Species Threat Number 1:
Accidental or Otherwise Caused Nuclear War Between the US and Russia
Go to Helen Caldicott's web site
8-09-11 - Remember Nagasaki, Japan's tradition Christian center. Sixty-six years ago, the year I came from, the nuclear bomb was created and used. Many more people had died in the fire bombings but the potential for these bombs was to waste the biosphere. So far we still haven't done that but people tend to think that the danger has passed. It hasn't. One of the greatest threats, maybe the greatest threat, to the human race and other higher forms of life is the use of nuclear bombs. Accidental nuclear war between Russian and the US is still possible. We still have thousands of missiles armed and ready to launch in an instant. President Obama has indicated an awareness of this and in a first for US presidents made early assertions that we should work toward a world without nuclear weapons in his lifetime but also threatened Iran with "all options are on the table."
Center for Defense Information
See cuke's Species Threat Number 1: Accidental or Otherwise Caused Nuclear War Between the US and Russia
Check out the Nuke Songs section of DC's Defuser Music, featuring World Suicide and Freeze Please.
4-18-10 - Los Alamos Lab's CMRR-NF project would send wrong message to world By Willem Malten in the Santa Fe New Mexican - another posting in the Nuclear (pronounced like "new clear") Threat section
4-17-10 - Updating the Species Threats section - nuclear threat department.
4-17-10 - Significant movement on nuclear weapons reduction - but not really getting below species threat level, still within psychotic planet definition.
Jonathan Schell's April 2010 article Reaching Zero in the Nation with other links and reports.
Democracy Now discussion with Schell - note the related stories links there.
Huff Post on Obama nuclear policy overhaul and Obama Nuclear Conference
Monsters and Critics: Obama's nuclear conference only the beginning
Truthdig: What Obama’s Nuclear Weapons Conference Missed
1-22-09
- From
this article in UK Guardian - it's all off the new White House
website. This is a super big deal - dc.
The other notable shift in US foreign policy announced today was a strategic decision to move towards a "nuclear free world", through bilateral and multilateral disarmament. "Obama and [Vice President Joe] Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it," according to the agenda. It is a long term goal. The US will maintain a "strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist", but begin to take steps on the "long road towards eliminating nuclear weapons".
The development of new nuclear weapons will be stopped, a sharp change from the Bush administration that pushed for a new generation of warheads, and the new administration will work with Moscow to take US and Russian missiles off their current hair trigger alert, while seeking "dramatic reductions in US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material".
8-06-08 - Hiroshima Day - ICAN - International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. One article on the threat of accidental nuclear war with Russia, possibly the #1 threat to the human race even today.
8-06-06 - Boston Globe Article on Hiroshima nuclear attack.
Just Google the subject and look around.
Thanks to Taigen Dan Leighton
for this article.
From: http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/NewsArticle.cfm?NewsID=1533
Still on Catastrophe's Edge
by Robert McNamara and Helen Caldicott
Los Angeles Times -
04/26/2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-caldicott26apr26,1,1734186.story
As we continue to grapple with the United States' vulnerability to
terrorist attack, we fail to recognize the most serious danger, one that
is overlooked by politicians and emergency management agencies alike.
Thousands of Russian nuclear warheads are targeted on the U.S.
How can this be, after the end of the Cold War nearly 15 years ago?
Unfortunately, the targeting strategy of Russia and the United States has
changed little, despite a profound change in relations between these two
nations.
Most people believe that the threat of nuclear attack - whether by
accident, human fallibility or malfeasance - has disappeared. Yet a
January 2002 document from the U.S. Foreign Military Studies Office,
titled "Prototypes for Targeting America, a Soviet Military
Assessment," states that New York City, for example, is the single
most important target in the Atlantic region after major military
installations.
A U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report, commissioned in the 1980s,
is still relevant. It estimated that Soviet nuclear war plans had two
one-megaton bombs aimed at each of three airports that serve New York, one
aimed at each of the major bridges, two at Wall Street and two at each of
four oil refineries. The major rail centers and power stations were also
targeted, along with the port facilities.
It's also instructive that a recent Federal Emergency Management Agency
report on nuclear-attack preparedness contains a map that depicts New York
City obliterated by nuclear blasts and the resulting firestorms and
fallout. Millions of people would die instantly. Survivors would perish
shortly thereafter from burns and exposure to radiation.
And New York would not be the only devastated city. According to a report
on nuclear war planning by the National Resources Defense Council, Russia
aims most of its 8,200 nuclear warheads at the U.S., and the U.S.
maintains 7,000 offensive strategic warheads in its arsenal, most of which
are targeted on Russian missile silos and command centers. Each of these
warheads has roughly 20 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on
Hiroshima.
Of the 7,000 U.S. nuclear warheads, 2,500 are maintained on hair-trigger
alert, ready for launching. In order to effectively retaliate, the
commander of the Strategic Air Command has only three minutes to decide if
a nuclear attack warning is valid. He has 10 minutes to find the president
for a 30-second briefing on attack options. And the president has three
minutes to decide whether to launch the warheads and at which targets,
according to the Center for Defense Information. Once launched, the
missiles would reach their Russian targets in 15 to 30 minutes.
A nearly identical situation prevails in Russia, except there the early
warning system is decaying rapidly. As always, the early warning systems
of both countries register alarms daily, triggered by wildfires, satellite
launchings and solar reflections off clouds or oceans. A more immediate
concern is the difficulty of guaranteeing protection of computerized early
warning systems and command centers against terrorists or hackers.
The two nuclear superpowers still own 96% of the global nuclear arsenal of
30,000 nuclear weapons. It is clear that their nuclear planning and
ongoing targeting are the major threats to national security.
The Senate and House armed services committees and foreign relations
committees must address these ongoing and unresolved threats to the people
of the U.S. and, indeed, the planet.
Russia and the U.S. are now self- described allies in their fight against
global terrorism. Their first duty in this effort should be immediate and
rapid bilateral nuclear disarmament, accompanied by the other six nuclear
nations (France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan and Israel), along with
U.N. Security Council action to ensure that no other nations -
particularly Iran and North Korea - acquire nuclear weapons.
According to Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a clear road map for nuclear disarmament should be established. Time is not on our side.
Robert McNamara was secretary of Defense for presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Helen Caldicott is a pediatrician and president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute.
Please visit NPRI's web site at www.nuclearpolicy.org
learn about the dread WSC, the World Suicide Club
Number 2: Strike from an asteroid or comet