Category: Nuclear Threat

February 2, 1962 – Although the Soviet Union’s first underground nuclear test actually occurred on October 11, 1961, on this date the first Soviet underground nuclear explosion was detected by U.S. military authorities.  Initially considered a clandestine way to hide the exact specifications of test warheads, underground nuclear testing by both the U.S. and Soviet Union became accepted and even promoted as an alternative to space-based and particularly atmospheric nuclear testing which spread radioactive strontium-90 over the entire surface of the planet and was found as a contaminant in the teeth of children worldwide.  The Limited Test Ban Treaty negotiated by President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, which entered into force on Oct. 10, 1963, relegated nuclear tests solely to underground sites.  Comments:  The testing of over 2,050 nuclear devices over the last seven decades by the nine nuclear weapons states has inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to global populations especially native peoples.  Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, destruction of land and ocean ecosystems, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague large numbers of people today due to nuclear testing.  Since an ever growing global network of hundreds of extremely sensitive seismic monitoring stations has made nuclear test cheating impossible, President Trump should recommend that the Senate ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) at the earliest possible opportunity.  (Sources:  Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.  “Arms Control Chronology.”  Washington, DC:  Center for Defense Information, 2002, p. 10 and Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig.  “Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume IV.”  National Resources Defense Council, Inc.  Cambridge, MA:  Ballinger Publishing Co., 1987, p.5.)

February 10, 2015 – An article published on this date in the Rutland Herald newspaper authored by Susan Smallheer, was titled, “Strontium-90 Detected in Vermont Yankee Well Water.”  The article noted that test results by the Vermont Department of Health in conjunction with The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Oak Ridge Laboratory confirmed that the volatile cancer-causing isotope strontium-90 was detected in water wells at the Entergy Corporation’s Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in the underground plume between the reactor building and the Connecticut River, a water source that had been previously contaminated with radioactive tritium in 2010.  Although the water test samples were taken in August before the plant was shut down permanently in December of 2014 and the commissioner of the state health department, Dr. Harry Chen, claimed the presence of 3.5 pico curies per liter of strontium-90 was less than half the drinking water standard of eight pico curies per liter per day and NRC Spokesman Neil Sheehan claimed that new tests showed only one pico curie per liter, there is little doubt that a number of dangerous radioactive toxic contaminants have been and are now definitely leaking from not only Vermont Yankee but also from most if not all of the operating or recently decommissioned global civilian nuclear reactors of which there are over 400.  The bad news for Vermont Yankee reactor neighbors is that the entire facility will not be completely dismantled and decontaminated for as long as five decades from now according to Dr. Chen.  Comments:  In addition to the dangerous risk of nuclear reactor accidents like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, the tremendously out-of-control civilian and military nuclear waste sequestration, remediation, and permanent storage conundrum as well as the terrorist targeting potential, the economic unsustainability of civilian nuclear power, and the potential for nuclear proliferation points logically to an accelerated phase-out of global civilian nuclear power plants over the next decade.  President Donald Trump should embrace this proposal and announce it publicly in his first 100 days in office along with a strong commitment to reduce and eliminate coal and other fossil fuel energy sources that increase global warming while subsidizing accelerated government and corporate green energy solutions in order to combat climate change.  (Source:  http://www.recorder.com/home/15625872-95/strontium-90-detected-in-vt-yankee-well-water accessed Jan. 15, 2017.)

February 14, 1967 – A treaty prohibiting the research, development, and production of nuclear weapons in Latin America, the Treaty of Tlatelolco, was signed on this date.  Eventually all 33 nation-states in the region, including Cuba, acceded to the treaty which entered into force on April 22, 1968.  The treaty included two protocols that allowed both nuclear weapons states and those countries with territories in the region to participate in the regime.  In effect, this treaty created a nuclear-weapons-free-zone (NWFZ) in the region as did later agreements in other areas of the world such as the August 6, 1985 Raratonga Treaty, which established a South Pacific NWFZ, the December 15, 1995 Bangkok Treaty, which mandated a Southeast Asia NWFZ, and the April 11, 1996 Pelindaba Treaty, which created an African NWFZ, and hundreds of municipal NWFZs in a number of global cities including several in the United States.  Comments:  The growing global campaign to significantly reduce and eliminate nuclear arsenals, which has helped expand an ever-growing zone of nuclear-weapons-free regions, suffered a symbolic setback recently when President Donald Trump not only argued for expanding and growing the U.S. nuclear weapons inventory but also expressed the desire to see non-nuclear states such as South Korea and Japan develop their own doomsday weapons.  In addition, hoped for NWFZs in the Mideast and Southwest/Southern Asia became less likely due to Donald Trump’s rhetoric, agreed to by Republican leaders in the newly sworn in 115^th Congress, about terminating the Iran nuclear deal.  (Source:  Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.  “Arms Control Chronology.”  Washington, DC:  Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 1-4.)

February 20, 2016 – A team of U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command airmen from the 91^st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota and the 625^th Strategic Operations Squadron at Offutt, AFB, Nebraska aboard the Airborne Launch Control System, in coordination with the 576^th Flight Test Squadron (FLTS), launched an unarmed LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBM equipped with a test reentry vehicle, that would in wartime carry one or more nuclear weapons, from Vandenberg AFB, California 4,200 miles to impact the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands despite the long standing opposition of the government of that territory led by Foreign Minister Tony de Brum to continued violations of their sovereignty by such tests and consistent with a series of Nuclear Zero lawsuits filed in the International Court of Justice in The Hague starting in October 2014 by that government against the nuclear weapons states to convince those nations to end the nuclear arms race.by committing to nuclear disarmament as they agreed to in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  One week later, the U.S. conducted yet another such nuclear test launch.  Comments:  The official U.S. rationale for decades of continuing tests of its ICBM-based nuclear arsenal as representing, “a visible message of national security which serves to assure our partners and dissuade potential aggressors,” as stated by the 576^th FLTS commander Colonel Craig Ramsey, rings quite hollow when we consider that the U.S. itself has never enacted a policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons.  Therefore, regular ICBM testing ensures that a U.S. nuclear first strike remains a viable offensive capability – making nuclear warfare a more likely eventuality.  The same is true for Russia, China and the other nuclear weapons states.  (Source:  “Minot Tests Minuteman III.” U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command – Office of Public Affairs, Feb. 22, 2016 http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/670572/minot-tests-minuteman-iii accessed Jan. 13, 2017.)

