It was not until the epilogue that I fully understood the severity of what can happen with a nuclear plant. The Fukushima incident is one of the scariest things I have ever heard about. Although I hated half of this book, I did really enjoy the other half. I found myself becoming distracted while reading the parts strictly about Rocky Flats. Those sections of the memoir did not catch my attention. However, the parts about Iversen's life had me very intrigued. The topic of Nuclear Plants and Plutonium is not really used in books often. Up until my freshman year of college, I have not read a book/ memoir about this topic. When I would read the parts about Kris' life I found myself relating to her all to often because of our childhoods. Even though they were extremely different, they were incredibly similar at the same time. Her childhood with her horse was just like mine. I was given a horse as a gift and it still remains my best friend, just like Kris. Also her parents getting divorced was much like my own life.
The epilogue was when I fully understood how severe Nuclear plants have on our environment. Kris states, "In the United States we currently have approximately 25,000 plutonium pits in our stockpile: roughly 10,000 in nuclear warheads, 5,000 in 'strategic reserve' and more than 10,000 'surplus' pits at the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas" (344). All of those numbers, to me, are extremely scary. Why should we need any of that in our country? If we saw what happened in Fukushima and in Russia, why would our country want to put ourselves in that same risk? I believe that is very scary and that the government is very secretive.
The secretivity of our government is also something I learned more about in this memoir and how real it actually is. I remember hearing my parents talking about it and how there is so much the citizens don't actually know. I believe, if we live in America we have a right to know what is going on in our government and why things are the way they are.
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