Category: Nuclear Threat

January 1, 1947 – President Harry Truman, who ordered the U.S. Army Air Force to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 17 months previously, signed legislation on this date transferring the nation’s supply of nuclear bombs and production facilities to a new civilian agency – the Atomic Energy Commission headed by David Lilienthal.  The idea for the AEC came from Manhattan Project scientists, engineers, and nuclear physicists who had lobbied Congress to take the control of nuclear weapons away from Pentagon commanders.  Comments:  Unfortunately, another critical idea which would have internationalized the development and possession of nuclear weapons, the Baruch Plan, did not materialize in the postwar world.  Despite the valuable precedent of civilian control of nuclear weapons, the Nuclear Club members today continue to reject calls to dramatically reduce and eliminate these doomsday devices as an affront to their national sovereignty and ironically they argue that such moves will actually increase the risk of war.  Meanwhile a growing majority of global citizenry vehemently disagree with these assertions and continue to push for a world without nuclear weapons.  Perhaps Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, said it best, “It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.” (Source:  Craig Nelson. “The Age of Radiance.” New York:  Simon & Schuster, 2014, p. 229.)

January 3, 1976 – As part of the Operation Anvil series of 19 underground nuclear test blasts at the Nevada Test Site, a test designated Muenster was conducted on this date at the bottom of a nearly mile deep shaft (4,759 feet).  This “Intermediate” magnitude test had an estimated yield of 160 kilotons, more than ten times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  Comments:  Although underground nuclear tests, mandated by the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, were obviously not as harmful as earlier atmospheric tests, contamination of underground water and mineral resources was a long-term risk as well as the possibility of the accidental venting of radioactive elements into the atmosphere which occurred on Dec.18, 1970 during the Baneberry ten kiloton test at the Nevada Test Site.  Nevertheless, the testing of over 2,050 nuclear devices over the last seven decades by nine nuclear weapons states has inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to global populations especially native peoples and veterans who participated in observing tests at a relatively close range.  Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, destruction of land and ocean ecosystems, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague large numbers of people due to nuclear testing.  (Source:  Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig.  “Nuclear Weapons Databook:  Volume II, Appendix B.” National Resources Defense Council, Inc. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1987, p. 171.)

January 11, 2012 – At the National Press Club in Washington, DC, former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, Co-Chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), and Dr. Page Stoutland, Vice President for Nuclear Materials Security at NTI, unveiled the first-ever Nuclear Materials Security Index of Nations, comparing security conditions on a country-by-country basis in 176 nations.  Prepared with the assistance of The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the Index’s function was to persuade nations to strengthen nuclear security and reduce risks of thefts, diversions, and accidents.  On Jan.14, 2016 the third edition of the NTI Index was released assessing security conditions in 24 nations with one kilogram or more of weapons-usable nuclear materials.  An additional 152 countries with less than one kilogram of such materials or none at all were also assessed.  This “theft ranking” was included in the first and second editions of The Index in 2012 and 2014, respectively.  The 2016 NTI Index also examined a third set of nations, 45 in all, in a new “sabotage ranking” which assessed the risk of an act of sabotage or terrorism against a nuclear facility on the same or larger scale as the radioactive contamination seen in the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.  Comments:  It is critical that the U.S., the other eight nuclear weapons states, and other nations with nuclear capabilities and fissile material inventories lift the heavy veil of secrecy and cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other global nongovernmental entities such NTI to prevent proliferation and nuclear terrorism.  In future decades, as nuclear weapons and fissile materials inventories are dramatically reduced, such cooperation and transparency will be essential in moving toward global nuclear abolition.  (Source:  Nuclear Threat Initiative.  “Nuclear Security Index:  Building a Framework for Assurance, Accountability, and Action.”  http://www.nti.org/about/projects/nti-index/ accessed Dec. 19, 2017.)

January 20, 2017 – Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45^th President of the United States despite serious concerns expressed during and after the election campaign that either he and/or his campaign officials had suspicious ties to Russian governmental representatives.  In addition to multiple allegations of criminal misconduct going back decades (including sexual harassment/assault, violations of the Domestic and Foreign Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution, and conflict of interest charges tied to his refusal to release his tax returns to the American people), before and after taking the oath of office, countless articles and media stories (from mostly non-mainstream media sources) expressed concerns about the mental stability of one of the oldest persons to ever serve as President – he turned 71 years of age on June 14, 2017.  Recently 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health professionals, led by Professor Bandy Lee, released a book on October 3, 2017 titled, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” which concluded that, based on the speech, behavior, and daily tweets of the President over the long course of his public life, he is “a serious danger to the country and the world.”  They continued, “He places the country at grave risk of involving it in a war and of undermining democracy itself because of his pathological narcissism and sociopathy.”  Comments:  Along with his recent history of unwise, belligerent, and sometimes contradictory statements about nuclear weapons and his rants against Kim Jong-un and the North Korean regime, taken with the clear knowledge that he might do the unthinkable and press the nuclear button, sending a nuclear holocaust impacting not only North Korea or Iran but also many neighboring nations, including our allies, or other unknown, unpredictable targets, President Trump represents one of the most serious threats to world peace in this century and ultimately to the extremely fragile seven-decade old global nuclear deterrent system since 1945!  Unfortunately, efforts to convince him to resign, to impeach him, or to legally remove him from power appear as unlikely as does the milder action of persuading him to seek immediate psychotherapy.  But, if the global community and the largest majority of Americans possible redouble their efforts, there is increasing optimism that something can be done to prevent breaking the nuclear threshold and increasing the risk of a purposeful, accidental, or unintentional nuclear Armageddon.  Let us hope that in the President’s January 30, 2018 State of the Union Address he announces a clearly peaceful alternative to his previous nuclear saber rattling with North Korea and Iran and the beginning of the end of a renewed Cold War II and nuclear arms race with Russia.  (Sources: Multiple mainstream and alternative news media websites and articles.)

