Nuclear Weapons

A New ‘Nuclear Era’– The Same Negligent Spending (10/2/2024)

Vladimir Putin warns west he will consider using nuclear weapons (9/25/2024)

Sleeping Through the Alarm Elaine Scarry, Rachel Ablow

Global spending on nuclear weapons up 13% in record rise (6/17/2024)

“...a handful of men each have the power to end the world in a few minutes, without having to consult anyone.
It is not a group anyone would choose to have that responsibility, including as it does the likes of Putin and Kim Jong-un.
In Washington it is a choice this year between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They all bring a lot of human frailty, anger, fear and paranoia to a potential decision that could end the planet.
“You would want to have a commander-in-chief who is of sound mind, who is fully in control of his mental capacity, who is not volatile, who is not subject to anger,” Jacobsen said, referring to this year’s presidential election. From a review of Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
Years from now, the Trump administration’s wholesale withdrawal from international agreements, its “unsigning” of treaties, and its weakening of international organizations will stand out from the lies, the corruption, the incompetence, and the breaking of norms as one of its most damaging features. A partial list includes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, NAFTA, the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran nuclear deal, the Arms Trade Treaty, and, most recently, the World Health Organization. Among these, withdrawals in the nuclear arena may prove to be especially harmful. The New Nuclear Threat
By not just refusing to endorse the new UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons but also to even participate in the negotiations that led up to its adoption, the Trump administration has undermined the United States’ moral standing in the world and jeopardized its national security by doing nothing to diminish the prospects of a nuclear war." Lawrence J. Korb (7/10/2017)

NTI Launches “Make Nukes History” Campaign to Spotlight Nuclear Weapon Risks Ahead of Academy Awards (3/6/2024)

The Doomsday Machine is Still On: Nothing Can Be Changed until it is Faced (12/15/2023)

‘Buying influence’: top US nuclear board advisers are tied to arms business (11/10/2023)

It is 2 Minutes to Midnight

Arms Control Group Rebuffs Congressional Report Pushing US Nuclear Buildup (10/12/2023)

Fresh effort to ban the bomb as new generation bids for nuclear-free world (11/10/2022)

What’s next for the nuclear ban treaty? (7/19/2022)

How nuclear war would affect earth today (7/7/2022)

The Real Cost of ICBMs (6/2022)

Nuclear weapons undo governments and undo anything that could be meant by democracy ... We had a choice: get rid of nuclear weapons or get rid of Congress and the citizens. We got rid of Congress and the citizens. Thermonuclear Monarchy, Choosing Between Democracy and Doom Elaine Scarry
It is estimated that the world will spend a combined US $1 trillion on nuclear weapons from 2011 to 2021. At roughly a $100 billion a year.., we are spending about forty times more a year on unnecessary nuclear weapons than on necessary UN expenses. All these confirm that humanity at large is behaving absurdly in many ways in managing our planet. Kishore Mahbubani: the Great Convergence pg 108

George Kennan

Why does India have nuclear weapons? Why does North Korea? Because when they went to the International Court of Justice in 1995 they said to the court, “We don’t have them yet, but we’re going to get them if they’re not declared illegal.” Other countries, too, are saying that if the nuclear states don’t honor Article 6 of the Nonproliferation Treaty, which requires the nuclear states to give up their arms, then they’re going to get them too. So, yes, if you assume that we have them and they have them, then we’re all under immediate threat." Elaine Scarry
"It is my profound conviction that nuclear weapons did not, and will not, of themselves prevent major war. To the contrary, I am persuaded that the presence of these hideous devices unnecessarily prolonged and intensified the Cold War. In today's security environment, threats of their employment have been fully exposed as neither credible nor of any military utility." General Lee Butler
“the country’s nuclear arsenal includes,but is not limited to, fourteen Ohio-class submarines, each carrying the equivalent power to 4000 Hiroshima blasts. Each one of the fourteen ships carries enough power to destroy the people of an entire continent, to do this as a solo performance, without the assistance of its thirteen fellow ships. The precise arithmetic of this blast power can be hard to keep in mind. But one pair of numbers is easy to grasp: the earth has seven continents; the United States has fourteen Ohio-class submarines." Thermonuclear Monarchy, Choosing Between Democracy and Doom Elaine Scarry

