With each passing day, the situation at the East Palestine, Ohio, toxic chemical spill seems to go from bad to worse.
And what few details have emerged about the disaster make it seem like it was totally preventable.
In a fitting and uncomfortable twist, it now seems there's a connection between the East Palestine disaster and a satirical Netflix film about a very similar disaster.
Noah Baumbach's White Noise is a satirical disaster comedy adaptation of Don DeLillo's book of the same name, about an "airborne toxic event" that results from a train crash.
Much like East Palestine, the disaster is covered up by the company responsible and barely reported on in the media. Also like East Palestine, the disaster in White Noise takes place in and was filmed in Ohio.
And it turns out that the parallels go even deeper—some of the film's extras are residents of East Palestine and among those currently dealing with the likely deadly aftermath of the Norfolk Southern catastrophe there.
What is even more crazy is that there was a movie just out called “White noise“ filmed in northern Ohio and some of the extras who were in it pretending to evacuate in the film now just had to evacuate in real life. Same identical scenario. Watch this pic.twitter.com/qy8jjVKxeP
— Erin Elizabeth Health Nut News 🙌 (@unhealthytruth) February 13, 2023
One of those extras, East Palestine resident Ben Ratner, appeared on CNN recently, and talked about the similarities between real life and the movie.
"The first half of the movie is all almost exactly what’s going on here...All of a sudden, it hit too close to home."
The situation in East Palestine is particularly harrowing given that the information residents have been given by government entities like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not at all align with what residents are witnessing in their own neighborhoods.
After an initial brief evacuation so the EPA could investigate the spill, residents were told it was safe to move back home even as the disaster's mushroom cloud from a controlled burn of the incredibly toxic vinyl chloride the train was carrying continues to hover over the town.
But residents have reported that pets and livestock have been dying en masse or struggling to breathe, and local creeks and waterways are full of dead fish.
For his part, Ratner told CNN that he and his family aren't coming anywhere near East Palestine any time soon, and they're not sure they'll stay once they do go back.
On Twitter, the similarities between East Palestine and White Noise definitely struck people as unsettling.
\u201c@unhealthytruth We just watched it and I was shocked today at similarities\u201d— Erin Elizabeth Health Nut News \ud83d\ude4c (@Erin Elizabeth Health Nut News \ud83d\ude4c) 1676232379
\u201cThe DeLillo / White Noise / Baumbach / East Palestine thing is existentially weird.\n\nWhat else to say when a book about simulacrum becomes a film about simulacrum and then the plot of that film later plays out in real life for a bunch of the film\u2019s extras? https://t.co/SUdyluhS9B\u201d— Nick Farruggia (@Nick Farruggia) 1676224877
\u201cThe fact that residents of East Palestine were extras in the Airborne Toxic Event part of White Noise might be the thing that finally sends me over the edge\u201d— \ud83c\udffaDr. Diocletian Blobb \ud83d\udcef\ud83d\udd2e (@\ud83c\udffaDr. Diocletian Blobb \ud83d\udcef\ud83d\udd2e) 1676146761
\u201cThis piece uses the \u201cWhite Noise\u201d connection as a hook but contains some decent info on the crisis in East Palestine, Ohio. Those story is largely being suppressed bc it makes a lot of powerful people look bad and they\u2019re trying to cover up the damage done\nhttps://t.co/UpCYaCOGoi\u201d— Puff the Magic Hater \ud83e\udda3 (@Puff the Magic Hater \ud83e\udda3) 1676208226
\u201cWhite Noise. East Palestine, Ohio.\u201d— N\u039bTLY D\u039eNIS\u039e (@N\u039bTLY D\u039eNIS\u039e) 1676335365
\u201cHeard there\u2019s a Netflix White Noise movie because of what\u2019s going on in East Palestine. I read the book my 2nd year in college in 2004. It has one of my favorite lines in it: \u201cThe old people shopped in a panic. When TV didn\u2019t fill them with rage, it scared them half to death.\u201d\u201d— J.R. (@J.R.) 1676494556
\u201cvery spooky that Noah Baumbauch\u2019s WHITE NOISE deals with an airborne toxic event caused by a train derailing and it is set in Ohio and shot a half hour away from East Palestine\u201d— nik (@nik) 1676057007
\u201cVinyl chloride train derailment and explosion in Palestine, Ohio?\n\nIsn\u2019t this literally the premise of White Noise with Adam Driver on @netflix ?\u201d— David Leavitt (@David Leavitt) 1676301111
DeLillo's book White Noise, which he wrote in 1985, has often been heralded for seeming to have predicted several major future events, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here's hoping he's wrong more often in his future works.