January 24, 1961 – As part of the 24-hour Operation Coverall U.S. Strategic Air Command plan, consistent with the first Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), to always have one-third of the strategic bomber fleet airborne in order to have available a nuclear strike option against the Soviet Union and its allies, a B-52G Stratofortress bomber carrying two 2.5 megaton Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs left Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina.  When a wing fuel tank leak was detected, the bomber headed back to base but the plane caught fire, exploded in mid-air, and crashed 12 miles north of the airbase near the town of  Goldsboro killing three of the eight-man crew and releasing the two hydrogen bombs from the plane’s payload bay.  Three of the arming devices on one of the bombs activated causing it to trigger the arming mechanisms and deploy a 100-foot diameter retardation parachute which allowed that bomb to hit the ground with little damage.   However, only one of six arming safety devices prevented the warhead from detonating in a nuclear explosion.  The second bomb plunged into a muddy field at about 700 miles-per-hour and disintegrated – although the tritium bottle and plutonium core were later partially recovered from 20 feet underground.  This bomb was in the “armed” setting because of the impact of the crash.  U.S. government reports, including a declassified report from Sandia National Laboratories published by the National Security Archive on June 9, 2014, concluded that the same safety switch involved in this 1961 crash had also failed in other incidents.  In a related development, Eric Schlosser’s 2013 book “Command and Control” presented a declassified 1969 document which quoted Parker F. Jones, a nuclear safety supervisor at Sandia National Laboratories, who said that, “One simple dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe.”  Comments:  If one or both of these multi-megaton hydrogen bombs had exploded four days into the Kennedy Administration, a nuclear war might have inadvertently been triggered.  If not, the U.S. still would have suffered an unprecedented nuclear disaster hundreds of times more significant than the Hiroshima bombing.  With hundreds of thousands killed within a zone of 17 miles and similar numbers injured, millions more people would have been irradiated as prevailing winds would have sent a huge radioactive cloud hundreds of miles northeast to the nation’s capital and on to New York City leaving a large, permanent evacuation zone in and around what some experts claim would have become a new Bay of North Carolina.  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 nuclear weapons arsenals.  (Sources:  Eric Schlosser. “Command and Control:  Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.”  New York:  Penguin Press, 2013, William Burr.  “The Nuclear Vault” National Security Archive at The George Washington University. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb475/ and “1961 Goldsboro B-52 Crash.”  Military Wiki. http://wikia.com/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash both accessed Dec.19, 2017.)

January 31, 1935 – Birthdate of Kenzaburo Oe, a renowned Japanese author and winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature.  This contemporary novelist, short story writer, and essayist has long dealt with social, political, and philosophical issues including social nonconformist theory, existentialism, nuclear weapons, and nuclear power.  Born in Ose, a village now in Uchiko, Ehime Prefecture on Shikoku, he is a pacifist and historian who revealed that Japanese military officers had coerced many Okinawan civilians into committing suicide during the Allied invasion of that island in 1945.  He also authored books and articles on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as on Article 9, the War Renunciation clause of the Japanese Constitution.  After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, he urged Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to rethink the restart of Japanese nuclear reactors and abandon nuclear energy entirely.  In January 2014 he wrote that, “Hiroshima must be engraved in our memories.  It is a catastrophe more dramatic than natural disasters because it’s man-made.  To repeat it by showing the same disregard for human life in nuclear power stations is the worst betrayal of the memory of the victims of Hiroshima.”  (Sources:  Many mainstream and alternative news media articles and Akira Tashiro. “Japan: Finally No to Nuclear Power.”  The Progressive. http://progressive.org/dispatches/japan-finally-nuclear-power accessed Dec. 19, 2017.)

December 1, 2016 – Alex Wellerstein’s Washington Post article, “No One Can Stop President Trump From Using Nuclear Weapons,” concluded that, “When the legal framework for nuclear weapons was developed, the fear was not about an irrational president, but trigger-happy generals,” which was resolved long ago, Wellerstein noted, to mandate civilian control over the military and most importantly its possible firing of nuclear weapons.  Yet he also remarked that, “There is no way today to keep (President) Trump from launching a nuclear attack under the existing system.”  This article was certainly not the first of its kind but it surely helped fuel a continued ongoing debate expressed earlier in a most partisan way by Hillary Clinton’s statement at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2016, “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”  More recently at a Nov. 14, 2017 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) titled “Authority to Order the Use of Nuclear Weapons,” despite the admonition of chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) that the proceeding was not intended to target the 45^th President, “This is not specific to anybody,” many Democrats on the committee were not so reticent in expressing their concerns.  Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) stated that, “We are concerned that the President of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national interests.” Comments:  Despite seemingly comforting statements during this hearing by Brian McKeon, former Chief Counsel to the Democratic members of the SFRC for 12 years (“Article II of the Constitution mandating the President as sole Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces does not give him carte blanche to take the country to war.”) and General Robert Kehler, former head of U.S. Strategic Command (“The military can refuse to follow what it considers an illegal order, even a nuclear one.”), the entirety of the human species remains deeply concerned about the current very high risk of nuclear conflict involving the U.S.  Even if recent legislation from Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) on “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017” or a future, more bipartisan version of such a bill reached Donald Trump’s desk, it is likely he would veto it and it appears unlikely that Congress could override that veto. Nevertheless, it is time to redouble global efforts to prevent a Nuclear Armageddon.  (Sources:  U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations website and a variety of mainstream and alternative media sources such as Democracy Now and RT.com.)

