In 1970s Queensland, widespread concern about the perils of nuclear technology prompted an explosion of protest. Those seeking to avert a nuclear apocalypse used three arguments to mobilize supporters, which still resonate today: erosion of the rights of protesters, workers, and First Nations peoples; profiteering and power grabbing by the nuclear industry; and harms to human health. While nature played an indirect role as a victim in these messages, one of the antinuclear movement’s legacies is its construction of a narrative connecting human survival to nature’s beneficence: in the nuclear age we are no longer the true masters of our own fate.