February 23, 1981 – Despite rhetoric by right-wing Cold Warriors including representatives of the Committee on the Present Danger like President Reagan’s U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and ultra-conservative scholars in the late 1970s and early 1980s such as Leon Sloss, Richard Pipes, and others that believed that the Soviet Union planned to fight and win a nuclear war with the United States, the comments that Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev made at the 26^th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party argued against such irrationality, then and now, “To try and outstrip each other in the arms race or to expect to win a nuclear war is dangerous madness.”  Comments:  Nonetheless, Russia, China, other nuclear powers, the U.S., and its nuclear-armed allies, especially the administration of President Donald Trump, building on a decision made by former President Barack Obama, have announced plans to spend trillions of dollars, pounds, rubles, etc., to modernize their nuclear arsenals and prevail in a nuclear arms race.  Madness, indeed.  (Sources:  Marilyn Bechtel, David Laibman, and Daniel Rosenberg, editors.  Full Text of “Peace, Plan and Progress:  The 26^th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”  A New World Review Collection.  New York:  NWR Publications, Inc., 1981.  https://archive.org/Stream/PeacePlanAndProgress/Peace%20and%20Progress_djvu.txt accessed Jan. 19, 2017 and Jerry Wayne Sanders.  “Peddlers of Crisis:  The Committee on the Present Danger and the Politics of Containment.”  Cambridge, MA:  South End Press, 1983.)

February 26, 1950 – Manhattan Project physicist, Hungarian-born Leo Szilard informed listeners at a University of Chicago Roundtable broadcast on NBC Radio for the first time about a potential doomsday scenario that scientists might one day construct – a global arsenal of very large naval ship-sized cobalt-60 nuclear weapons that could irradiate the world and wipe out the human race.  Comments:  While there is no evidence that such a doomsday weapon (dramatized in the Stanley Kubrick black comedy film Dr. Strangelove) was ever constructed, the Soviet Union did create a system known as Perimeter or Dead Hand which became operational in the early to mid-1980s to ensure that if Soviet leadership was suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue, decapitated, killed in a surprise nuclear attack on the Kremlin, that the entirety of the Soviet nuclear arsenal could still be launched automatically either by subordinate commanders or by an automated electronic command and control system.  Comments:  This set of facts only strengthens the argument that during the Cold War, and unfortunately also today during Cold War II, humanity has been extremely fortunate that a nuclear war has not been triggered due to inadvertent, accidental, unintentional, or irrational circumstances.  Before our species’ luck runs out, it is imperative that all nine nuclear weapons states drastically reduce and eliminate global nuclear arsenals at the earliest date possible.  (Sources:  Samuel Upton Newtan.  “Nuclear War I and Other Major Nuclear Disasters of the 20^th Century.  Bloomington, Indiana:  Author House, 2007, pp. 37-38 and Nicholas Thompson. “Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine.”  Wired.  Sept. 21, 2009.  https://www.wired.com/2009/09mg-deadhand/ accessed Jan. 19, 2017.)

Eisenhower’s warning

In his famous farewell address, US President Dwight Eisenhower eloquently described the terrible effects of an overgrown military-industrial complex. Here are his words:

“We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions…. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government…[and] we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

In another speech, he said: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

The devil’s dynamo

The military-industrial complex involves a circular flow of money. The cash flows like the electrical current in a dynamo, driving a diabolical machine. Money from immensely rich corporate oligarchs buys the votes of politicians and the propaganda of the mainstream media. Numbed by the propaganda, citizens allow the politicians to vote for obscenely bloated military budgets, which further enrich the corporate oligarchs, and the circular flow continues.

Today the world spends more than 1.7 trillion dollars ( $1,700,000,000,000) every year on armaments. This vast river of money, almost too large to be imagined, is the “devil’s dynamo” driving the institution of war. Politicians notoriously can be bought with a tiny fraction of this enormous amount; hence the decay of democracy. It is also plain that if the almost unbelievable sums now wasted on armaments were used constructively, most of the pressing problems now facing humanity could be solved.

Because the world spends almost two thousand billion dollars each year on armaments, it follows that very many people make their living from war. This is the reason why it is correct to speak of war as an institution, and why war persists, although we know that it is the cause of much of the suffering that inflicts humanity.

We know that war is madness, but it persists. We know that it threatens the survival of civilization, but it persists, entrenched in the attitudes of historians, newspaper editors and television producers, entrenched in the methods by which politicians finance their campaigns, and entrenched in the financial power of arms manufacturers, entrenched also in the ponderous and costly hardware of war, the fleets of warships, bombers, tanks, nuclear missiles and so on.

The military-industrial complex needs enemies

The military-industrial complex needs enemies. Without them it would wither. Thus at the end of the Second World War, this vast power complex was faced with a crisis. It was saved by the discovery of a new enemy: Communism.

This new enemy saved the military-industrial complex for a long time, but at the end of the Cold War, there was another crisis: the threat that arms profits would be converted into a  “peace dividend.” Would this be the end of unlimited corporate greed? Heaven forbid! There was a desperate search for a new enemy. What about Islam? The Crusades could be revived, and all would be well. This seemed, for a long time to be a good solution.

But recently, with the Middle East in flames, Islam no longer seemed to be a sufficiently strong enemy justify the colossal budgets of armaments industries. A new enemy was urgently needed. One  look at our mass media tells us the solution that our military-industrial complex has come up with: Revival of the Cold War!

Nuclear war by accident or miscalculation

As a consequence of our oligarchy’s decision to revive the Cold War, we are witnessing increasing demonization of Russia as well as flagrant provocations, such as the recent massive NATO maneuvers on Russia’s borders.

With unbelievable hubris and irresponsibility, western politicians are risking the destruction of human civilization and much of the biosphere through a thermonuclear war. Such a cataclysmic war could occur through technical or human error, or through escalation. This possibility is made greater by the fact that despite the end of the Cold War, thousands of missiles carrying nuclear warheads are still kept on a “hair-trigger” state of alert with a quasi-automatic reaction time measured in minutes.

A number of prominent political and military figures (many of whom have ample knowledge of the system of deterrence, having been part of it) have expressed concern about the danger of accidental nuclear war.