In 2009, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

War

Military

Nuclear Weapons

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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Doomsday Dashboard

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Nuclear Vault

All Things Nuclear

ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons)

Pugwash Movement

Beyond The Bomb

Nuclear Security Project

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Outrider.org

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The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Reaching Critical Will

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International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

International Physicians for the Abolition of Nuclear War

Defusing the Nuclear Threat

Physicians for Social Responsibility

Non Proliferation Treaty

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FAS.org

International Panel on Fissile Materials.

KNOW NUKES Y'ALL SUMMIT

April 5 marks the 10th anniversary of the speech in which Barack Obama laid out his vision for a world without nuclear weapons. It did not gain traction. Instead, the United States and Russia are developing new nuclear capabilities, while the nuclear arms control regime is on course to expire in 2021. The result will be a world that is less stable, less secure, and less predictable. Steven Pifer (4/5/2019)
Since the rigged election and judicial coup which resulted in the illegitimate installation of President George W. Bush, and his extremist foreign policy team of nuclear hard-liners, the world has careened wildly toward the nuclear precipice. Continuing and accelerating existing nuclear war-fighting policies, Bush has radically lowered the threshold to the actual use of nuclear weapons. The current risk as measured by the “Doomsday Clock” of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reads seven minutes to midnight, the closest since 1990. Given the present confluence of international developments including 9-11, impending total war against Iraq, the Bush Nuclear Posture Review, political instability in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and the abrogation of the antiballistic Missile Treaty, the Doomsday Clock is, perhaps, running a bit slow. Nuclear Nightmare Redux. U.S. “First Strike” Nuclear Attacks. “Three Minutes to Midnight” (6/26/2015)
In the early 1960s, SAC was asked how many Russians, Chinese, and Eastern Europeans would die from its all-out attack plan. The answer was a nearly inconceivable 275 million, just from the bombs’ blasts. (Heat, fire, smoke, and radiation would kill tens of millions more, but the numbers would vary depending on wind and weather, so SAC did not count them.) Presidents and their advisers found it difficult if not impossible to imagine the conditions under which they would launch such a holocaust. Only in the basement at SAC headquarters—where targeters sat, day after day, assigning weapons to targets in a policy-free environment—did it make sense. “Look,” yelled the SAC commander General Thomas Power at a nagging policy analyst from Washington who was arguing for a war plan with fewer casualties, “at the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” The New Nuclear Threat
I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' Robert Oppenheimer

At doom’s doorstep: It is 100 seconds to midnight (1/20/2022)

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the World’s Future (1/14/2022)

The never ending cycle of nuclear insanity (9/25/2021)

Say No to Nuclear Weapons by Frida Berrigan (8/1/2021)

An All-American Horror Story: How we Sacrificed our Health on the Altar of useless Nuclear Arsenals (7/2/2021)

High-Level Group Issues Appeal to Biden and Putin to Reduce Nuclear Weapons Dangers (6/8/2021)

Accidental Apocalypse and Nuclear War on Drugs (3/28/2021)

Around WWII fundamental insights into particle physics brought the recognition that an atomic bomb was possible. Scientists driven from Europe by Hitler, migrated to the US and participated in a massive effort to assemble such a bomb, prove that it would work, and deliver it in what it was thought would end the war. It did. The complete story is well told in Richard Rhodes book ‘The Making of the Atomic Bomb’ which won a Pulitzer Prize and other awards.

The Danish scientist Neils Bohr contributed to the basic physics. Science is open, so that sooner or later a fundamental break through becomes general knowledge. Bohr cautioned that keeping development of the bomb secret would result in a nasty arms race after the war, and so it did, since he failed to persuade politicians at the time. As expected, after a few years, many countries have acquired the bomb, a political failure to ban such weapons, so we are all much less safe.

