Between Scylla and Charybdis

It is unnerving to be on a military base that tests its emergency sirens at noon. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so for anyone who didn’t grow up, like I did, in the midst of the Cold War and the fears of imminent nuclear attack. But for me, to hear the sirens go off causes too many thoughts of “what if” it wasn’t just a test.

I was sitting on the couch writing on my dissertation chapter three on Voodoo and power-redistribution and suddenly, at noon, I heard multiple wails of the sirens that would warn us of impending danger. To do what? Kiss your ass goodbye? I don’t know what I would do if the sirens continued to wail. I suppose close the windows and find a corner to crouch in. Probably wouldn’t do any good, though.

They test the sirens every day, and today they went off three times between noon and 12:05. Just when I figured the first batch was over, there was a new one. I suppose if you were here all the time you would get used to them and not even notice the noise. That and most people have their windows closed against the usual heat and humidity so probably don’t even hear them. But I have the windows open to the cool early-Fall breeze, and it just pulled me right out of my editing and thinking about feminism and power, causing a very slight clench to the tummy and chill up my neck. Now that’s power.

I suppose one would say the Cold War ended in the early 90s with the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet USSR into dozens of small loosely allied countries. There aren’t, as far as I know, very many organized countries out there, who consider themselves our “enemies,” who have the capacity to lob thousands of nuclear warheads our way. So probably, nuclear annihilation is basically a fear of the past. Sure, we are in a different sort of “War” nowadays, but it’s not at all the same. (Thank Goddess!) Incidents, while they would be devastating, would probably not mean the end of the world as we know it and any survivors left to linger with radiation poison and anarchy. Probably not even widespread devastation– just pockets of terrible tragedy (bad enough, I know, but not the same as our fears of the past). There are a lot of people who didn’t experience, or else don’t remember the way we would lie awake, thinking of what might happen if Russia (which is how we thought of it, even though it wasn’t just that country) got mad and started something. I read a book as a pre-teen called Warday, which I remember being really well-written, about such an event, and a limited nuclear exchange between the US and the USSR. I ought to re-read that book, just to see if I think it as interesting today as I did back then.

Hearing the sirens always reminds me of those images. But nowadays I also have the lovely added bonus prize of terrorism. What would happen if there were imminent threats terror-wise, to targets like the military base upon which I sit right now? Probably this little base tucked away in small-town La is not high on any lists of targets. And the gate guards have their machine guns ready to do whatever it is they would do if someone were to try and crash the gate. That “someone” would not get very far, even here on a small base. Try a larger, more “sensitive” base and you’ll see bigger and more impressive guns. But the Siren Song is still a little unnerving. It reminds me of how much we really do owe to those people who “guard the gates” for us.

Sirens are mythical women (sometimes looking like Mermaids, sometimes not) who would lure men, sailors in particular, to their death on the rocky islands, or seduce them into the sea where they would then drown. Legend has it that the men wouldn’t mind, lulled into submission by the beauty of the women, and their music. But they’d be dead all the same.

Odysseus escaped the Siren by plugging up his ears, and the ears of his sailors. These sirens are not at all seductive– their easy-to-hear loud pitched wail would not make me “not mind.” In fact, I mind a lot. I wish there was some way to lull people into peacefulness, a Siren call of another sort. I fear, though, that human nature sort of likes the pull down to rocky depths. And it’s difficult to plug your ears when you don’t know when the Siren Call will come.