OZY Investigation: How the Bible Belt Be came a Dumping Ground for ‘Yankee Trash’

An OZY investigation uncovers that the South bears the burden of America’s trash, from carcinogenic radioactive waste to toxic coal ash and trains of human refuse.

In northwest Georgia, Donnie Smith spends slow mornings at his auto shop, watching Netflix and counting the trucks passing by his window. You can hear the 18-wheelers from a mile away, barreling down the picturesque Appalachian countryside as early as 4 am. Hundreds of them carry toxic coal ash and a barren stench daily to the landfill next door, which leaves residents nervous about drinking the tap water from their otherwise pristine lake. “There is another one,” Smith points out every minute or so. “Once they got the foot in the door, you couldn’t get them out.”

You’ll find the same book, just a different verse, in downstate South Carolina, where Uncle Sam and private industry have left the Savannah River with radioactive cesium levels that are among the world’s highest, according to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. Already saddled with at least $35 million in cleanup costs from now-bankrupt companies, the region’s burden comes with radioactive alligators and disturbingly high cancer rates that shot up by as much as 25 percent in some counties between the 1980s and the 2000s. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m not worried,” says Audrey Lofton, a former Savannah River Site janitor. “What can a little nobody like me do but talk about it?”

Here’s why pollsters can learn a thing or two about conducting surveys in Eurasia.

Central Asia probably isn’t the first place that comes to mind when most people plan a relaxing getaway. Landlocked and under-developed, it’s equal parts arid and vast, mountainous and forbidding — a great expanse where history’s most brutal armies terrorized populations for centuries.

Then came more modern regimes that forced their own brands of heavy-handed rule, eventually leaving locals far behind their Western counterparts in terms of living standards. Corruption remains widespread, spurred on by poor governance, while socioeconomic mobility is rare. That’s in addition to the dominance of deeply conservative values that often stifle personal freedoms, as well as the various environmental issues — like pollution and poor water access — that threaten sustainability. Yet somehow: Four of the world’s five least stressed countries are in Central Asia.

OZY columnist and former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin argues there’s no chance Kim Jong Un denuclearizes. So now what?

Time to face it: North Korea is almost certainly going to remain a nuclear weapons state. Its nuclear capabilities are now impressive, well-documented and embraced by Kim Jong Un as regime survival tools. But in assessing adversaries, you also always have to weigh intent. And that is the question that’s been explored the least: What exactly does North Korea plan to do with its nuclear weapons — and how should that affect our perception of the threat?

First capabilities. Just how nuclear-capable is North Korea? Estimates by public experts put the number of nuclear weapons between 20 and 60. They have missiles of various ranges that appear capable of delivering a nuclear weapon. Test results indicate that one can lift sufficient weight to carry a nuclear weapon and with a modified trajectory fly 8,000 miles and reach most parts of the United States. It is not clear that they have done all the testing to ensure the portion of the missile reentering the atmosphere could survive the heat and reach its target with accuracy. But prudence requires that we assume they are close enough to constitute a threat.

With their shorter-range missiles, they can easily target allies such as Japan and South Korea with nuclear and conventional weapons. Given the distances, warning time would be minimal.