and that we are fast approaching it. Reich had his ecological consciousness raised during the
Oranur experiment. He became concerned not only with the dangers of nuclear radiation
but also with chemical pollution and the danger from nonnuclear forms of electromagnet-
ic emissions. The latter too, he noted, could in sufficient dosage “irritate” orgone energy in
a noxious way. Since the 1960s, the classical theory of radiation sickness has grown more
similar to Reich’s in its recognition that relatively low levels of nuclear radiation and nonnu-
clear emissions (e.g., from microwaves) can have harmful cumulative results^12. However,
there remains little awareness of Reich’s basic conceptual thrust: that it is not pollution per
se—chemical or energetic—that is the main menace, but rather its effect on atmospheric
and organismic orgone energy. Classical theory, moreover, focuses entirely on mechanical
factors, the amount of radiation one is exposed to in a given period, or the part of the body
affected by the radiation, in assessing the risk factor. Characteristically, as we have seen in his
work on cancer, Reich focused on both the specific toxic agent and the individual’s particu-
lar energetic vulnerability. Thus the debate between Reich’s Oranur concepts and classical
theories of radiation sickness has yet to occur.
By March 1952, Orgonon was evacuated; the high Geiger-Muller counts persisted,
as did the subjective malaise. Reich’s assistants worked out of their apartments or homes and
had only brief meetings at the Observatory with him. Ilse and Peter went to an apartment
in Rangeley. Reich moved around a great deal (as we shall see in Chapter 27), occasionally
staying at the Observatory but never for very long.
By this time, he was concerned with a new development. He noted a quality of
“stillness” and “bleakness” over the landscape^13. Reich’s description of this “bleakness”
closely resembles Rachel Carson’s in Silent Spring, written some ten years after the Oranur
experiment.
Reich was especially impressed by what he called “DOR-clouds.” These bore a
remarkable similarity to what would later be called air pollution or smog. DOR-clouds, black
and bleak,could be present even in the midst of sunshine. When they were, the motility of
animals was diminished, the atmosphere felt “suffocating,” and the sky seemed to lose its
sparkle.*
26 : The Oranur Experiment: 1950-1953 351
*Reich describes the “emotional flavor” (his words) of DOR-clouds in a manner reminiscent of the nineteenth-
century art critic John Ruskin.Indeed,the comparison goes further since Ruskin was, to my knowledge, the first
writer to comment on the atmospheric effects ofintensive coal usage in England in the 1880s. Ruskin noted with
horror a new kind of cloud, which he termed the “plague cloud.”(!) The “plague cloud” was in sharp contrast to
good weather clouds, which were “either white or golden, adding to, not abating, the lustre of the sky.” It also con-
trasted with the clouds ofwet weather, which were of two types: “Those of beneficent rain ... and, those of storm,
usually charged highly with electricity. The beneficent rain cloud was indeed often extremely dull and grey for days
together, but gracious nevertheless, felt to be doing good, and ... capable also of the most exquisite colouring....
The storm cloud [was] always majestic ... and felt also to be beneficent in its own way, affecting the mass of the air
with vital agitation, and purging it from the impurity of all morbific elements.” The plague cloud, on the other hand,
was “grey ... not rain-cloud but a dry, black veil which no ray of sunshine can pierce.... That thin, scraggy, filthy,
mangy miserable cloud can’t turn the sun red, as a good, business-like fog does with a hundred feet or so of (....)