Colin S. Grey, Chairman of the US Institute for Public Policy, expressed this concern as follows: “The problem, indeed the enduring problem, is that we are resting our future upon a nuclear deterrence system concerning which we cannot tolerate even a single malfunction.”

General Curtis E. LeMay has written, “In my opinion a general war will grow through a series of political miscalculations and accidents rather than through any deliberate attack by either side.”

Bruce G. Blair  of the Brookings Institute has remarked that “It is obvious that the rushed nature of the process, from warning to decision to action, risks causing a catastrophic mistake.”… “This system is an accident waiting to happen.”

The duty of civil society

Civil society must make its will felt. A thermonuclear war today would be not only genocidal but also omnicidal. It would kill people of all ages, babies, children, young people, mothers, fathers and grandparents, without any regard whatever for guilt or innocence. Such a war would be the ultimate ecological catastrophe, destroying not only human civilization but also much of the biosphere. Each of us has a duty to work with courage and dedication to prevent it.

Some suggestions for further reading:

Europe Must Not Be Forced Into a Nuclear War with Russia

http://www.countercurrents.org/avery170715.htm

https://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12514

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44904.htm

Caring for the Future of Our Children

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/feed-the-people-before-building-fighter-planes

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46211.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46209.htm

Trump, the Banks and the Bomb

Donald Trump’s New Nuclear Instability

January 1, 1992 – It was not only a New Year but it seemed like a new century as the almost fifty-year Cold War, which began in 1946, ended.  The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the Velvet Revolutions against Soviet-imposed communism in Eastern Europe in 1989-90, the ending of the Warsaw Pact Soviet-Eastern European military alliance in February 1991, and finally the Christmas Day 1991 dissolution of the U.S.S.R, all seemingly meant that peace was at hand.  In 1991, global nuclear arsenals totaled around 58,300 warheads.  A quarter century later, in January of 2017, there remain roughly 15,375 nuclear warheads (Russia with 7,300 and the U.S. with 6,970, respectively, which represent 93 percent of the global arsenal) of which 4,200 are deployed with operational forces with about 1,800 warheads on a hazardous hair-trigger alert status and ready to be used on short notice, including a shocking number of doomsday weapons deployed by both NATO and Russia near the borders of the former Soviet Union.  Comments:  Surprisingly, despite all the myriad of other global problems facing humankind (climate change, the largest number of war refugees since World War II, growing international as well as domestic terrorism, overpopulation, poverty, a growing gap between rich and poor, and many other concerns), the risks of nuclear war are not significantly lower today than they were during the Cold War.  While it has been 20 years since Cornell University astrophysicist, cosmologist, and world-renowned science-popularizer Carl Sagan passed away, his warning about the nuclear threat is as relevant in 2017 as it was more than 25 years ago:  “On our small planet, at this moment, we face a critical branch point in history.  What we do with our world right now will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants.  It is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well.  If we capitulate to superstition, greed, or stupidity, we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance.  But we’re also capable of using our compassion, our intelligence, our technology, and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.” (Sources:  Hans Kristensen and Stan Norris. “Status of World Nuclear Forces.”  Federation of American Scientists, 2016 http://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/ and The Carl Sagan Portal.  http://carlsagan.com accessed Dec. 16, 2016.)

 

January 11, 2007 – An extensive study, designated JSR-06-335, paid for by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and conducted by the contract firm the MITRE Corporation of McLean, Virginia titled “Pit Lifetime” was released on this date.  A group of nuclear weapons experts in the JASON Program Office including Freeman Dyson and Sidney Drell as well as other employees of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) concluded that their multi-year assessment of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile showed, “no degradation in performance of primaries (plutonium pits) of stockpile systems due to plutonium aging that would be a cause for concern regarding their safety and reliability.  Most primary types have credible minimum (author’s emphasis) lifetimes in excess of 100 years…”  Comments:  In addition to the fact that dramatic reductions and the eventual elimination (sooner than later is highly recommended due to the ongoing and increasing daily risk of nuclear war) of global nuclear arsenals is supported by the vast majority of humanity, this JASON study is still relevant today as it casts extreme doubt on the current Obama and future Trump administration’s imperative to modernize and improve the reliability of the nuclear arsenal.  While many Pentagon, DOE, and civilian hawks criticized this 2007 study, most U.S. Department of Energy staffers, as well as the former director of LANL, Harold Agnew, agreed with the conclusions.  The JASON scientists also concluded that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) would not negatively impact nuclear weapons safety and reliability.  Therefore, in order to prevent wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, if not more, as well as protecting Americans and global populations from the detrimental health and environmental impacts of renewed nuclear testing, the 45^th President of the United States should strongly recommend to the newly sworn-in Congress that:  (1) U.S. nuclear modernization be severely curtailed or even eliminated (except for relatively inexpensive steps to make the arsenal safer and more protected from hacking threats) and (2) that the U.S. join the majority of world nations by having the Senate ratify the CTBT in the first 100 days of his administration.  (Source:  JASON Program Office.  “Pit Lifetime.” MITRE Corporation, JSR-06-335, Jan. 11, 2007 http://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/pit.pdf accessed Dec. 17, 2016.)

 

January 13, 1975 – A New York Times article, “Air Force Panel Recommends Discharge of Major Who Challenged Failsafe System,” published on this date, discussed an incident in 1973 when a U.S. nuclear missile launch control officer-in-training, Major Harold L. Hering, asked one of the seminal questions in the history of the human species – what the U.S. Air Force considered a forbidden question – “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?”  Comments:  The order, like all military orders to blindly and unquestioningly obey a superior’s command authority without any reservation whatsoever, to launch genocidal nation-destroying, nuclear winter-species threatening Armageddon-causing weapons represents the very fundamental foundation of the nuclear deterrence assumption – a supposedly ultra-rational, unerring means of preventing the U.S., Russia, China, or other nuclear powers and their allies from ever facing wholesale destruction at the hands of a foreign enemy.  The massive and extremely hazardous flaws in this system, which has almost failed too many times to count (if we include hundreds or thousands of nuclear incidents and accidents which narrowly triggered accidental or unintentional nuclear warfare), have been written about and debated extensively for over seventy years – and have been dramatized in many books and films including Fail Safe and Doctor Strangelove and other works.  It’s clearly an open secret to the vast majority of humanity that deterrence will eventually fail catastrophically resulting in unintentional megadeath on an unforeseen scale and most probably the end of human civilization if not the entire species.  Global citizenry are increasingly verbalizing opposition to this state of affairs by stating most forcefully, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.”  There is an ever growing global consensus that nuclear arms threaten everyone and that this situation must be reversed before it is too late.  (Source:  Ron Rosenbaum.  “How the End Begins:  The Road to a Nuclear World War III.”  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.)

