The Bomb

As I wrote in my last blog New Belongings posted on April 1st, I recently joined the Union of Concerned Scientists. In previous decades this Cambridge, MA based group had been in the forefront of the campaign in America to abolish nuclear weapons, but I joined the organization recently because it has also taken up the cause of climate change. But little did I know the strange coincidence of events that would have me pondering this issue of nuclear weapons again, more than since my student days.

Back then in the late fifties and early sixties we had the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in Britain founded and led by Canon John Collins (1905 – 1982) an Anglican clergyman, who in the late seventies I would have the privilege of meeting at a reception in Cambridge, MA.

Then in October 1962 we had the Cuban Missile crisis. By then I was a graduate student at Glasgow University and took part in a truly historic debate that began at noon on the most crucial day of the crisis – October 26^th when many thought this might well lead to a nuclear war. Our debate went on for eleven hours!  That week was a nail-biting time with many of us wondering if this was it. I can still see Menzies Campbell, later to be leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, holding forth for nuclear disarmament; and Donald Dewar, later to be First Minister of Scotland, but then as chairman of the debate, using his authority to order a pause at 9 pm so that we could listen to the news on a radio because the situation was so intense. The following morning Kruschev backed down and the Soviet ships carrying missiles to Cuba turned around.

Since then things on this matter seemed to improve. Reagan met Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986 leading to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987. Many of us then assumed that neither the Russians nor the Americans were crazy enough to want their own countries destroyed. This policy is known as ‘mutual assured destruction’ or MAD, yes, quite. Well, it’s worked up till now.

All this has been brought into focus for me in recent days however due to a series of strange personal coincidences. On April 10th I watched the CBS program 60 Minutes. One of the items was about the final 28 pages of the 9/11 Report that have never been released and considered top secret. At question, and it is thought that these 28 pages might throw some light on it, is how did a bunch of young Arab men who spoke little English manage to come into America and in very short time take flying lessons, and then as we all know fly American airliners into the Twin Towers in New York and into the Pentagon.  According to the 60 Minutes report part of what these 28 pages have covered up all these years is that some of the terrorists received help from at least one person in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Los Angeles - their point of entry.

As I heard these lines on 60 Minutes I was reminded of some words of that big-mouthed Republican front-runner in a recent interview. When he becomes President he said he would stop financing the defense budgets of countries like Saudi Arabia and South Korea and simply give them all some nuclear weapons !  I know - he’s nuts, but he is still the Republican front runner .

Then if all this wasn’t enough, the next day I started into a new book that I’d bought at a sale recently without taking full note of its content but taken by its title: The Fate of the Earth. The author is Jonathan Schell (1943 – 2014) and was written in 1982, winning the LA Times Book Prize. As I started in I soon realized it was about nuclear weapons, how they work, their destructive power, and the likelihood of their being used, and strongly advocating for nuclear disarmament. Then that same evening - April 11^th I turn on the news and there’s John Kerry our Secretary of State making the first visit by such a senior American government official to Hiroshima, and clearly shaken by what he saw in the city and its museum to the nuclear blast that killed 140,000 people on August 6th, 1945. The report pointed out that there are now thousands of nuclear weapons in the world.

Schell’s 1982 book describes in graphic detail the incredibly powerful affects, based on what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the many tests of much larger bombs, including the more devastating hydrogen bomb, that nuclear weapons have - blasting power, mind boggling heat, and then the continuing spread of deadly radioactive substances. It is not a pleasant read.

Hiroshima after a very small atomic bomb

A modest one on down-town Boston would destroy everything inside route 128, our ring road; a not very big one would flatten the whole of Manhattan. Schell goes on giving mind-shattering details like these. Basically, he concludes that both Russia and America have enough nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery systems to destroy ALL the cities and large towns in each other’s country. Weather patterns would then distribute the radiation to the rest of the world.