December 7, 1993 – On this date, U.S. Secretary of Energy Hazel R. O’Leary announced her Openness Initiative in “a deliberate effort to rebuild a basic level of trust between the American people and their government that is necessary for a democracy to function.”  As part of this initiative, she released documents describing previously classified U.S. nuclear tests, facts about bomb-grade plutonium, and related information.  The most startling release of information related to human radiation experiments, specifically the 1945-47 injections of 18 human subjects with plutonium.  More details on a wide variety of 48 different radiation experiments conducted on uninformed and/or uneducated members of the public came in a June 1994 press release.  Through the efforts of hundreds of Department of Energy (DOE) staff, private stakeholders, and long-time activists, a years-long effort to find, declassify, evaluate, and substantiate abuses by DOE and their subcontractors were revealed in a number of subsequent reports that were published in the ensuing years of the Clinton Administration. One such report was released in February of 1995.  Titled, “Human Radiation Experiments: The Department of Energy Roadmap to the Story and Records” (document number DOE/EH-0445), this report catalogued dozens of experiments conducted on not only adults but also children from the 1930s to 1970s.  One series of tests, which were conducted on unsuspecting hospital patients including the critically ill, pregnant women and their fetuses, the poor, the middle class, the mentally ill, and institutionalized children, resulted in the injection, irradiation, or other exposure to radioactive elements with the compiled data from the resultant cancers and even radioactive body parts forwarded for final analysis to Los Alamos National Laboratory or other DOE or governmental facilities.  Comments:  Such experiments probably represent only the tip of the iceberg in terms of countless, purposeful experiments, tests, and radioactive exposures conducted by representatives of the nine nuclear weapons states and possibly other nations that considered or are today considering acquiring nuclear weapons and/or fissile materials.  This is yet another paramount reason why nuclear weapons and nuclear power should be dramatically reduced and eliminated entirely (except for legitimate medicinal uses or very limited internationally-sanctioned civilian nuclear fusion reactor research) by 2030.  (Source:  Eileen Welsome.  “The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War.”  New York:  Dial Press, 1999.)

December 10, 2017 – Setsuko Thurlow, an 85 year-old hibakusha survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, along with Executive Director Beatrice Fihn, as dual representatives of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), will receive the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway.  ICAN is being rewarded “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons (a reference to the overwhelming approval by U.N. member countries, except the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states, of the July 7, 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons- TPNW).”  ICAN is a coalition of 468 nonprofit organizations in 101 nations founded in 2007.  Comments:  Two years ago, Setsuko Thurlow honored the victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on the 70^th anniversary of the attack by remarking that, “Former German President Richard von Weizeker once said, ‘We must look truth straight in the eye – without embellishment and without distortion,’ The truth is, we all live with the daily threat of nuclear weapons.  In every silo, on every submarine, in the bomb bays of airplanes, every second of every day, nuclear weapons, thousands on high alert, are poised for deployment threatening everyone we love and everything we hold dear.  How much longer can we allow the nuclear weapons states to wield this threat to all life on earth?  Let us make the 70^th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the appropriate milestone to achieve our goal:  to abolish nuclear weapons, and safeguard the future of our one shared planet earth.” (Sources:  International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.  “Atomic Bomb Survivor to Jointly Accept Nobel Peace Prize on ICAN’s Behalf.”  Press Release, Oct. 26, 2017. http://www.ican.org/campaign-news/atomic-bomb-survivor-to-jointly-accept-nobel-peace-prize accessed Nov.16, 2017 and The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  “70 Years After Hiroshima, It’s Time to Confront the Past.” Sunflower Newsletter, September 2015.)

December 13, 2001 – The George W. Bush Administration announced that it would withdraw the United States from the 1972 ABM Treaty in six months – the first formal renunciation of an international arms control agreement since 1945.  Months later, in 2002, the President announced he would give the green light to the rapid deployment of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) missile defense system with the goal of having an initial operational capability by late 2004.  Unfortunately, the 43^rd President justified building the GMD system by arguing that the need for strategic missile defense was acute and required exempting the system from many of the mandatory oversight, accountability, and financial transparency procedures that Congress and the Pentagon had learned through decades of experience are critical to successfully developing viable, successful, and effective military systems.  The same can be said for the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system which currently has six “operational” batteries deployed.  Both THAAD and the GMD (the latter with a total of 44 deployed interceptors at Ft. Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California) systems’ exemption from the proven fly-before-you-buy process and track record of extremely limited real world capability (as seen in drastically flawed testing programs) has had an impact on the viability and reliability of missile defense systems that the Pentagon falsely claims are “proven.”  Comments:  Not only have unwise accelerated deployments of strategic missile defenses been incredibly expensive and wasteful of hundreds of billions of tax dollars, before and after President Reagan’s March 23, 1983 “Star Wars” speech, these deployments also helped fuel a renewed offensive nuclear arms race as the U.S., Russia, China, and other members of the Nuclear Club commit to spend trillions in the next few decades on new generations of ICBMs, submarine-launched and mobile land-based ballistic missiles, and air-launched cruise missiles, not to mention accelerated research and development on more exotic and destabilizing nuclear weapons systems.  (Sources:  Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors. “Arms Control Chronology.” Washington, DC:  Center for Defense Information, 2002, p. 98 and Laura Grego, George N. Lewis, and David Wright. “Shielded From Oversight: The Disasterous U.S. Approach to Strategic Missile Defense.”  Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2016 and U.S. Department of Defense.  Missile Defense Agency. “Elements: Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD).” and “THAAD.” https://www.mda.mil/system/gmd.html and https://www.mda.mil/system/thaad.html both accessed Nov. 15, 2017.)