 

January 14, 2017 – Eighteen months ago on July 14, 2015, the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (P5 + 1), and the European Union announced an agreement with Iran that is commonly referred to as the “Iran nuclear deal,” a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action  endorsed by over 70 global nonproliferation experts to lift sanctions on that nation in return for an Iranian commitment to curtail their nuclear enrichment activities and significantly eliminate the risk that the Islamic Republic would be able to build a nuclear weapon for at least ten years or more.  In September of 2015, a Republican-controlled Congress approved this international agreement.  The November 8, 2016 election of Republican Donald Trump as president put the first nail in the coffin of the Iran nuclear deal, and the second major blow to the agreement was President-elect Trump’s selection of Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) as CIA Director.  Pompeo has stated that, “I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal…”  Current CIA Director John Brennan called this potential move a mistake.  He warned Trump that scrapping the agreement with Iran would undermine U.S. foreign policy, embolden hardliners in Iran and threaten to set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.  Brennan said, “I think it would be the height of folly if the next administration were to tear up that agreement.”  Comments:  Even if the U.S. withdraws from the Iran nuclear deal, it is unlikely that the agreement will also be scuttled by all or most of the other signatories.  America will become an international pariah again, ironically along with hardline Iranian advocates of an accelerated nuclear program.  Nonproliferation will also suffer a significant setback and the risk of a regional nuclear conflict involving Iran, Israel, or possibly India and Pakistan will increase substantially.  Trump-supported Israeli air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities could spur a wider regional war and increase the risk of not just more terrorism but of nuclear terrorism with the U.S. and Israel as the most likely targets.  (Sources:  U.S. Department of State.  “Nuclear Agreement With Iran.” July 14, 2015 http://www.state.gov/p/nea/p5/ and Dan Bilefsky.  “CIA Chief Warns Donald Trump Against Tearing Up Iran Nuclear Deal.”  New York Times. Nov. 30, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/world/americas/cia-trump-Iran-nuclear-deal.html?smid=fb-n… both accessed December 19, 2016.)

 

January 21, 1968 – A fire that broke out in the navigator’s compartment of a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber, carrying four Mark-28 nuclear bombs each with a yield of 1.1 megatons, caused the crew to quickly eject before the aircraft crashed at a speed of 600 miles-per-hour impacting seven miles southwest of Thule Air Base onto the ice of North Star Bay in Greenland, a Danish possession.  High explosives jacketing the nuclear warheads and their plutonium pits detonated on impact igniting an estimated 225,000 pounds of jet fuel which triggered a catastrophic fire that burned over an area of three square miles.  Extreme weather conditions made comprehensive recovery and decontamination of the crash zone impossible.  Nevertheless, an extremely large volume of contaminated ice and debris (that eventually filled 147 freight train cars and represented an estimated 237,000 cubic feet of material) was flown back to the Atomic Energy Commission facility in Aiken, South Carolina and buried while bomb fragments were recycled at the Pantex facility in Amarillo, Texas.  This incident spurred massive protests in Denmark as the Danish government had forbidden U.S. deployment of nuclear weapons on its territory.  Comments:  Many of the hundreds if not thousands of nuclear accidents, involving all nine nuclear weapons states, still remain partially or completely classified and hidden from public scrutiny which potentially threatens the health and well-being of large numbers of people.  These near-nuclear catastrophes provide an additional justification for reducing dramatically and eventually eliminating an estimated 15,375 warheads in existing global nuclear arsenals.  (Sources:  The Center for Defense Information.  “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents:  Dangers In Our Midst.”  The Defense Monitor, Vol. 10, No. 5, 1981. http://www.nukestrat.com/us/CDI_BrokenArrowMonitor1981.pdf accessed Dec. 17, 2016 and Eric Schlosser.  “Command and Control:  Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.”  New York:  Penguin Press, 2013.)

 

January 24, 1946 – The very first resolution of the newly created United Nations General Assembly, passed on this date, called for the elimination of atomic weapons. Over the ensuring seven decades, hundreds of other U.N. resolutions have addressed the global threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.  Last October at the U.N. General Assembly First Committee for Disarmament, 123 nations, including amazingly North Korea, voted to support negotiations in 2017 to prohibit and ban nuclear weapons just as the vast majority of world nations in the past made biological and chemical weapons’ production and use illegal.  Unfortunately in this vote, the United States joined Israel, Russia, the U.K., France, the NATO countries (with the exception of The Netherlands which abstained due to grassroots public lobbying), Australia, South Korea, and Japan in a bloc of 38 opposing nations.  Surprisingly, China joined non-NPT nuclear weapons states Pakistan and India in a group of 16 abstaining nations.   All nine nuclear weapon states, unfortunately, did vote as a bloc to boycott a special U.N. Open Ended Working Group for Nuclear Disarmament held in the summer of 2016.  Comments:  The vast majority of global populations (including many that live in the nine nuclear weapons states) and nation-states have recognized the urgent imperative of eliminating nuclear weapons or at least reducing global nuclear stockpiles below the nuclear winter threshold with the utmost timeliness and speed.  Every day we delay this essential prerequisite to continued human survival, we risk the unthinkable – the first use of nuclear weapons in combat since 1945, the first-ever use of genocidal thermonuclear weapons against human populations, and the triggering of an unprecedented global catastrophe – nuclear war.  It is an extremely slippery slope to argue that a “small” bunker-busting nuclear weapon used against underground Iranian or North Korean nuclear facilities will not be the tripwire that opens the door to the use of other types and sizes of nuclear weapons by other nation-states or actors.  Once Pandora’s Box is opened, it may be too late to save our global civilization and the human species.  Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon presented a forceful argument against the nuclear deterrence “blinders” employed by nuclear weapons states and their allies in a 2013 speech in Monterey, California, “I urge all nuclear-armed states to reconsider their national nuclear posture.  Nuclear deterrence is not a solution to international peace and stability.  It is an obstacle.  The longer we procrastinate, the greater the risk that these weapons will be used, will proliferate, or be acquired by terrorists.  But our aim must be more than keeping these weapons from “falling into the wrong hands.”  There are no right hands for nuclear weapons.”  (Source:  United Nations General Assembly.  Resolution UNGA 1, 24 January 1946 and Alice Slater.  “Seeking Nuclear Disarmament in Dangerous Times.”  In Depth News. Nov. 28, 2016.)

