Short Stories

“ANTI-NUCLEAR” (SHORT STORY)

In the dead of night, Richard grapples with a daunting task.

Richard must craft an anti-nuclear campaign that will sway an entire nation. The clock ticks. Ideas come and go but conventional methods fall short. Until inspiration strikes at the last minute.

“Anti-Nuclear” is a creative short story about the politics of communications.

Will Richards’ unorthodox approach work?

2,000 words / 8 minutes of provocative reading pleasure

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‘The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.’ Dante Alighieri

STEFANO BOSCUTTI

ANTI-NUCLEAR

It’s well past midnight and Richard still doesn’t have a decent idea for the advertising campaign.

Australia is heading to a national election and the opposition leader and head of the Liberal Party Peter Dutton has decided to make nuclear energy his key platform, promising a string of nuclear reactors that will produce clean, cheap, consistent energy. (Dutton can’t even get the alliteration right. What hope does he have of getting his communications in order.)

By banding with the National Party, Dutton hopes to cajole conservative Australians to vote for a nuclear future. Despite the fact nuclear power is constitutionally illegal. Despite the logistical, political and environmental concerns of uranium mill tailings, spent reactor fuel and radioactive waste. Not to mention the absurdly high upfront costs and catastrophic outcomes of a nuclear accident.

Seriously, how hard can it be? Create an anti-nuclear advertising campaign for the ages that derails a national election in Australia.

Start with a heart-stopping television commercial that scares the bejesus out of everybody, take key stills and plaster them on giant billboards with headlines that stoke the fear, follow up with print advertisements that push that fear deep into the hearts and minds of voters. Swarm the socials with memes. Stand back and pick up a swag of awards. Leverage those awards to snag a new job at a bigger agency than Allen & Allen for considerably more money.

Richard has been with Allen & Allen for almost four years. The agency is based on a traditional English law firm, both in structure and ambiance. Headquartered in Melbourne’s legal precinct, it’s renowned for its expertise in corporate and public policy communications. Consistently ranks high in terms of revenue and earnings per partner.

Set over three floors of a large office tower, the interior is panelled in dark wood. Down the corridors, rows of heavy wooden doors bear the names and titles of partners and senior associates. Most are closed and locked for the night.

Thick carpet muffles any steps and adds to the sense of dignified quiet. The faint aroma of old books, polished wood and trace of pipe tobacco is custom blended for the firm.

The chief executive is fond of bespoke three-piece suits from Ede & Ravenscroft, London’s oldest tailor and robe maker. All to add to the reserved, considered air. The higher charge-out rates.

But none of this helps Richard come up with a great campaign idea. Richard’s office is lined with sheets of A2 paper, scrawled with one bad idea after the other.

There’s the seasoned economist rationally comparing the high costs of nuclear versus the low costs of renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

There’s the happy-go-lucky tradie pointing out that for the same cost of building nuclear power plants, the Liberal Party can give every Australian a free rooftop solar system.

There’s the desperate scientist demonstrating the long-term effects of nuclear waste and how it remains dangerous for thousands of years.

There’s the frantic surgeon in mid-operation expounding on the health risks of nuclear accidents.

There’s the belligerent army general calling for more nuclear reactors to produce more nuclear waste, more plutonium so more nuclear weapons can be made.

There’s the gritty documentary featuring interviews with survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown visiting the graves of their dead relatives.

There’s the scenes of typical city life with a handful of survivors wearing hazmat suits as grotesquely deformed creatures slither through the desolate metropolis.

There’s the Aboriginal bird god Bunjil flying over a nuclear plant to show how vulnerable the site is to climate change and natural disasters.

There’s the children’s playground with warped, melted metal. A crumbling swing eerily moving as the sounds of children playing give way to horror and death, screams and terror.

There’s the post-apocalyptic zombie horror show where mutilated people with half-rotten faces shop at a supermarket for radioactive groceries with the money they’ve saved with cheap nuclear energy.

There’s the beautiful river winding through a national park. Hikers marvelling at nature, dropping to one knee to scoop up fresh water only to have a double-headed fish float past.

There’s the large country town with everyone going about their business when a nuclear bomb levels everything in a flash, incinerates everyone. Even the kelpie in the back of the ute.

There’s the secret police swarming into a small country town, rounding up and arresting everybody after a nuclear reactor accident. Batons swinging, shooting reporters on sight.

There’s the idea of a naked Peter Dutton hunched like a madman. Eyes ablaze, sharpened teeth munching on a dead baby.

Seriously, how hard can it be to come up with a good idea? How many stupid ideas does Richard have to wade through?

There’s the one that showcases successful examples of communities transitioning from nuclear to renewable energy. So nice, so sweet it makes Richard want to throw up.

Even worse, all these ideas play to the choir. All these ideas appeal to voters who wouldn’t vote for the Liberal Party and National Party in a million years. Voters whose minds are already made up. Sure you might be able to convince a handful of swinging voters.

It might be enough to get an edge over the opposition. But ideally you want to knock them back to the stone age, you want the election to decimate the nuclear lobby for the next thousand years. For that to happen you need die-hard Liberal and National voters to vote for Labor and the Greens for the first time. Especially multi-generational Liberal and National voters in rural areas in battleground states.

As a copywriter, Richard is supposed to be working with an art director to come up with creative concepts. But after the last one left the firm in tears, human resources haven’t been able to find any art directors willing to work with him.

