Things Are Not Always As Presented!

By Jerry Smith

August 23, 2013

The following came to me today as one of those Emails that friends and relatives send.  It had more meaning to me than the usual article for a variety of reasons I will share after YOU have an opportunity to read and think about what these words and pictures mean to you.

67 years later!




What happened to the radiation that ”Will last thousands of years?”

HIROSHIMA  1945

We all know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed in August 1945 after the explosions of atomic bombs.
 However, we know little about the progress made by the people of that land during the past 67 years.

HIROSHIMA - 67 YEARS LATER

DETROIT- 65  YEARS AFTER HIROSHIMA

Which has caused more long-term destruction- 


The A-bombs

Or 


Government welfare programs created to buy the
 votes of those who want someone to take care of them?

Japan does not have a welfare system.

In Japan, you either work for it or do without. 

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all are applicable to this experiment we call America:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Can you think of a reason for not sharing this? Neither could I. 

Those pictures and few words no doubt raised a “political” thought or two for most of you.  I must admit, me too.  Those pictures “say” a lot!

But after a few minutes of thinking a little deeper, it came to me that my oldest daughter and her family live not far from both of these cities in Japan.  Their safety is of course paramount to me and all seems pretty safe judging by the building that has gone on.

As my mind tends to do, we shifted gears one more time to a whole new train of thought. 

Who is Right?

As many of you already know about me, Jeeping and Land Use are nearly a constant issue mulling over and over in my sometimes-hard head.  My head and heart have been working on this issue since the mid 1970s.

You are probably wondering; what the devil is he talking about?  How does this relate to Japan and “who is right about what?”  Please stick with me a minute or two as I try to explain.

As we have just seen and heard, sometimes people are pretty much exactly wrong when they are really sure they are right.  Add to that the fact that a lot (probably millions) of people jumped right up and joined the thinking that “Radiation will last thousands of years!”  It’s my guess that they were absolutely sure they were right.  The same was said about Chernobyl even after knowing what happened in Japan.

In my 60+ years on this world we have gone through times where millions of people believed we were entering the next ice age and now, a few years later, it’s “Global Warming” that is the big “world ending” “man caused” event.

Seems like it would be easy to call a healthy “Boloney!” (a kinder way of saying ‘Bull Crap’) on people who buy into these “crisis”.  Time has and likely will again prove them to be on the wrong side of the argument… yet many will never admit they have been wrong under any circumstances. For these people, there is little reason to argue with them. They know they are right and you'll never convince them of anything else.  Save your breath.

Since about 1960, we have had a growing number of people who firmly believe that “preserving” all public lands for some unknown future use is the proper, noble, and right thing to do.  They argue that we need to preserve more public lands for future generations and that motorized use of these lands is detrimental in about every way conceivable.

They seem perfectly content to lock away all the natural resources… both renewable and nonrenewable. 

Renewable Resources

One of the renewable resources that they insist on locking away has to do with motorized recreation. This renewable resource has never been proven to be of any grave detriment to any lands that I have ever heard of.   Even where some idiot drives into a muddy area leaving deep tracks over time will heal.

Depending on the particular area in question, roads and trails normally are less than 3% of the total area. In many cases they can be less than 1% of the total area.

Taking these percentages into account, common sense should dictate that motorized use of no more than 3% of any given area should have little to no detrimental environmental impacts.

Shall we ban all windstorms?

Granted that on any given backcountry trail or road, the passing of motorized vehicles will raise some dust, but take into account that on any day with exceptional wind present, tons of dust will be raised and deposited some were downwind… sometimes thousands of miles from where it was raised.  During these dust storms more material is lifted into the air than all the vehicles that have passed by for dozens of years could have raised. Shall we ban all windstorms?

Preservationists claims of motorized use causing extreme damage to both land and water quality are not only false, but extremely false!

That is not to say that motorized use does not contribute to these problems, but the extremity to which this contribution is made is so grossly exaggerated, you'd think it was the only cause.

Shall we ban all wildfires?

Take for example just one small area burned by wildfire. Erosion from just a few acres of one of these burned areas causes far more pollutants and siltation than hundreds of miles of backcountry roads and trails.  Is this a good reason to ban wildfires?

What about river systems?

Rivers such as the Colorado River, the Green River, the Mississippi River, and many others carry thousands of tons of silt and debris every day. No one knows how many digits to the right of a decimal point one would be before being able to measure the impact use of motorized recreation on backcountry roads and trails contributes to this pollution, but it seems logical that you would be many zeros from that decimal point. Does this mean that we should ban river systems?

Whether your chosen recreation in the great American backcountry has to do with motorized or non-motorized uses, nearly all uses come down to utilizing a road and or trail at some point in time. It would seem that we all participate in some level of the pollution process.

Even a hiker or equestrian leaves behind a certain level of pollution. (How many pairs of shoes have you worn out walking backcountry trails?) How does that worn synthetic sole fit into the natural environment? How about the steel in a horseshoe? Does the trail you use contribute to any increase in siltation and erosion?

Again I Ask; “Who is right?”