December 18, 1970 – At the Nevada Test Site in Area 8 on Yucca Flat, the eighth of 12 tests in the Operation Emery series of nuclear blasts, code-named Baneberry, caused an unexpected and unprecedented result for an underground explosion – a significant release of radioactive elements.  The ten kiloton blast, detonated at the bottom of a sealed vertical shaft 900 feet deep, created a fissure near the surface of the shaft cap that resulted in the leak of approximately six percent of the explosive’s radioactive products into the atmosphere.  Hot gas and radioactive fallout rained down on workers at the site but the release not only had a local impact but a global one.  The plume released 6.7 MCi of radioactive material including 80 kCi of Iodine-131 and other toxic noble gases that rose to the upper atmosphere and jet stream settling down later in areas of northeastern California, northern Nevada, southern Idaho, and eastern sections of Oregon and Washington with some radionuclides spreading across the U.S., to Canada, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean.  Comments:  The testing of over 2,050 nuclear devices over the last seven decades by nine nuclear weapons states has inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to global populations especially native peoples and veterans who participated in observing tests at a relatively close range.  Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, destruction of land and ocean ecosystems, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague large numbers of people due to nuclear testing.  (Source:  Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig.  “Nuclear Weapons Databook:  Volume II, Appendix B.” National Resources Defense Council, Inc. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1987, p.169 and “Estimated Exposures and Thyroid Doses Received by the American People from Iodine-131 in Fallout Following Nevada Atmospheric Nuclear Bomb Tests: History of the Nevada Test Site and Nuclear Testing Background.” National Cancer Institute. Chapter 2, September 1997. NIH 97-4264. https://www.cancer.gov.)

December 24, 1950 – Fifteen days after General Douglas MacArthur first requested that President Truman provide him with atomic bombs to turn back a massive Chinese attack on U.N. forces, he upped the ante on Christmas Eve by submitting to the President a more detailed strategic plan calling for a nuclear first strike. MacArthur’s operational plans included a list of 26 targets in mainland China to be hit by atomic blasts.  He also proposed dropping 30-50 such weapons in a path along the Manchurian border to prevent future invasions into North Korea from Red China for sixty years!  In April of 1951, Truman had had enough and he ordered MacArthur to step down as commander of Allied Forces in Korea.  However, top U.S. military planners continued to focus on using nuclear weapons to break the stalemate on the Korean peninsula.  MacArthur’s replacement, General Matthew Ridgway, requested the use of 38 atomic bombs against enemy targets in May of that year.  Comments:  While some would argue that events two-thirds of a century in the past have little relevance today, in fact recent U.S.-North Korean tensions include unfortunately a renewed dose of nuclear threat and bluster, this time on both sides.  The Korean War that was curtailed dramatically after the July 1953 Armistice has nevertheless been reenergized.  There is a desperate need for global intervention to forestall a 21^st century Korean War by signing a permanent peace treaty ending the conflict for good.  All parties at risk should be coerced, persuaded, cajoled, or begged to resolve the crisis through an enlarged “1.5 talks” process that expands this small private channel endeavor to a large-scale negotiating protocol shepherded by neutral nations such as Brazil, India, and South Africa.  The alternative could be the species-threatening breach of the nuclear threshold for the first time since 1945 – possibly the beginning of the end for global civilization.  (Sources:  Eric Schlosser.  “Command and Control:  Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.”  New York:  Penguin Press, 2013 and numerous mainstream and alternative news media sources.)

NUCLEAR WEAPONS: AN ABSOLUTE EVIL, by John Scales Avery

A pdf file of a first draft of the book can be freely downloaded from the following link:

http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/nuclear.pdf

Here are some excerpts from the Introduction:

The threat of nuclear war is very high today

This book is a collection of articles and book chapters that I have written advocating the abolition of nuclear weapons. Some new material has also been added, for example a discussion of the Nuclear Weapons Convention which has recently been adopted by an overwhelming majority vote at the United Nations General Assembly.

Today, because of the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump will initiate a nuclear war against Iran or North Korea, or even Russia, the issue of nuclear weapons is at the center of the global stage. I strongly believe that the time has come for all countries to take a united stance on this issue. Most of the world’s nations live in nuclear weapon free zones. This does not give them any real protection, since the catastrophic environmental effects of nuclear war would be global, not sparing any nation. However, by supporting the Nuclear Weapons Convention and by becoming members of NWFZ’s, nations can state that they consider nuclear weapons to be morally unacceptable, a view that must soon become worldwide if human civilization is to survive.

We must take a stand, and state clearly that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil; that their possession does not increase anyone’s security; that their continued existence is a threat to the life of every person on the planet; and that these genocidal and potentially omnicidal weapons have no place in a civilized society.

Nuclear warfare as genocide

On December 9, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a convention prohibiting genocide. It seems appropriate to discuss nuclear warfare against the background of this important standard of international law.

Cannot nuclear warfare be seen as an example of genocide? It is capable of killing entire populations, including babies, young children, adults in their prime and old people, without any regard for guilt or innocence. The retention of nuclear weapons, with the intent to use them under some circumstances, must be seen as the intent to commit genocide. Is it not morally degrading to see our leaders announce their intention to commit the “crime of crimes” in our names?