December 2, 1942 – A group of Allied physicists led by Enrico Fermi achieved the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in a makeshift laboratory constructed on a squash court under the west stands at the University of Chicago Stadium.  Thirty-one months later, the top secret U.S.-funded and directed Manhattan Project successfully tested a 15-20 kiloton nuclear device, code-named Trinity, on July 16, 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico.  Despite protests from some scientists, military leaders, and government officials, the first use of nuclear weapons in combat occurred when U.S. B-29 bombers dropped a 15 kiloton uranium-fueled nuclear bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 and a plutonium-fueled 21 kiloton bomb on Nagasaki killing and injuring hundreds of thousands of predominantly civilian victims.  Comments:  Thus began the nuclear arms race which still continues today to threaten humanity with extinction.  The man who originally convinced President Franklin Roosevelt in a 1939 letter to deter a possible Nazi German A-bomb with one of our own, may have said it best, “Humanity is going to require a substantially new way of thinking if it is to survive.”  (Source:  Randy Alfred. “Dec. 2, 1942:  Nuclear Pile Gets Going.”  Wired.com. Dec. 2, 2010.  https://www.wired.com/2010/12/1202nuclear-milestones/ accessed Nov. 10, 2016.)

 

December 8-9, 2014 – As a result of concerns by a group of nation-states attending the 2010 NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) Review Conference of “the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from the use of nuclear weapons,” the last of three conferences (the first was in Oslo, Norway on March 4-5, 2013 and the second was in Nayarit, Mexico on Feb. 13-14, 2014) on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons was held on these dates in Vienna, Austria.  The Vienna Conference, as well as the other two meetings, produced a wealth of fact-based materials about the horrendous short- and long-term globally detrimental impact of even so-called “limited” nuclear war on individuals, societies, and the global common.  The meeting also generated valuable legal analyses, building on seven decades of international humanitarian legal protections, that characterize the use of nuclear weapons as illegal and utterly unjustifiable.  One of the most valuable concrete results of the Vienna Conference was the crafting of The Humanitarian Pledge for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons which was adopted as U.N. General Assembly Resolution 70/48 on December 7, 2015 with 139 nations approving, 29 opposing, and 17 abstaining.  Comments:  Before leaving office, President Barack Obama should take a cue from President Kennedy’s creation of the ExComm (Executive Committee) to deal with the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 and create an Executive Committee to Address the Environmental Crises of Global Climate Change and the Growing Threat of Nuclear Weapons to meet once or twice a week to brief the President on policies and actions to mitigate and work towards a resolution of these catastrophic trends.  The President should staff this committee with not only his Chief of Staff and main political advisors but more importantly with several scientific experts such as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, environmentalists such as Bill McKibben, and prominent bipartisan/nonpartisan retired political statesmen and women like President Jimmy Carter, and former Secretary of State George P. Schultz.  The committee’s charter will mandate the Committee’s continuance after President Obama steps down on January 20, 2017 as a permanent nonprofit organization (which would also mandate absolutely no corporate funding or donations)  meeting in public settings once or twice a month at revolving sites such as the Carter Center in Atlanta and at locations outside the United States as well.  Each meeting will also include a number of local experts and community activists.  The nuclear threat and climate change are the main issues facing humanity in the 21^st century and much more time, money, brain power, and focus needs to be harnessed to address these global crises.  (Sources:  Patricia Lewis, Beyza Unal, and Sasan Aghlani.  “Nuclear Disarmament:  The Missing Link in Multilaterialism.” The Royal Institute of Chatham House, International Security Department, October 2016 and “The Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.”  8-9 December 2014.  https://ww.bmeia.gv.at/en/european-foreign-policy/disarmament/weapons-of-mass-destruction/nuclear-weapons-and-nuclear-terrorism/vienna-conference-on-the-humanitarian-impact-of-nuclear-weapons/ accessed on Nov. 10, 2016.)

 

December 10, 1967 – As part of the Operation Plowshare program created by the Atomic Energy Commission (now known as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to explore “peaceful” uses of nuclear weapons as initiated by President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace December 8, 1953 plan, a 29 kiloton nuclear device code-named Gasbuggy was detonated 60 miles from Farmington, New Mexico on this date.  The purpose of the blast was to learn whether a small underground nuclear explosion would stimulate the release of natural gas trapped in dense shale deposits.  Initially the test was considered a success until it was discovered that the immense volume of gas produced was highly radioactive and therefore unusable.  Unfortunately, the contaminated gas was vented and flared which released radioactive krypton-85 into the atmosphere.  In addition, groundwater was contaminated with other radioactive elements such as strontium-90.  Comments:  Thankfully this was one of the last Atoms for Peace test explosions, however nuclear testing has continued for decades and the U.S. has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  This appears unlikely during the Donald Trump presidency with a Republican-controlled Congress.  The testing of over 2,000 nuclear devices over the last seven decades has inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to global populations especially native peoples.  Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, destruction of land and ocean ecosystems, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague large numbers of people to this day due to nuclear testing.  (Source:  Colonel Derek L. Duke as told to Fred Dungan.  “Chasing Loose Nukes.”  Dungan Books, 2007, pp. 10-11.  http://www.fdungan.com/duke.htm accessed Nov. 10, 2016.)

