Nuclear weapons--a curse to humanity

On July 16, 1945, the USA detonated the first atomic bomb in the barren desert of New Mexico. Less than a month after this first explosion, it dropped two atom bombs on the heavily populated cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. This first usage of the horror bomb indiscriminately wiped out more than 100,000 civilian women, children and old people--and condemned many others to a very slow and painful death. Others were horribly maimed, burned and scarred for life. There were horrors the US wouldn't even let its own people know about, wouldn't allow pictures in the newspaper.

Since WWII, the explosive power of the combined nuclear arsenals of the US and the Soviet Union has grown to the equivalent of over 300,000 Hiroshimas! The 8,500 warheads and bombs in the US arsenal alone have a combined explosive power of more than three billion tonnes of TNT. Dr. James Muller, a Harvard heart specialist and secretary of the Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, Inc., brought this out when he said, "At some point deep down inside, people know the world could explode tomorrow. " Yet some people are just talking about it calmly as though it is the natural thing to expect--that we are going to destroy each other and the world! Do we even still remember what nuclear explosions do? Does the post-Hiroshima generation still appreciate the horror of nuclear weapons and the dangers posed by the prospect of a nuclear conflict?

Ted Rudow III, MA, CA, USA