Gilligan's Island (nuclear disaster)
“Gilligan’s Island is where I want to be.”
“I’d rather do Mary Ann.”
Gilligan's Island (Das Gilliganinsel) is the name of a small Pacific island which was used as a hydrogen bomb test site by the US Air Force in 1965. Although the subsequent disaster resulted in no fatalities, it did cause a severe public-relations backlash against US atomic testing procedures, not to mention the destruction of Tokyo. The island itself hosts many species of animals, plant life, and shopping malls. Huts are the standard way of living but offer no air conditioning for the warm climate. The humidity is often at 80% of human endurance, but the surrounding ocean which serves as a giant humidifier (while the volcano on the eastern side of the island dehumidifies) keeps things relatively comfortable as they fight it out. Usually the volcano wins. It was due to the volcano's devouring the hydrogen bombs that ultimately caused the the US Air Force to abandon their conquest of wiping the island off the face of the ocean.
The Selection[edit | edit source]
The US Air Force selected Gillagan's Island, an "uncharted desert isle", as a test site on the basis of its distance from major sea-lanes, the fact that it was apparently uninhabited, that there were "No phones! No lights! No motorcars!" and that it was "as primitive as can be", though the rationale behind this last criterion remains unclear.
I want the Professor to make good drugs for me.
After the disaster a Congressional hearing heard evidence that some eight USAF officers had visited the island before the blast and each had interacted with the castaways, spending up to half an hour with them. And yet, none had seen fit to mention the existence of the castaways to their superiors in the Air Force, or anyone else for that matter. The chairman of the hearing declared that such a coincidence "was so far outside the bounds of probability as to enter the realm of impossibility". To counter this claim, USAF attorneys produced some two-hundred and eight non-USAF witnesses who had each also met with the castaways and yet had been unable or unwilling to share that information with the outside world. The hearing chairman then withdrew his comment.
The Bombing[edit | edit source]
Whizzzzzz 'BOOOOOOOOOM. Hah! In your face, Ivan! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Reportedly these words were the only recording from the nuclear silo where the bomb was launched. The button-pushers who were responsible for the execution of a nuclear test launch, thought of some guy named Ivan (Russian) when in fact it should have been the ninja assassin Shō Kosugi (Japanese) who had originally initiated a previous attack against anything in the Pacific Ocean. Although Hawaii experienced some killer waves, which radical surfers took full advantage of, it wasn't seen as U.S. territory and therefore considered to be Russian.
The Aftermath[edit | edit source]
Confirming the worst fears of Nobel Prizewinning Physicist Stan Lee, the castaways were horribly mutated by the radiation.
- Gilligan was mutated into a gigantic lizard with atomic breath, and became known as Godzillagan.
- The Skipper became Skippera, a gigantic sea turtle whose powers include interplanetary flight and the ability to hit Godzillagan with his hat.
- The Millionaire became King Turson J. Howellora, the III Headed Monster. Each of his heads had a different evil power!
- The Movie Star became Gingra, an eighty-foot long mothlike creature that could create sonic booms with her wings and shoot death rays from her antennae.
- And the rest.
The Rampage[edit | edit source]
Reveling in the vast power of their new, monstrous forms, the castaways – or as were soon to be called the Kaijuways – swept north intending to destroy Hawaii. However, the highly trained and disciplined Honolulu Anti-Monster Patrol leaped into action and deployed their Anti-Monster Defense (pictured right).
The Kaijuways reached Japan and soon the locals were running away screaming such things as "Gee I'm sick of this," "The council ought to put a stop to it, that's what I say," and "Did I leave the oven on?"
It wasn't long before the Kaijuways had leveled Tokyo, in spite of a largely ineffectual barrage from the Japanese Self Defense Force's Elite Plastic Tank Brigade, Fireworks Artillery and Fly By Wire Jet Squadron.
It remained for a plucky young scientist with wooden acting, his girlfriend with the Jackie O hairdo and a terribly annoying child to save the day. They learned the Kaijuways one weakness – when the Gilligan's Island closing credits music played, everything instantly reverted to being exactly the way it was at the beginning of the episode. Outside the oddity of nuclear effects they were still human, and not huge lizard, turtle, monster monstrosities. In which case it wasn't clear who was ultimately responsible for such freaks of nature, time, and alternate realities, but Japan, Russia, Hawaii, and Hollywood writers were the main suspects.
The castaways returned to their island, where they remain hidden in the Professor's bamboo fallout shelter, until the background radiation drops to a safe level and they can emerge. For the people of Japan, the arduous chore remained of rebuilding Tokyo yet again.
Criticism[edit | edit source]
Many critics of the Gilligan's Island Test point out the lax standards the USAF used in the selection of the island, their failure to locate and evacuate the Castaways before testing began, and the fact that tests of this sort had been banned nearly two years before the Gilligan's Island bomb was detonated.
Defenders of the USAF suggest that the entire incident never took place at all, but was most likely a dream sequence, like the one where Lovey Howell was Cinderella, or the one where Gilligan took on a corrupt wild west sheriff.
To this, the critics reply that Gilligan dreamed he was a drunk sheriff, the sequence where someone dreamed of taking on a corrupt sheriff was from an episode of The Prisoner. Oh, yeah, say the defenders, that's right. Except, while Gilligan was a sheriff, he wasn't a drunk. Now that they come to think about it, that was from an episode of Red Dwarf. So it was, riposte the critics, only it wasn't a dream sequence it was like a holodeck thing, or something ... what were we talking about? Oh, nothing, say the defenders, adding you suckers under their breath.
Pundits accuse writer Sherwood Schwartz of profiteering on the tragedy.