 

December 12, 1952 – The NRX nuclear research reactor at Chalk Point Laboratories in Ontario, Canada suffered a partial meltdown after a power surge caused some fuel rods to rupture and melt which resulted in a flood of millions of liters of radioactive water spilling into the reactor building’s basement.  A young U.S. naval officer serving in the nuclear submarine service, James (Jimmy) Earl Carter, the future 39^th President of the United States, was charged with directing a unit of nearly two dozen sailors to stabilize the reactor and begin cleaning up the highly radioactive contamination.  Carter and each member of his team limited themselves to only a few seconds of exposure during their forays into the reactor building.  Nevertheless, the President noted in a 2008 interview that, “They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now.  We were fairly well instructed then on what nuclear power was but for about six months after that I had radioactivity in my urine.”  Decades later in August of 2015, doctors removed a cancerous mass from the President’s liver.  He was also diagnosed with a form of melanoma that was discovered on parts of his brain which required him to undergo radiation treatments and immune-based therapy.  During his presidency, Jimmy Carter had to deal with the March 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident.  President Carter recognized the importance of addressing the nuclear threat as he promised to work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons during his inaugural address and his administration worked with the Soviets to negotiate and sign the SALT II Treaty.  In his December 10, 2002 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, President Carter said, “…we will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.  The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.  God gives us the capacity for choice.  We can choose to alleviate suffering.  We can choose to work together in peace.  We can make these changes and we must.”  Comments:  In addition to the dangerous risk of nuclear reactor accidents like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, the tremendously out-of-control civilian and military nuclear waste sequestration, remediation, and permanent storage conundrum, as well as the terrorist targeting potential, the economic unsustainability of civilian nuclear power, and the potential for nuclear proliferation points logically to an accelerated phase-out of global civilian nuclear power plants over the next decade.  President Barack Obama should publicly announce this initiative and begin to launch this phase-out before he leaves office.  (Sources:  Arthur Milnes.  “Jimmy Carter’s Exposure to Nuclear Danger.” CNN.com, April 5, 2011.  http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/05/milnes.carter.nuclear/ and Clyde Hughes.  “Jimmy Carter:  Didn’t Say Cancer is Cured, Treatment Continues.”  The Wire. Jan. 26, 2016.  http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/jimmy-carter-cancer-treatment/2016/01/26/id/710859/ both accessed Nov. 10, 2016.)

 

December 20, 1993 – The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) issued Directive 5230.16 “Nuclear Accident and Incident Public Affairs Guidance” that mandated a Pentagon policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence or absence of nuclear weapons on U.S. naval vessels which reinforced the fact that two years after the Cold War ended, military secrecy, particularly regarding nuclear weapons, was as tight-lipped as ever, if not becoming even more restrictive.  Journalists and nuclear experts had been clamoring for years for more information on all manner of U.S. and allied nuclear weapons incidents, but despite the passage of decades of time and the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact Soviet military alliance, the Pentagon was not forthcoming.  DoD Public Affairs officers continued to point to a minimalist list of 32 nuclear accidents and incidents that was released in 1980.  Nevertheless Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, which can take as long as several years for the Pentagon to respond to (and sometimes the response is negative, due to existing or upgraded secrecy classification protocols), have seen just one branch of the armed services – the U.S. Navy – release details of 381 nuclear weapons incidents that occurred between 1965 and 1977.  Comments:  Many of the hundreds if not thousands of nuclear accidents, involving all nine nuclear weapons states, still remain partially or completely classified and hidden from public scrutiny.  These near-nuclear catastrophes provide an additional justification for reducing dramatically and eventually eliminating an estimated 15,500 warheads in existing global nuclear arsenals.  (Source:  http://www.abovetopsecret.com accessed Nov. 10, 2016.)

 

December 22, 1983 – The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a publication founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists who “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work,” moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock, which has tracked humanity’s proximity to Nuclear Armageddon since 1947, from four minutes to three minutes to Midnight.  The moving of the clock’s hands was necessitated by ever growing tensions in U.S.-Soviet relations spurred by actions by both superpowers.  Examples included President Ronald Reagan’s announcement on March 23, 1983 of the “Star Wars” (SDI – Strategic Defense Initiative) system, a greatly accelerated land- and space-based effort to intercept the overwhelming majority of Soviet ICBMs before they impacted U.S. targets.  This plan threatened the relatively stable nuclear deterrence system and convinced the Soviet leadership that the U.S. actually intended a huge defensive buildup to allow them to escape relatively unscathed after a Soviet counterstrike to a suspected American first strike attack plan.  The Soviets later heightened tensions by shooting down Korean Airlines Flight 007 near Sakhalin Island on September 1, 1983.  Comments:  With the election of Donald Trump, the first president without any government or military experience, as the 45^th Commander-in-Chief, it seems extremely possible that the Doomsday Clock may be advanced to its historic high of two minutes until Midnight as experienced from 1953-60.  During the past year of campaigning, President-elect Trump has expressed a profound and frightening ignorance on the nuclear threat best exemplified by his shocking query, “Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?” Even the fact that 50 leading Republican national security experts warned in an open letter published this past September that Trump possesses “dangerous qualities in an individual with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal,” did not dissuade the American electorate from selecting Donald Trump as president.  One can only hope that President Trump will follow the pattern of Cold War hawk President Ronald Reagan who for decades talked of destroying Soviet communism but eventually proclaimed publicly that “a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought,” and talked openly with Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev of eliminating nuclear weapons entirely.  (Sources:  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists website.  http://thebulletin.org/background-and-mission-1945-2016 and Ira Helfand and Robert Dodge.  “Op-Ed:  Should We Let An Unstable Person Have Control of the Nuclear Arsenal? No, But That’s Not The Right Question.”  Los Angeles Times. Sept. 23, 2016.  http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-helfand-dodge-nuclear-weapon-question-2016-september-23 both accessed Nov. 10, 2016.)