The continuity of life is sacred

In 1985, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War received the Nobel Peace Prize. IPPNW had been founded in 1980 by six physicians, three from the Soviet Union and three from the United States. Today, the organization has wide membership among the world’s physicians. Professor Bernard Lown of the Harvard School of Public Health, one of the founders
of IPPNW, said in a recent speech:

“…No public health hazard ever faced by humankind equals the threat of nuclear war. Never before has man possessed the destructive resources to make this planet uninhabitable…. Modern medicine has nothing to offer, not even a token benefit, in the event of nuclear war…”

“We are but transient passengers on this planet Earth. It does not belong to us. We are not free to doom generations yet unborn. We are not at liberty to erase humanity’s past or dim its future. Social systems do not endure for eternity. Only life can lay claim to uninterrupted continuity. This continuity is sacred.”

Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, emphasized the same point in one of his speeches: “I feel”, he said, “Nuclear weapons are criminal! Every war is a crime!”

War was always madness, always immoral, always the cause of unspeakable suffering, economic waste and widespread destruction, and always a source of poverty, hate, barbarism and endless cycles of revenge and counter-revenge. It has always been a crime for soldiers to kill people, just as it is a crime for murderers in civil society to kill people. No flag has ever been wide enough
to cover up atrocities.

But today, the development of all-destroying modern weapons has put war completely beyond the bounds of sanity and elementary humanity. Today, war is not only insane, but also a violation of international law. Both the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles make it a crime to launch an aggressive war. According to the Nuremberg Principles, every soldier is responsible for the crimes that he or she commits, even while acting under the orders of a superior officer.

Nuclear weapons are not only insane, immoral and potentially omnicidal, but also criminal under international law. In response to questions put to it by WHO and the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice ruled in 1996 that “the threat and use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and particularly the principles and rules of humanitarian law.” The only possible exception to this general rule might be “an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a state would be at stake”. But the Court refused to say that even in this extreme circumstance the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be legal. It left the exceptional case undecided. In addition, the Court added unanimously that “there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international
control.”

Can we not rid ourselves of both nuclear weapons and the institution of war itself? We must act quickly and resolutely before everything that we love in our beautiful world is reduced to radioactive ashes.

November 5, 1951 – Easy, the fourth nuclear test explosion of Operation Buster-Jangle in a series of seven test blasts sponsored by Los Alamos National Laboratory, was conducted at the Nevada Test Site.  A U.S. Air Force B-45 bomber dropped the warhead and it was detonated at an altitude of 1,314 feet with a magnitude of 31 kilotons, about twice as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  The objective of these tests was to evaluate new devices that might be included in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  Comments:  The testing of over 2,050 nuclear devices over the last seven decades by nine nuclear weapons states has inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to global populations especially native peoples and veterans who participated in observing tests at a relatively close range.  Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, destruction of land and ocean ecosystems, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague large numbers of people due to nuclear testing.  (Source:  Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig.  “Nuclear Weapons Databook:  Volume II, Appendix B.” National Resources Defense Council, Inc. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1987, p. 152.)

November 8, 2016 – In one of the closest elections in U.S. history, Republican Donald J. Trump was elected the 45^th President of the United States by virtue of his Electoral College margin of 304-227 over Democrat Hillary Clinton despite the fact that he lost the popular vote by over 2.8 million votes (48.0 to 45.9 percent).  As a result, the nuclear threat to the U.S. and the world has undisputedly risen based on Trump’s pre-election statements:  “You want to be unpredictable (with nuclear weapons),” CBS-TV, Jan. 13, 2016; “Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?” MSNBC, Aug. 3, 2016, as well as his comments made during the transition period and after he took the oath of office.  Six days after his inauguration, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, in consultation with that organization’s Board of Sponsors, which included 15 Nobel Laureates, “…decided to act, in part, based on the words of a single person: Donald Trump.” The organization’s press release continued, “Donald Trump made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons…Both his statements and actions as President-elect have broken with historical precedent in unsettling ways.  He has made ill-considered comments about expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  He has shown a troubling propensity to discount or outright reject expert advice related to international security (and arms control)…”  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists used this language about Trump (as well as pointing to other negative global nuclear trends) to justify moving the Doomsday Clock from three minutes to two and a half minutes until Midnight.  Comments:  Unfortunately most scholars would argue that historical precedent does not allow for the consideration of threatening nuclear Armageddon as a sufficient constitutional justification for the impeachment of a President.  Many other presidents have used nuclear threats and gotten away with it, notably President Nixon’s 1969 actions consistent with his ‘Madman Theory of International Relations’ of threatening an attack on the Soviet Union in order to convince the Vietnamese communist leadership that he was irrational and unable to compromise at the Paris Peace Talks.  Since becoming president, Donald Trump has expressed strong hostility toward two critical nuclear agreements negotiated by his predecessor: the 2010 New START Treaty with Russia and the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran.  Kingston Reif and Kelsey Davenport noted additionally that, “He has impulsively and recklessly threatened to respond to North Korean provocations (nuclear tests and ballistic missile test launches) with ‘fire and fury,’” and stated that the U.S. military might be forced to destroy all of North Korea.  Indeed, how can one be absolutely sure that like other presidents, Trump is only threatening to use nuclear weapons, not actually planning to do the unthinkable and cross the nuclear threshold plunging the world into an abyss it may never recover from?  Last year and then again a few weeks ago, over 20 prestigious psychiatrists and mental health professionals analyzed Trump’s personality and character and determined that he suffers from “malignant narcissism,” and that, “his speech and behavior show signs of significant mental derangement,” concluding that, “anyone as mentally unstable as Trump should not be entrusted with the life and death powers of the presidency.”  For these paramount reasons, along with many others noted by legal and constitutional scholars (his violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause for one), it seems reasonable that Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and all other political entities in this nation and abroad should press firmly for the resignation or impeachment of President Trump with all deliberate speed!  On the other hand, even if this unlikely series of events achieves success – what guarantee is there that Vice President Mike Pence or others in the line of presidential succession won’t also endanger the world with their own nuclear threats and actions?  In actuality, individual leaders are not the main problem.  Humanity faces destruction from climate change and nuclear war mostly because of a flawed global system that must adapt, reform, and evolve into a more egalitarian model before it is too late.   (Sources:  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Press Release.  “It is Now Two and A Half Minutes to Midnight.”Jan.25, 2017 (Embargoed until Jan. 26, 2017). http://thebulletin.org/press-release/it-now-two-and-half-minutes-midnight10432, Mehdi Hasan. “Worried About Trump’s Mental Stability?  The Worst is Yet to Come.”  The Intercept.org, Oct. 7, 2017, Dave Leip’s Atlas of Presidential Elections.  https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2016&off=0&elect=0&f=0, and Kingston Reif and Kelsey Davenport.  “Trump’s Threat to Nuclear Order.”  War on the Rocks.  Oct. 12, 2017. http://warontherocks.com/2017/10/trumps-threat-to-nuclear-order/ all accessed on Oct. 20, 2017.)

