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Experiencing A Nuclear Disaster
By Marc E. Iseli / Updated Dec. 2025
If you missed the Three Mile Island fiasco, or just blocked it out, let me jog your memory. I’ve got a front-row seat to America’s one and only nuclear disaster. Three Mile Island, Harrisburg, PA: just a hop, skip, and a radioactive jump from my house. The local bigwigs swore up and down that nuclear power was safe. Spoiler alert: that fairy tale didn’t last long.

So, Hollywood drops The China Syndrome, a movie about a nuclear meltdown, on March 16, 1979. Never heard of it at the time, because I was too busy prepping for my own starring role in a real-life nuclear cluster. I’d just signed up for delayed entry into the Marine Corps, counting down the days until boot camp on May 28. Then, just to keep things interesting, March 28 rolls around, and Three Mile Island decides to go full meltdown, right in my backyard. Timing is everything.

Big deal? Yeah, just a little. We were glued to the TV, waiting for the next round of "everything’s fine, nothing to see here" from the suits in charge. Meanwhile, Reactor Unit Two’s rods were melting like a cheap MRE in the sun, and a hydrogen bubble was building up, ready to go boom. Their genius plan? Evacuate everyone in a 10-mile radius, because radiation totally respects boundaries, and then just vent the radioactive gas into the air. Problem solved, right?

Naturally, the officials trotted out the old "perfectly safe" line again. Fast forward a few years, people start popping up with health problems and birth defects, but Uncle Sam just keeps sweeping it under the rug, still selling us on the magic of clean, safe nuclear power. Yeah, right. If it’s so safe, why do we have to bury the leftovers for a few hundred years and nobody wants it in their state?

Go ahead, ask the folks in Chernobyl or Fukushima how safe and clean nuclear power is. Three Mile Island had two reactors: Unit Two melted down and got the 20-year cleanup special, while Unit One just kept chugging along, no matter how much the locals complained. After 9/11, everyone started asking about security, and, shocker, the officials swore everything was locked down tight. Except for that one guy who drove through the main gate, parked, and strolled right into a reactor building. Outstanding security, gentlemen.

Unit One kept running right into the 2020s, finally shutting down and giving the locals a reason to celebrate. Now, rumor has it they want to fire it back up in 2025 to juice up all those AI data centers. What could possibly go wrong? Maybe we’ll get our own Terminator. Anyway, that’s how I survived a nuclear disaster, by getting the hell out of the state for four years and swapping radioactive air for California smog. Came back home, and the only thing thicker than the lies was the cloud hanging over the place.

Alright, you glorious Rat Phixers and Phlyers, if we ever survived a TAD, a Det, or a BOHICA, who haven't, and you didn’t think I was the biggest gaff off in the squadron. Got a sea story, or some grainy photos your ex didn’t set on fire, and they’re only slightly illegal? Send ‘em by email, snail mail, or safety wire it to a carrier pigeon. I collect ‘em all, just nothing that would incriminate me.
80svmfp3@gmail.com

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