San Clemente Island looks about as inviting as a US Navy bombing range, which it is! Although far south, not far north of the ocean frontier with Mexico, it is arguably one of the Channel Islands. The terrain is dry and seems lifeless except for a few beacons and benchmarks here and there. No doubt if we were allowed to land, we'd see a lot of plants and animals thriving, protected from human interference by the unexploded ordinance around them. It's a pradoxical rule: nature does best in places humans have made uninhabitable. No doubt most creatures outside our own species would rejoice if we blasted ourselves off the planet: the start of a time they might consider a "nuclear summer".