November 17-18, 1980 – “The Medical Consequences of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear War,” a PSR travelling symposium sponsored by the Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and the Council for a Livable World Education Fund, was held on these dates at the Herbst Theater in the War Memorial Veterans Building at the Civic Center in San Francisco.  Under the leadership of Dr. Helen Caldicott, PSR’s symposium series went from one U.S. city to another illustrating in stark detail the specific and horrendous impacts of nuclear war on each of the nation’s metropolitan areas.  Participants in this San Francisco conference included Herbert Scoville, Jr., President of the Arms Control Association, Dr. Sidney Drell, Professor of Theoretical Physics and Deputy Director of The Stanford Linear Accelerator, Dr. Stuart Finch, former Director of Research, Radiation Effects Research Foundation, Hiroshima, and retired Rear Admiral Gene R. La Rocque, Director of the Center for Defense Information.  The symposium wrapped up with this concluding statement, “There are no winners in a nuclear war, worldwide fallout would contaminate much of the globe for generations and atmospheric effects would severely damage all living things.”  Comments:  Three years after this conference, the TTAPS Study, one of whose authors included science popularizer and Professor of Astronomy at Cornell Carl Sagan, provided even stronger evidence that a nuclear war would not only be catastrophic for global civilization but could possibly trigger the end of all human life on the planet due to the Nuclear Winter phenomenon.  Nevertheless, presidents such as Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump have argued and continue to argue that might makes right and that building up the U.S. nuclear arsenal is not only good for the economy but ensures our nation’s survival in an unstable world.  Thankfully, a growing global constituency is demanding a shift to a New Paradigm that promotes an end to all wars, the phase-out of not only nuclear weapons but also nuclear power plants in favor of green, sustainable non-carbon-producing forms of energy, the redistribution of wealth to ensure the survival and prosperity of all the world’s inhabitants, and an end to the warped conception of “Peace through Strength.” (Source:  University of California at San Francisco.  News/Public Information Series Press Release. Nov. 6, 1980 and a plethora of alternative news media sources.)

November 20, 1983 – The Day After, a Nicholas Meyer-produced film was broadcast nationwide on ABC Television.  Starring Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, John Lithgow and others, this film was one of the first realistic dramatic presentations that explored the specific impacts of nuclear war on an actual American city – Lawrence, Kansas.  It is estimated that approximately 100 million Americans, half of the adult population of the country, watched the televised event.  Even a dedicated Cold Warrior like President Ronald Reagan, who may have seen an early rough cut of The Day After, acknowledged that his administration’s preparations to triumph in a nuclear war were naïve and unrealistic when he publicly stated in a speech to the Japanese Diet, “I believe there can be only one policy for preserving our precious civilization in this modern age.  A nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.”  Comments:  Over the seven decades since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hollywood as well as independent producers have provided many more films, miniseries, and documentaries about the unfortunately all too real threat of nuclear war.  However, the still growing strength of the military-industrial-Congressional-nuclear weapons laboratories complex and the mainstream media’s reluctance to report anti-nuclear and anti-militarist stories has resulted in a decades-long trend of growing militarism in American society.  This is seen in a number of areas:  Congress’ rhetoric of “the nuclear option” in reference to budget debates, the strong association of military terms to entertainment, sporting, and political events, the growing popularity of the video-computer game industry with titles embracing nuclear conflict and post-apocalyptic “play scenarios,” and in many other segments of American life.  Fortunately, a growing proportion of Americans and world citizenry are increasingly cognizant that nuclear conflict is not a game and must be prevented at all costs if our global civilization is to survive.  (Sources:  Mainstream and alternative media sources including CNN, The New York Times, Democracy Now, and RT.com.)

November 24, 1975 – Enroute to the Pacific Missile Test Range Facility in Hawaii, the U.S. Navy destroyer DD-950 U.S.S. Richard S. Edwards suffered an accidental explosion when an ASROC anti-submarine rocket propulsion system ignited causing injuries to at least one or more crew members.  The Navy did not categorize this incident as a Broken Arrow or nuclear accident most probably because the missile, while nuclear-capable, was in this particular circumstance not armed with an atomic warhead.  However, this incident illustrates that it was certainly possible that a nuclear-armed ASROC igniting accidentally could trigger a serious leak of radioactive materials or even the loss of the warhead overboard.  Comments:  This serious accident was just one example of dozens or even hundreds of accidents, involving weapons systems that are nuclear-capable, that have occurred underwater or on the high seas by naval forces of the nine nuclear weapons states.  In cases where nuclear reactors and warheads are lost at sea, there is the deadly serious concern about the leakage of highly radioactive toxins affecting not only the flora and fauna of the deep but the health and well-being of millions of people.  (Sources:  John Pike, et al., “Chicken Little and Darth Vader: Is the Sky Really Falling?” Federation of American Scientists, Oct. 1, 1991, pp. 57-58 and William Arkin and Joshua Handler.  “Neptune Papers II:  Naval Nuclear Accidents at Sea.”  Greenpeace International, 1990.)

