Introduction

Imagine that the United States government puts a dam between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, separating the latter from the rest of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. The vital shipping industry is destroyed and the environment suffers disastrous consequences as the lake dries up. Now imagine that the government builds a biochemical weapons facility on an island in the rapidly shrinking lake. At this facility, the government conducts extremely dangerous tests using harmful toxins such as anthrax and radioactive material, and many of these tests involve the torture and mutilation of animals. Then, after thirty years of operation, the government abandons the facility, not bothering to properly dispose of any harmful and dangerous biochemical material they left behind. Not only is the biochemical weapons material now available to any looters or terrorists who want it, but as the lake shrinks, the island becomes a peninsula and animals have easy access to it as well, bearing the potential for an animal-borne pandemic. These toxins are quickly seeping into what's left of the lake, and are carried around by the wild dust storms that now plague the region, resulting in a dangerously high cancer rate among those poor souls who still live on what used to be the shore of Lake Superior. The government turns a blind eye to the whole situation and acts as if it never happened, abandoning the region to wallow in a desolate, toxic wasteland.

This sounds impossible, right? Like something out of a sci-fi disaster movie. But, unfortunately, this is exactly what has been happening in the Aral Sea since 1960.