79 Years Ago Today, August 6, 1945 - A day which we ignore at our own peril

The detonation of a nuclear weapon is a terrible event which wreaks havoc upon the globe. It never has been an individual act; 79 years ago, over a hundred thousand people died in Hiroshima from Little Boy dropped on August 6, 1945; over a hundred thousand souls were lost when Fat Man was unleashed over Nagasaki, Japan three days later. 

Both were fission bombs which are no longer used. Instead, hydrogen fusion, thermonuclear bombs fill our arsenals, and are thousands of times more powerfully destructive. 

For example, Russia’s Tsar Bomba, the most monstrous nuclear weapon ever actually detonated, was carried by a modified aircraft miles above the earth in 1961; its detonation shock waves circled the globe three times, chasing and catching the departing crew.

Sixty-five years ago, August 6, 1959, two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling filed The Hiroshima Appeal,  a statement demanding an end to nuclear detonation testing and signed by a convocation of scientists, among them most all the Nobel laureates of the time. Their signatures were obtained a la Aristophanes’ Lysastrata  by his wife, Ava Helen Pauling (who, frankly, deserved the Nobel Prize for Peace which her husband was awarded in 1960...most of those signatures were obtained by the laureates’ wives through pillow talk.)

We currently face two terrible nuclear powder-keg situations made worse by US imperial shenanigans in Ukraine/Crimea and Israel/Palestine. Both are proxy wars waged by governments who wield nuclear weapons. 

Ukraine/Crimea is really a war between the globe’s largest repositories of nukes, US and Russia. Israel/Palestine is really a war between US-backed Israel, itself a purported nuclear power, and Iran, which so far hasn’t acquired status as a nuclear power...or has it? 

According to Reuters news agency, “Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60 percent purity and has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for two nuclear weapons, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency's theoretical definition.”

Such weapons of mass destruction are too horrific to use. Yet, “[t]he US may spend more than $1 trillion (£703bn) by the 2040s upgrading its nuclear capabilities. Some of America's warheads can be found around Europe in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Turkey, which host around 150 warheads between them.” 

 Just think: what else could the US spend a trillion dollars on besides upgrading its otherwise unusable, unnecessary, and immoral nuclear arsenal?

We face important moral, political, social, and economic decisions as the November 2024 elections quickly come upon us. We will be receiving our ballots and will be able to cast our votes in October. US war policies have a long history of putting us, our world, and our neighbors in peril. It is necessary to choose wise leaders, but is not enough. We must constantly remind them of their responsibility to avoid war and work earnestly for peace in our world.