November 28, 1993 – In one of the twenty known incidents of the attempted illicit sale of Russian bomb-grade fissile material in the last 25 years, especially since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, local authorities arrested a number of suspects in Polyarny, Russia on this date for the attempted transfer of 4,500 grams of highly enriched uranium to a group of buyers who were in actuality undercover security forces – this was the largest amount seized in the last two decades or so.  In April 2015, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Deputy Director Anne Harrington testified at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Strategic Forces that, “Of the roughly 20 documented seizures of nuclear explosive materials since 1992, all have come out of the former Soviet Union.” Despite recent reassurances from Rosatom, the state-owned corporation that runs Russia’s nuclear energy and weapons plants, that their nuclear materials, “are always strictly controlled” and accounted for, a Center for Public Integrity November 2015 investigative report concluded that, “In fact, some 99 percent of the world’s weapons-grade materials have been secured.  But one percent or more is still out there, and it amounts to several thousand pounds that could be acquired by any one of several terrorist organizations.” Comments:  Although some significant progress in securing and protecting nuclear materials from  theft or diversion has been allegedly confirmed by Russia and other Nuclear Club nations at the four biennial nuclear security summits (2010-16), much more needs to be accomplished in the U.N. and other international fora, as well as bilaterally by the Trump and Putin administrations, to prevent the use of fissile materials in dirty bombs or primitive small-yield fission weapons whether the materials diverted come from civilian nuclear plants or military nuclear weapon facilities.  In addition to concerns about the resulting mass casualties and short- and long-term radioactive contamination from such a catastrophe, there is also the frightening possibility that in times of crisis, such an attack might inadvertently trigger nuclear retaliation or even precipitate a nuclear exchange.  (Source:  Douglas Birch and R. Jeffrey Smith.  “The Fuel for a Nuclear Bomb is in the Hands of an Unknown Black Marketeer from Russia, U.S. Officials Say.” Center for Public Integrity, Nov. 12, 2015 reprinted in Courier: The Stanley Foundation Newsletter, Number 86, Spring 2016, pp. 7-14.)

October 3, 1942 – At the Peenemunde Army Research Center located on an island in the Baltic Sea, aerospace engineers commanded by the German Wehrmacht for the first time successfully launched a long-range guided single-stage, liquid-fueled ballistic missile.  The 46-foot long Aggregat 4 (A4) rocket, also known as Vergeltungswaffe 2 (V-2), which translates as “Vengeance Weapon 2,” weighing in at 27,600 pounds and capable of carrying a one-ton conventional high explosive warhead, reached a height of 52.5 miles.  Almost two years later beginning in September of 1944, some 3,000 of these weapons were launched at Allied targets in London, Antwerp, and Leiden, within their range limit of approximately 200 miles, killing almost 10,000 civilians and military personnel.  Also, tens of thousands of Jewish and other slave laborers were worked to death building not only the rocket components but the huge launch complex.  Comments:  Over the last three quarters of a century, the development of long-range ballistic missiles on hair-trigger alert status and nuclear weapons, especially thermonuclear fusion weapons with yields up to thousands of times that of the Hiroshima bomb, have led to an untenable, irrational, and unstable world where at any moment, a global nuclear catastrophe can be triggered through accident, miscalculation, madness, or unintentional means, which could very well result in the end of civilization and very possibly the extinction of the human species.  We have been very fortunate so far, but our luck won’t last forever, therefore these doomsday weapons must be eliminated at the earliest possible opportunity.  (Source:  Wernher von Braun and Frederick Ordway III.  “Space Travel: A History.”  New York:  Harper & Row, 1985, p. 45.)

October 6, 1986 – A Soviet nuclear-powered Yankee-I-class submarine K-219, that had experienced an accidental explosion in one of its SS-N-6 long-range nuclear-tipped ballistic missile tubes three days earlier approximately 480 miles east of Bermuda, sank in the Atlantic Ocean while under tow in 18,000 feet of water.  At least three crew members were killed in the initial explosion and it is likely that leakage from the damaged nuclear warheads may have irradiated other members of the crew and the personnel of five Soviet rescue vessels despite assurances by the Soviet government that there was “no risk of triggering the weapons onboard, or of a nuclear explosion, or of radioactive contamination.”  However, Western sources reported at the time that 16 nuclear missiles and two reactors were on board the vessel when it sank.  Comments:  This deadly incident was just one example of dozens or even hundreds of accidents involving submarines, surface ships, and aircraft involving the loss of nuclear propulsion units and/or nuclear weapons.  Some of these nuclear reactors and warheads lost at sea are leaking highly radioactive toxins affecting not only the flora and fauna of the deep, but the health and well-being of millions of people.  (Sources:  John Pike, et al., “Chicken Little and Darth Vader:  Is the Sky Really Falling?” Federation of American Scientists, Oct. 1, 1991 and William Arkin and Joshua Handler. “Neptune Papers II:  Naval Nuclear Accidents at Sea.”  Greenpeace International, 1990.)