So he churns through more and more ideas until he’s all churned out. One dull, ordinary idea after the other. One expected concept after the other.

All the while Richard worries how effective a traditional advertising campaign can be. Mainstream media has been decimated by digital media. Even a good idea struggles to gain attention, gain traction.

The conservative voters Richard wants to reach, wants to sway don’t trust advertising. Particular political advertising that they see as self-serving and overlooks their concerns.

Richard snaps a pencil in half in frustration. Maybe he should give up, hand in his resignation, start a new career while he still has a chance. He’s always liked coffee. Maybe he can become a barista. Making coffees has to be easier than making ideas.

He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. It’s almost dawn when the sun crawls over the horizon and the right idea finally hits him.

He gets up and rushes into the wood-panelled boardroom. Along one entire wall are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with leather-bound telephone directories covering every town, suburb and city in Australia.

Richard runs his finger along the spines of the directories until he stops at the Gippsland edition. Taps the spine and smiles, and slides it out. Hurries back to his office and tosses it on his desk.

David Ogilvy’s advice to write an ad like you’re writing a letter to a friend rings in his ears.

Richard pulls out an old portable typewriter from the bottom drawer. He’s not going to write an advertising campaign. He’s going to write an anonymous chain letter. He’s going to let that become the campaign. He’s going to let the medium become the message.

He starts typing.

Dear Friend

I’m sending you this information anonymously about the untold dangers of nuclear power because forces within the National Party and Liberal Party have been taken over by foreign interests.

All sorts of tricks are being used to brainwash you into thinking that nuclear power is a safe and practical way to deliver cheaper energy. It’s nothing but skullduggery by slimy politicians and slick lobbyists who hand them millions of dollars in donations.

The National Party and Liberal Party are promising hundreds of high-paying jobs. While there may be one-off specialist construction jobs when a nuclear reactor is built near you, once completed it will take only a dozen or so people to run. Most of the operations will be automated from China.

Who will bear the cost of building and running these nuclear power plants? Who will pay the trillions of dollars and inevitable cost blowouts? You and every other Australian taxpayer.

You’ll pay and others will profit. Others who live a long way away from any nuclear reactors.

Do you know what happens when a nuclear reactor melts down? You won’t find it in any pamphlets or flyers from the National Party or Liberal Party. They won’t tell you the truth.

They won’t tell you that when the nuclear reactor in the town of Chernobyl melted down, it released more than 400 times as much radioactive material as the Hiroshima atomic bomb that killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of people.

An uncontrollable chain reaction inside the reactor resulted in melted fuel rods pooling at the bottom of the reactor chamber before making their way into the deeper levels of the power plant.

Molten reactor material is called corium, and it’s the most dangerous substance on earth. Exposure to corium can kill within minutes, but that’s not all. Corium is extremely hot and generates its own heat from radioactivity. It’s almost impossible to cool it down.

The corium at Chernobyl reached 2,600°C. The temperature of natural lava from volcanoes ranges from 500 to 1,000°C.

Corium is so hot, it eats everything in its way. It can dissolve steel, sand and concrete, and it instantly transforms water into radioactive steam.

At Chernobyl, it was estimated 1,500 tons of corium was generated, flowing and eating its way through metres of concrete in the basement of the power plant. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated. The Russian government still won’t release the true number of victims.

Chernobyl is now a radioactive ghost town. 150,000sq km of land is contaminated for thousands of years. A 4,000sq km exclusion zone - an area more than twice the size of London – remains uninhabited.

Radioactive fallout, carried by winds, scattered over even larger areas. What are the effects of radiation exposure? It contaminates plants and animals making them unfit for sale or consumption.

In people, it causes immediate skin burns and radiation sickness, nausea and vomiting, bleeding and hair loss. It degenerates cells and damages DNA, causing dangerous health problems, including horrible birth defects and deadly cancers.

What will you do when your town becomes the next Chernobyl? How will you and your family survive a nuclear meltdown? How will you escape?

You cannot trust these politicians. You have to take your future into your own hands. At the coming election put you and your family first. Don’t waste your time putting numbers in the boxes on the ballot papers. Do this instead.

Simply write “NO NUCLEAR” across the ballot pages. Don’t worry about parties or preferences. Just write “NO NUCLEAR”.

Don’t tell anyone what you’ve done. Because what you’ve done is the right thing to safeguard not only your family and your friends but the entire country.

All sorts of tricks will be used to get you to vote National or Liberal. Don’t fall for them. You’re smarter than that.

Make ten copies of this letter at once and send them in plain envelopes, unsigned, to ten people. Don’t send them only to family and friends, for everyone can assist in this chain letter warning of the real dangers of nuclear power.

Richard grabs the Gippsland telephone directory and heads to the photocopy machine behind reception. Makes ten copies, finds ten envelopes, folds the ten copies inside and seals them.

He smiles as he opens the telephone directory and picks out the names and addresses of ten people at random. Ten people who live in Traralgon where the Liberals are planning to build a nuclear power plant at the Loy Yang Power Station.

He writes out the names and addresses in a black pen. Then adds a stamp on each envelope and heads downstairs to slip them into a mail box, slip them into history.

Are you a helpful person?

Did you enjoy this short story? Post it to your friends. Stamp it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.

The moral rights of the author are asserted.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.

Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.

This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Peter Dutton and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s fervent imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)

Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at boscutti.com

STEFANO BOSCUTTI

ANTI-NUCLEAR

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