed the area in some detail, and found it seriously affected by radiation. Most of the population was radiation-poisoned to some degree at least. There was also malnutrition. Only a few children were free of rickets. Pellagra, the old curse of the South, had reasserted itself.
We realized, during that first day, that we were in the presence of a whole world, small though it was, that was dying before our eyes. There were only two babies under the age of six months. One had been blinded and had lost a hand, and the other was suffering from a severe systemic infection.
The county sheriff, Mr. Weaver, reported that they buried five or six people a day, generally in shallow graves in a field near the old town graveyard. The local Catholic priest, Father Menendez, and the Baptist minister, Mr. Harold, officiated at the brief ceremonies.
Our one overwhelming wish was to radio out and somehow get great loads of food and clothing and, above all, medicines for these people. But we knew exactly what would come: little, and too late.
Instead we settled on a recommendation, which we presented to the sheriff and the two religious leaders the next day, that the whole population start moving north. A hundred miles closer to Dallas there were communities that were still very much intact.
We also offered to send what supplies we could down from Dallas, but we couldn’t provide much.
The situation was stark. If they stayed, all of these people were going to die. As the sheriff pointed out, a lot of them would also perish on the journey.
After we had dispensed all of our drugs and held as many information meetings as we could on every subject from personal hygiene to the three signs of terminal malnutrition, we took our leave of the people of Yoakum and returned to Dallas.
Eventually a column of these refugees did set out. Along the way they had lost about two thousand stragglers, with five thousand dead or unable to continue. Only six thousand people arrived in North Texas, of whom three thousand were placed in isolation due to their infectious disease status. All three thousand of these eventually died.
Of the fifteen thousand people alive in Yoakum on the day we visited, approximately two thousand remain alive today.
What We Expect, What We Fear: American Opinion in 1993
About six weeks ago there arrived in the offices of the
It was a production of the Consolidated American Polling Group, made up of former staff members of the Harris, Gallup, and Sindlinger organizations. After two years of reorganization and preparation, they were finally beginning to distribute national polls once again. Two documents were enclosed, one a poll of attitudes about the present state of the country, and the other concerning future expectations.
We will be presenting sections of these two polls throughout the book at points where they seem germane.
The samples used in the surveys each consisted of more than 1,400 American adults eighteen years of age and older. The samples are statistically representative of the nation in terms of geographic and demographic design. For comparison purposes, 1992 data are given where appropriate.
Naturally, neither the polls nor our use of them in any way reflects the opinions of the Consolidated American Polling Group Inc.
