6610 and all that: Extracts from a future history

Of Radioactive Fallout and the Vlunk Hypothesis

... particularly when damp. Controversies abound, perhaps more than in any other region of historiography, over the question of where the peoples of the Precatastrophic managed to find the necessary sources of energy to sustain their highly mechanised society; a society which has been described by the unfortunate Antegnosticator Vlunk as "godlike" in its capabilities.

Antegnosticator Vlunk believed that the peoples of the Precatastrophic were able to generate energy from the radioactive decay of various types of elemental particle, including particularly uranium and plutonium. Vlunk cited as evidence the evidence of abundant radioactivity, dating from the Precatastrophic, in the region known at that time as the Mudleast, as well as in areas which are known to have been highly developed, including what is now the Central European Desert. Vlunk noted the frequency with which the Mudleast is mentioned in the ancient records as a vital resource and as a locus of potential political volatility, and deduced from this that the Precatastrophics must have been able in some fashion to mine the radioactivity for power.

Vlunk also noted the occasional mention of "radioactive fallout" in certain fragments apparently titled "Tect and Sur", which seem to be part of a set of architectural plans for manufacturing a form of "basement extension" - such extensions being, like "patios" and "conservatives", a widespread and popular source of credits in the Precatastrophic society's great national ritual game of "rat racing" or "keeping up the johns". Vlunk contended that the mention of "fallout" was a reference to uranium or plutonium radiation, which had to be extracted and processed by domestic energy units. There were, Vlunk claimed, "food processors" for preparing nourishment, "word processors" for providing information and news, and "waste processors" for providing "waste" - a major manufacture of the time, apparently produced in great quantities by every household, whose nature and function remain poorly understood, although it is thought by many to have been connected with "television" and related phenomena.

Although Vlunk's hypothesis was widely discussed at the time, and still has a certain maverick appeal among the young and inexperienced, it has received little serious attention from respected opinion since Vlunk's expedition into the Mudleast in search of supporting evidence, as a result of which his teeth fell out. Some of his less respectful colleagues, including the notorious Vligg, were moved to suggest that this was the "radioactive fallout" of which the Tect and Sur fragments spoke. There is, of course, no evidence for this; but in any case, an Antegnosticator can no more function without teeth than a pringle can do without a gusset, so Vlunk was relieved of his responsibilties a mere few weeks before he finally died of leukaemia...