NUCLEAR? NO THANKS
In 1945 the ultimate in weapons of mass destruction was demonstrated. On the 6th of August in that year the United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing more than 90,000 people instantly. The bomb created a firestorm, generating winds and sapping the air of all oxygen. It burned out 8 square kilometres in 12 hours. There was a radius of complete destruction of 11 kilometres with damage graded heavy, moderate and light covering a radius of 40 km from the point of detonation.
Three days later another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki with equally devastating results. And so was started the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. The British philosopher, mathematician and writer Bertrand Russell commented that "the use of two different kinds of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki suggests calculated experimentation. " The then commander of the US Pacific Fleet Admiral Halsey said it was "an unnecessary experiment; a mistake to have ever dropped those two bombs."
Nuclear technology has come a long way since then, and now we have the United States planning to develop ‘mini-nukes’ as though it’s just a matter of scale in order to make them acceptable. In the months and years after those two bombs were dropped, thousands more died of an illness then called the atomic plague, but which was in fact radioactive fallout. These so-called ‘mini-nukes’ are being developed for use in conventional warfare. They will be equal to 5000 tonnes of TNT – roughly a quarter of the size of the Hiroshima bomb. If they are used, nearby people will fairly assuredly fall ill and many of them will die from the nuclear fallout.
Following the nuclear bombing of Japan a huge world-wide anti-nuclear movement grew to the point in 1963 when a treaty was signed in Moscow of the then nuclear powers, which banned the testing of atomic weapons in the atmosphere, outer space, polar regions and under the sea. Although this only put a curb on the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it was progress.
That progress is now stalled with the intended abrogation by the United States under President Bush of various international agreements, not least their intent to develop and test ‘small nuclear weapons’. It is openly stated these will be a part of the new control and use of outer space not only to protect the US (from whom?) but also its investments and interests around the world.
It is not Utopian to be opposed to nuclear weapons. It’s a survival reaction. It’s necessary. It was considered Utopian to abolish slavery, to abolish the use of children in mines and as chimney sweeps. It was considered Utopian for English workers to demand a vote only 160 years ago (only two lifetimes) and outrageously Utopian for women to have the vote when the late Bob Hope was a child.
At every opportunity be a part of "NO to nuclear weapons".
-Jim