November 3, 1945 – Before the creation of the CIA, the National Security Council or even the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the American Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), founded at the onset of U.S. entry into World War II with the task of producing intelligence reports for the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), was working on critical estimates involving the military capabilities and future intentions of the Soviet Union.  Based on a number of studies that concluded that Soviet ideology promoted inevitable conflict between Soviet and non-Soviet nations, the Joint Intelligence Committee reports convinced the JCS of dire Soviet military intentions against the U.S. and its allies in Europe and Asia.  On this date, a new JIC estimate, JIC-329, focused on Soviet vulnerability to a limited attack with nuclear weapons.  The estimate identified 20 industrial cities in the U.S.S.R., including Moscow, Gorki, Leningrad, Tashkent, Tbilisi, and Baku, that should be targeted for atomic destruction in an effort to blunt a Red Army offensive in Europe or Asia.  JIC-329 was the basis for the earliest known of many subsequent nuclear war plans against the Soviet Union and its allies.  Comments:  Unfortunately, seven decades into the Nuclear Age, there is little doubt that U.S., Russian, and other military establishments continue to devise ever more sophisticated and extensive planning and practice for the unthinkable – nuclear warfighting in a frighteningly large array of scenarios.  Meanwhile, every hour, day, week, month, and year, the risk of nuclear war imperceptibly increases.  Nuclear Armageddon is inevitable unless we resolve to end this insanity by eliminating once and for all these doomsday weapons.  (Source:  Larry A. Valero.  “The American Joint Intelligence Committee and Estimates of the Soviet Union, 1945-47.”  Studies in Intelligence (Unclassified Edition), No. 9, Summer 2000, pp. 65-80.)

 

November 9, 1934 – Today is the birthdate of Carl Sagan (who passed away on Dec. 20, 1996), a U.S. astronomer, astrophysicist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, cosmologist, science communicator (he produced and wrote the popular Cosmos PBS-TV series which first aired in 1980) who was a consultant and advisor to NASA since the 1950s.  He also helped guide and direct the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo robotic space missions.  This David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, made seminal contributions to the study of planetary atmospheres, planetary surfaces, the history of the Earth and exobiology and his list of international scientific and humanitarian honors is too long to list here.  Dr. Carl Sagan received the NASA Medal for Distinguished Public Service twice and was a recipient of the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences for “distinguished contributions in the application of science to public welfare.”  Perhaps most importantly, Dr. Sagan along with four other scientists – R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T.P. Ackerman, and J.B. Pollack – conducted extensive unprecedented research (reported in a December 23, 1983 article published in the journal Science, titled, “Nuclear Winter:  Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions”) on the global atmospheric and climate impacts of nuclear war.  Their discovery, which has been expanded and explained in more detail over the decades by many other similar scientific analyses, was that the explosion of as few as 100-200 nuclear weapons during a period of a day or so, would inject extremely large amounts of dust and smoke into the Earth’s upper atmosphere causing substantial reductions in light and temperature levels triggering a “nuclear winter.”  This previously unexpected impact of nuclear warfighting would substantially increase the magnitude of nuclear war deaths in a so-called “limited war” (100-200 explosions) and possibly lead to human extinction in an extensive all-out global nuclear war (a 5,000 megaton war).  Comments:  Carl Sagan was also one of the most prominent and vociferously outspoken proponents of ending the nuclear arms race and he spent quite a bit of his valuable time publicizing his views on this and other global threats to humanity.  In a Cosmos episode entitled, “Who Speaks for Earth?” Dr. Sagan expounded magnificently on this and related topics which are, of course, still very relevant today, “The global balance of terror, pioneered by the United States and the Soviet Union, holds hostage all the citizens of the Earth…The hostile military establishments are locked in some ghastly mutual embrace.  Each needs the other, but the balance of terror is a delicate balance, with very little margin for miscalculation.  And the world impoverishes itself by spending a trillion dollars a year on preparations for war and by employing perhaps half the scientists and high technologists on the planet in military endeavors.  How would we explain all this to a dispassionate extraterrestrial observer?  What account would we give of our stewardship of the planet Earth?  From an extraterrestrial perspective, our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure in the most important task it faces – preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens and the future habitability of the planet…Nuclear arms threaten every person on the Earth.  Fundamental changes in society are sometimes labeled impractical or contrary to human nature – as if nuclear war were practical or as if there was only one human nature.  But fundamental changes can clearly be made – we’re surrounded by them…The old appeals to racial, sexual, and religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work.  A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself – is doomed!  We are one planet.  Our loyalties are to the species and the planet.  We speak for Earth.  Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that Cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring.” (Source:  The Carl Sagan Portal.  http://www.carlsagan.com/ accessed October 15, 2016.)

 

November 10, 1950 – Enroute from a Canadian air base at Goose Bay to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, a U.S. Air Force B-50 Superfortress bomber, carrying a U.S. Mark IV nuclear bomb that had previously been secretly deployed in Canada, developed engine trouble near Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec and was forced to jettison the 5 ½ ton nuclear weapon at 10,500 feet altitude approximately 300 miles northeast of Montreal.  The crew set the bomb to self-destruct at 2,500 feet as it dropped over the St. Lawrence River.  The conventional blast of the bomb’s high-explosive shaped charges disturbed thousands of area residents and scattered nearly 100 pounds of radioactive uranium (U-238) used in the weapons’ tamper over a large area.  Thankfully, the bomb’s plutonium core or “pit” had been removed.  The aircraft made an emergency landing at a U.S. base in Maine.  But the U.S. Air Force covered up the incident explaining it away as the military practice explosion of a 500-pound conventional bomb.  This secret Broken Arrow was not revealed until the 1980s.  Comments:  Many of the hundreds, if not thousands of nuclear accidents involving all nine nuclear weapon states still remain partially or completely classified and hidden from public scrutiny.  These near- nuclear catastrophes provide an additional justification for reducing dramatically and eventually eliminating global nuclear weapons arsenals.  (Sources:  “Broken Arrows: Nuclear Weapons Accidents.”  AtomicArchive.com. http://atomicarchive.com/Almanac/Brokenarrows_static.shtml accessed Oct. 13, 2016 and Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, and William Burr. “Where They Were.” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. November/December 1999.)

