So many Americans assume that the nuclear danger ended when the Soviet Union broke up beginning in 1989 when the nuclear arms race ended. Agreements were made between the United States and Russia to stop developing new nuclear wagons and to begin to decrease the number of nuclear weapons in the arsenal of both nations. On the contrary, Dr. William J. Perry, Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, and several other nuclear scientists and military leaders, agree that the world is in greater danger today of nuclear disaster than at any time in previous history. It is worrisome that so many otherwise intelligent and informed people thick that there is no nuclear danger today. It is even worse that the younger generations have little knowledge of the worldwide devastation that would occur so easily and instantly if a nation, group, or individual terrorist deployed even a small nuclear weapon. The nuclear weapons that exist today are capable of many times the destruction that was loosed in 1945 by the United States against the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Total casualties initially from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings totaled about 200,000. In the following decades, many times that number of people died from being exposed to the nuclear bomb radiation which resulted in various kinds of cancer deaths. Scientists simply had no idea initially of the long range effects of nuclear radiation. For that reason, the United States and Russia continued to do aboveground nuclear testing until the late 1960s. By then, a growing knowledge and understanding of radiation effects led the United States and Russia to do their nuclear testing below ground, which was not entirely safe either, as it turned out. People who lived down wind from the White Sands nuclear blast and the Las Vegas, Nevada testing have had larger concentrations of cancer as well.
During the 1980s, scientists came up with the concept of a Nuclear Winter, using computer models. A Nuclear Winter would be caused by a nuclear weapons exchange between nations, causing firestorms in the cities targeted that would emit so much nuclear-radiated soot into the stratosphere that it would begin to cover the earth, thus causing a significant temperature drop. As the naturally occurring wind patterns push the soot cover around the earth, it would eventually cover first the northern half of the earth, gradually circling until it also covered the southern hemisphere. The ash soot would be so dense that it would block out the sun, thus killing all agriculture and eventually all human and other animal life, leaving the earth an uninhabited planet. This is a hypothesis that we do not want to test out. the radiation itself would kill millions of humans right off. We can other afford to allow such a nuclear exchange.
Soon after World War II ended, there were only a few nations holding nuclear weapons: The United States, the Soviet Union (later Russia), England and France. Today there are other far less stable nations that also have nuclear weapons: North Korea, Pakistan, India, Israel. With the Middle East in such turmoil and such rogue terrorist organizations as ISIS and Al Quida in existence and spreading cells to Africa, Asia and Europe, the world is in danger of uncontrollable wars and nuclear exchanges should they get a hold of nuclear weapons. We cannot afford to have further nuclear proliferation. In face, we need to decrease then number of nuclear weapons that exist. We should not be engaged in updating or adding to our nuclear arsenals anywhere on the planet.
This is the reason that peace-loving organizations such as the Friends (Quakers) hold commemoration days to remember the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not just that we mourn the nuclear destruction of those cities and the hundreds of though sands of people that died horrific deaths due to the bombings, it is an effort to call attention to the on-going nuclear threat. That threat is alive and well. It will take aware, knowledgeable, caring, intelligent people to work to prevent a future nuclear disaster that would affect all humans on earth. It is not a dead subject. It is alive and a danger that we need to face and to work to get control of.
Please come join us in Silver City at Gough Park on August 7 at 12:30 to engage in silent meditation, followed by worship-sharing. There will ask be a talk given by Jill Hruby, the current Director of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, who will speak on Friday, August 12th at 7pm at the Global Resource Center auditorium at WNMU, about the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Young people, especially, are urged to attend the talk.
Dr. Jane Foraker-Thompson
Gila Friends Monthly Meeting
Silver City, NM 88062