By Silas Rutherford
The hit TV show Fallout (2024) opens with a satirical depiction of societies within fallout shelters in a kitsch all-American fashion – like watching a colorful, upbeat advertisement for a soul sucking product. Digital projections of pre nuclear bomb suburban towns overshadow the cement walls one of the main characters resides within, and her saccharine daily routine introduced in the first episode is the epitome of the rich living in their bubbles of denial while the world burns around them. The audience can see clearly that the “vault dwellers” will never escape the hell they have created or return to the surface of wasteland and poison.
Fallout (2024) is entertainment, but it is also art. Regardless of whether you are more inclined towards Aristotle’s concept of art imitating life, or Oscar Wilde’s belief of life imitating art, there are brazen parallels between aspects of the show and what is occurring in our towns, states, and countries. Warheads to Windmills is a campaign that is urging us to take these parallels seriously before it’s too late. The Massachusetts Coalition of Warheads to Windmills is calling for weeks of action this September 16-22, and 23-29 to address the crisis caused by fossil fuels and the production and use of nuclear weapons by profiteering Vault Tec-esque corporations. The focus of actions for these weeks are boycotting, divesting, and raising awareness about weapons and fossil fuel companies local to Massachusetts.
Unsurprisingly, Big Oil is also a major contributor to this world crisis – both in real life and in Fallout, which depicts grotesque human experiments, the violence of warfare, deterioration of the human soul, and the absolute gall of profiteering companies to continue to try to exalt themselves above the rest of humanity to grasp at power and control. In Fallout the button to destroy the world was detonated by an oligarchy of profiteers working for the fictional company megacorp Vault Tec. For years before the explosions, Vault Tec was selling fallout shelters to the rich for millions of dollars, so that the “elite” scientists and wealthy ruling class would survive. The remnants of humanity not killed by the blast are burned, scarred, disease ridden, and in agony. Vault Dwellers live cozy lives underground with digital wristbands that detect radiation, most having no real concept of the outside world or the existence of horrors caused by the same corporation that sold them said comforts and shelter.
The Warheads to Windmills fossil fuel map highlights facilities responsible for countless human rights violations and environmental damage, such as Raytheon, General Dynamics, and L3 Harris. They also organize local actions and working groups. Big oil is being targeted through boycotts of Shell gas stations, “Gas station owners are often approached by other brands to make a switch. You can make the ask too! This is something gas stations were able to do during the Shell boycott during the 1980s. If they are not able to make a switch due to contractual or other business obligations, ask them to take a pledge to not renew their current branding deal with Big Oil when it expires. Ask the gas station owners directly what the terms of their deal are, and try to work with them to support them in disaffiliating”- Warheads to Windmills. As an alternative to Big Oil, the coalition suggests to “buy your gas from locally-owned, independent gas stations or Costco, Citgo, Gulf, WalMart. At least they’re not spending millions lobbying Congress to preserve the oil industry”.
It is imperative that we take action towards a sustainable future before we burn ourselves, the planet, and the futures of people for centuries to come into dust. That is, if you don’t want to dwell in a vault.
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