October 17, 2015 – At a meeting of the World Medical Association (WMA) General Assembly held in Moscow, this grouping of global physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals unanimously updated its Statement on Nuclear Weapons originally adopted in 1998 and amended in 2008, requesting that all National Medical Associations take extensive steps to educate their publics and governments about the incredibly horrendous, species-threatening health impacts of nuclear conflict and “to join the WMA in supporting this Declaration and to urge their respective governments to work to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.”  Comments:  A plethora of scientific papers, conferences, and symposia over the last several decades on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war have concluded that even a relatively small number of thermonuclear explosions can almost entirely negate reasonable medical responses, even for a large, wealthy nation such as the United States.  This represents yet another reason why nuclear weapons must be abolished.  (Source:  “The Growing Threat of Nuclear War and the Role of the Health Community.”  World Medical Journal, Vol. 62, No. 3, October 3, 2016.  http://lab.arstubiedriba.lv/WMJ/vol62/3-october-2016/slides/slide-7.jpg accessed Sept. 22, 2017.)

October 18, 1998 – America’s Defense Monitor, a half-hour documentary PBS-TV series that premiered in 1987, released a new film, “Can We Learn to Live Without Nuclear Weapons,” produced by The Center for Defense Information, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization and independent monitor of the Pentagon, founded in 1972, whose board of directors and staff included retired military officers (Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, Jr.), former U.S. government officials (Philip Coyle, who served as assistant secretary of defense), and civilian experts (Dr. Bruce Blair, a former U.S. Air Force nuclear missile launch control officer).  The chief issue addressed in this episode was, “Must the world continue to rely on nuclear deterrence for stability and security or should nuclear weapons be abolished altogether, and if so, how?”  Most of the prominent experts interviewed for the film, including David Krieger, the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; Senator Alan Cranston (Retired), President of the Gorbachev USA Foundation; Admiral Noel Gaylor, former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, USN (Retired); and Paul Warnke, Assistant Secretary of Defense, 1967-69, and Chief U.S. Arms Control negotiator, 1977-78, argued for the elimination of global nuclear arsenals.

October 21-22, 2008 – At the “Cyber War, Cyber Terrorism, and Cyber Espionage” IT Security Conference held in Fargo, North Dakota, many threats were contemplated, hypothesized, and projected but at least one real world nuclear threat was reported.  At least two independent sources corroborated this story.  One is Ron Rosenbaum’s 2011 book “How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III” and the other is a paper by Professor Joe St Sauver which specifically quotes long-time nuclear expert Dr. Bruce Blair.  “Blair cites one scary example:  the discovery of an unprotected electronic backdoor into the naval broadcast communications network used to transmit launch orders by radio to the U.S. Trident deterrent submarine fleet.  Unauthorized persons including terrorists might have been able to seize electronic control of shore-based radio transmitters … and actually inject a (nuclear) launch order into the network.  The deficiency was taken so seriously that new launch order validation protocols had to be devised, and Trident crews had to undergo special training to learn them.”  Comments: Cyber security and anti-hacking protocols, especially to prevent unauthorized access to nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, should be the focus of a strong internationally binding set of agreements among all the world’s nations, especially the nine nuclear weapons states. (Sources:  Ron Rosenbaum.  “How the End Begins:  The Road to a Nuclear World War III.” New York:  Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 109 and Professor Joe St Sauver.  “Cyber War, Cyber Terrorism, and Cyber Espionage:  Report of IT Security Conference held Oct. 21-22, 2008 in Fargo, ND https://www.stsauver.com/~joe/cyberwar/cyberwar.pdf accessed Sept. 22, 2017.)

October 23-27, 2017 – The Fourth International Conference on Nuclear Power Plant Life Management, organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency in coordination with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and the Electric Power Research Institute, will be held on these dates in Lyon, France (the nation with the greatest percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power).  This meeting will allegedly build on three previous conferences on the same subject held in Budapest in 2002, Shanghai in 2007, and Salt Lake City in 2012 with the aim to address, “the management of the safe, cost-effective operation of the world’s fleet of (civilian) nuclear power plants (NPPs) which are on average 20 years old even though the design life of such plants is typically 30-40 years or more.”  Comments:  While it may seem prudent for nuclear engineers and plant operation professionals to exchange essential information and procedures that might mitigate, lessen, or even prevent nuclear disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima and many other such incidents, it is more likely that such conferences are chiefly designed to persuade the public that nuclear plant operations are routine, economical, safe, and a critical alternative to dirty fossil fuel power plants.  Wrong on all four counts!  For instance, solar, wind, and geothermal energy systems have proven, especially in the last few years, much more economically feasible and competitive than nuclear power plants.  Then there is the nuclear industry mantra that nuclear energy is “zero carbon electricity,” and that there are no global warming impacts from nuclear power generation, which represents an elaborate delusion.  Zero carbon?  This is technically true during the thirty years or longer that a nuclear plant is operating, but patently wrong when we recognize the huge carbon signature of nuclear power plants during their entire life cycle.  Significant greenhouse emissions are the result of mining, transporting, processing, and mitigating harmful environmental impacts before uranium fuel is loaded into a reactor.  Then there are the emissions resulting from the construction and maintenance of large nuclear complexes including waste removal, sequestration, and very long-term storage (potentially requiring thousands or even tens of thousands of years), not to mention decommissioning, decontaminating, and restoring a nuclear site to the public commons. The nuclear industrial complex also fails to factor into the equation the long-term environmental and public health costs as well as the terrorist attack or blackmail threat and the dangerous risk of nuclear proliferation when considering the creation, operation, and decommissioning of a nuclear power plant.  (Sources:  International Atomic Energy Agency. http://www.pub.iaea.org/iaeameeting/50811/Fourth-International-Conference-On-Nuclear-Power-Plant-Life-Management, The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. http://ieer.org, and The Helen Caldicott Foundation. http://helencaldicottfoundation.org/ accessed Sept. 25, 2017.)