How Did We End Up Here?

I woke up one morning in Paducah, Kentucky, it is part river town, part farm town, with a gaseous diffusion plant.  Gaseous diffusion is used to refine radioactive metals, it works kind of like this, take a metal, bring it to a boil, run the steam from it through unbelievably strong  magnetic fields that causes differing metals to separate in the steam, cool and repeat.  The result is a town that is part farmer, part redneck, part physicist, part industrial.  I was glad to leave alive and not glowing in the dark. I did wonder, kind of the like the guy above, how did I end up here today?