But, what struck me about this 1982 book is that there is no mention of the possibility of some terrorists getting hold of one or two such weapons.  Could ISIS get hold of one? One thinks of Russia with its corrupt government, and the former Soviet states one or two of which are struggling with their economies and chaotic governments; we hope we’ve stopped – for the present – Iran from building the bomb; and then there’s the nut-case in North Korea. And we trust that all the thousands of nuclear weapons in America are in safe, sane hands.

The homemade bombs in Paris and Brussels did horrific damage, literally blowing some people to pieces. A major atomic bomb blast would be a BILLION times greater!  All it needs is just one in the hands of a suicide bomber who isn’t at all worried about ‘mutual assured deterrence’; in fact is looking forward to instant passage to heaven. I just hope and trust that all governments in possession of nuclear weapons are taking sufficient precautions.

But quite simply, humanity cannot continue to live on into the future indefinitely without an effort to rid ourselves of these monsters worldwide.   

OK I’ve said enough.  But yes, there are times when I’m shit worried. And now I’m going to read a book about the gorgeous wonders of nature.            

  New belongings

I’m long since retired, and as of last year don’t anymore hold any executive positions in any local organizations, which were basically environmental. So, still wanting to help build a better world, I have recently joined three national organizations.

The National Center for Science Education, NCSE, is based in San Francisco but I was fortunate to meet some of their staff at a meeting locally a few months ago. Their focus is to provide information and advice about keeping the teaching of evolution and climate change in our science classrooms. The NCSE has been behind some of the high-profile court cases – mostly successful – where some schoolboards have tried to introduce religiously-based alternatives to evolution in public schools. Perhaps the most famous case was in Dover, PA in 2005 when the judge, a Republican, basically caught the school-board representatives in a lie when they tried to claim that they were simply trying to promote looking at the possibility of ‘intelligent design’ when it was shown that they had inserted this phrase in their document where it had previously said ‘creationism’ which is a religious term and therefore against the US First Amendment forbidding the promotion of religion in public education. Nevertheless, a recent survey showed that 23% of biology teachers in public schools in America refuse to teach evolution – the very basis for understanding the wonderfulness of all the living creatures in this world of ours, as well as how our own bodies work. For more on NCSE’s work see their website at www.ncse.org

The Union of Concerned Scientists, UCS, is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Traditionally it has worked for greater nuclear safety, but now is in the forefront of tackling the disturbing number of broadcasters such as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and our amazing Republican Presidential candidates and the Republican controlled Congress, in their climate change denial.

We’ve known since the 19^th century that CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat. You don’t need a high school diploma to know that if you burn coal, oil, natural gas or gasoline – all of which we’re doing on a vast scale – it’s going to raise the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and lead to global warming. Our planet is the blue planet because it’s mostly water – heat water and it expands. A new report released this week predicts sea level rises of as much as ten feet by the end of the century. I won’t be around but my grandchildren will be. But Miami and both coasts of Florida won’t be, New York and parts of Boston will be inundated, and several entire Pacific island nations will disappear. A move away from fossil fuels to other forms of energy is worth fighting for, urgently. www.uscusa.org

The third organization that I’ve joined is the American Humanist Association. None of these three organizations is loved in certain obvious quarters in America; but the AHA is perhaps the most misunderstood. Here’s AHA’s own definition of itself in it’s latest newsletter: “Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.”  In the same article written by AHA’s President and Vice-President, they go on to say: “Atheism is what we don’t believe; humanism is what we do believe.” They conclude: “It’s up to us humanists and our allies to make sure that we create a desirable, fair, and just world to live in.”  www.americanhumanist.org 

Those of you who’ve known me for a while know that for many years I worked for the inter-religious organization Moral Re-Armament (MRA), now known as Initiatives of Change. www.us.iofc.org  During the years that I worked with MRA I saw it move from a basically Christian organization to an inter-religious one, and in that way be able to play an important role in facilitating dialogue between the different faith groups in the world - something very much needed today with threats from extremist groups from more than one religion.

Being true to what I honestly believe to be true about us humans and the universe we live in, I hope to use the rest of my life working with these three organizations that I’ve described to help try and leave this world in a bit better shape than it’s in at present.