 

November 19, 1985 – In their first face-to-face meeting in Geneva, President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev spoke about moving beyond their nations’ mutual mistrust and suspicions of the past to begin a new stage of U.S.-Soviet relations.  Mr. Gorbachev stressed the need for ending the nuclear arms race while President Reagan expressed his concern about Soviet intentions in the Third World.  Later though at a dinner with Gorbachev and his wife, the President did acknowledge the importance of the nuclear issue as one that “would unite all the peoples of the world.”  Comments:  While both leaders at the later October 1986 Reykjavik, Iceland Summit spoke publicly about the need to eliminate nuclear weapons, the military-industrial complex in both nations circumvented these leaders’ desire to negotiate a nuclear abolition treaty.  President Reagan died in June of 2004 but Mikhail Gorbachev, today at age 85, is still concerned that renewed Cold War tensions have brought the world to “a dangerous point.”  On Oct. 10, 2016, Gorbachev criticized both the Obama and Putin administrations for their rhetoric over Syria, the U.S. suspension of talks with Russia regarding a Syrian ceasefire, Putin’s announcement that Russia was withdrawing from a bilateral arms control agreement aimed at reprocessing weapons-grade plutonium, and U.S. support of continued military deployments in NATO countries near Russia’s western border.  The 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner said that, “It is necessary to return to the main priorities.  These are nuclear disarmament, the fight against terrorism, the prevention of an environmental disaster.  Compared to these challenges, all the rest slips into the background.” (Sources:  Roland Oliphant.  “Mikhail Gorbachev Warns World Is At ‘Dangerous Point’ Amid U.S.-Russian Face-Off Over Syria.”  The Telegraph.  Oct. 10, 2016  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/10/gorbachev-warns-world-is-at-dangerous-point and  Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton. “The Gorbachev File:  National Security Archive Briefing Book No. 544.”  Document-07, (“Dinner Hosted by the Gorbachevs in Geneva”) Nov. 19, 1985, http://nsaarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB544-The-Gorbachev-File-85th-Birthday/ both accessed Oct. 13, 2016.)

 

November 20, 2013 – An Associated Press story by Robert Burns titled, “Nuke Troubles Run Deep,” summarized a new Rand Corporation study on the performance levels of U.S. Air Force officers assigned to duties relating to nuclear warfighting.  The news was not good.  The Rand report found that overall these officers suffered low job satisfaction and very high rates of “burnout.”  The study also found unusually high rates of court martials in the ICBM force, 129 percent higher in 2011 than the previous year and, just a year later, 145 percent higher in 2012 than in the Air Force as a whole.  One nuclear warfighter reportedly was quoted as saying, “We don’t care if things go properly, we just don’t want to get in trouble.”  Comments:  The combination of human fallibility juxtaposed with the most destructive weapons ever invented yields unfortunately very dire consequences not only for America but for the entire human species as well.  This is why a dramatic and swift reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons must be the top global priority.  Continuing delays in addressing this global imperative are not only irrational but omnicidal.  (Source:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20131120/us-nuclear-missteps/ accessed Oct. 13, 2016.)

 

November 24, 1961 – When all communications links, including a number of seemingly redundant ones, between the U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) and NORAD suddenly and inexplicably went dead, cutting SAC off from three early warning radar stations in England, Greenland, and Australia, the only explanation possible, it was reasoned, was that a full-scale Soviet nuclear first strike had begun.  As a direct result, all SAC bases were put on high alert and nuclear-armed B-52 bombers scrambled and prepared to counterattack the Soviet Union with hundreds of megatons of nuclear weapons.  Luckily, the order for World War III to begin was never given when it was ascertained that the allegedly redundant communication circuits all ran through one relay station located in Colorado.  The cause for the communication breakdown was the overheating of a single motor.   Comments:  Such false alarms are still possible today although technological verification is more sophisticated and supposedly more foolproof.  It is still true however that the very short response times in nuclear crises, make accidental, unintentional, or unauthorized nuclear warfare a frighteningly real possibility now and in the future.  That is why short of the elimination of all nuclear weapons arsenals, a crucial preliminary step is for the nuclear weapons states to de-alert these doomsday weapons, making it impossible to fire these civilization-destroying devices for at least 72 hours during which time it is hoped that rational minds will circumvent such a catastrophe.  (Sources:  “Seven Close Calls in the Nuclear Age.”  Mental_Floss.com http://mentalfloss.com/article/25685/7-close-calls-nuclear-age accessed Oct. 13, 2016 and Eric Schlosser.  “Command and Control:  Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.”  New York:  Penguin Press, 2013.)

 

November 26, 1991 – Britain exploded the last of 45 nuclear weapons ending a forty-year period (1952-1991) of testing at the U.S. Nevada Test Site on this date.  Nuclear testing by Britain and other nuclear weapons states (which continues today by North Korea) of more than 2,000 nuclear devices has inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to global populations, especially native peoples.  Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, destruction of land and ocean ecosystems, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague large numbers of people to this day due to nuclear testing.   The United Kingdom signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) the same day as the United States on Sept. 24, 1996 but unlike the U.S., which has failed to ratify the agreement, the U.K., like most global nations, ratified the CTBT on April 6, 1998.  Recently the United Nations Security Council voted almost unanimously (14 affirmative votes and one abstention) to pass a U.S. draft resolution calling on all nation states to end nuclear weapons testing and to expedite the final ratification of the CTBT.  Ironically, the U.S. and a bloc of 44 nuclear capable nations including China, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan (but not Russia, the U.K, and France) are holding up the permanent end of nuclear testing.  The Republican-controlled Congress has consistently opposed ratification (despite overwhelming evidence that hundreds of global sensing stations have credibly eliminated the possibility of hiding a clandestine nuclear blast) since the U.S. Senate narrowly rejected CTBT ratification by a vote of 51-48 on Oct. 13, 1999.   Even today, some Republicans are so adamantly against the CTBT that they have threatened to prevent the authorization of about $37 million annually that the U.S. contributes to the organization that administers the treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, which represents about a quarter of its budget.  Comments:  The citizenry of the United States and the global community, in the last days before the Nov. 8^th presidential election, can still pressure President Obama, the Congressional leadership, and other key U.S. political figures, as well as the newly elected 45^th President, to make CTBT ratification a top priority in the current or newly sworn-in Congress, along with nuclear de-alerting, ending the Global War on Terrorism (the longest war in U.S. history which, if it continues, increases the risks of nuclear terrorism over the long-term), phasing out civilian nuclear power by 2025, and converting the U.S. energy grid from fossil fuels and nuclear power to green energy in the next 10 to 15 years.  (Sources:  Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.  “Arms Control Chronology.”  Washington, DC:  Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 15, 22, 24 and Kambiz Foroobar.  “U.N. Adopts U.S.-Drafted Plea for Stalled Nuclear Test Treaty.”  Bloomberg.com, Sept. 23, 2016,  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-23/un-adopts-u-s-drafted-plea-for-stalled-nuclear-test-treaty accessed Oct. 13, 2016.)