But there’s more. The insights into particle physics brought an understanding of the process that powers the sun, and the realization that the atomic bomb could be a trigger for a much larger bomb, namely the hydrogen bomb. So we created the technology to make the planet uninhabitable.

Dictators, and it's always a dictator, who threaten nuclear war are a threat to all of us, as is right wing government. That's why it is disturbing that the GOP sides with authoritarians like Putin. Humanity had better reject right wing gov. to survive.

Pugwash Note on Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament (1/30/2021)

UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Begins, Nobel Winner Asks Joe Biden to Abandon Them (1/21/2021)

Do tactical nukes break international law? (12/31/2020)

Nuclear Weapons Profiteers are Driving the Nukes Debate (11/17/2020)

Who Can We Trust With the Nuclear Button? No One (6/22/2020)

US ICBMs Are Superfluous and Increase the Risk of Mistaken Nuclear War, Report Finds (6/2020)

Trump Administration Reportedly Considered Conducting First Nuclear Test in 28 Years (5/23/2020)

Trump Budget Calls for New Nuclear Warheads and 2 Types of Missiles (2/10/2020)

US Deploys Dangerous Nuclear Weapon for First Time Ever (2/5/2020)

...with regard to Saudi Arabia, the Trump Administration has virtually obliterated the lines normally separating government policymaking from corporate and foreign interests. The documents show the Administration’s willingness to let private parties with close ties to the President wield outsized influence over U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia. These new documents raise serious questions about whether the White House is willing to place the potential profits of the President’s friends above the national security of the American people and the universal objective of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Corporate and Foreign Interests Behind White House Push to Transfer U.S. Nuclear Technology to Saudi Arabia (7/2019)

Trump abandons nuclear treaties, invents arms control. Say WHAT? (12/3/2019)

Don’t Let the New START Treaty Lapse (11/8/2019)

Are We Headed for Another Expensive Nuclear Arms Race? Could Be. (8/8/2019)

Report Accuses Trump Allies of Conspiring to Profit Off Saudi Nuclear Deal (7/2019) Vanity Fair

US firms secretly approved for Saudi Arabia nuclear work: report (4/28/2019)

How Many Minutes to Midnight ? (2/12/2019)

Trump Is Launching a New, Terrifying Arms Race (2/2019)

White House Plan to Sell Saudis Nuclear Technology May Be Illegal (2/20/2019)

House Panel Probes Trump Advisers’ Push for Saudi Nuclear Deal (2/19/2019)

U.S. stresses safety in talks on nuclear power with Saudi Arabia: Perry (9/26/2018)

Saudis Want a U.S. Nuclear Deal. Can They Be Trusted Not to Build a Bomb? (11/22/2018)

Trump’s Missile Misfire, The president is rewarding the Russians for their bad behavior by pulling out of a key treaty. (10/22/2018)

Trump says US will withdraw from nuclear arms treaty with Russia (10/20/2018)

Trump Administration Neuters Nuclear Safety Board (7/22/2018)

How Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons Changed the World (7/6/2018)

Daniel Ellsberg on dismantling the doomsday machine (2/28/2017)

‘The Trump Administration Is Threatening Another Nuclear Arms Race’ (2/7/2018)

What you need to know about the president's nuclear launch authority

Closer to Midnight: The Doomsday Clock and the Threat of Nuclear War (1/25/2018)

Beatrice Fihn Accepts Nobel Peace Prize for Group's Work to Ban Nuclear Weapons (12/10/2017))

Massive Overkill: The Pentagon's High-Priced Nuclear Arsenal (11/30/2017)

Trump Wanted Tenfold Increase in Nuclear Arsenal, Surprising Military (10/11/2017)

Trump team drawing up fresh plans to bolster US nuclear arsenal (10/29/2017))

The nuclear weapons ban treaty: Opportunities lost (7/16/2017) See more.

Saturday June 17th – New York City- Support the UN in Adopting a Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons

The Pentagon’s nuclear review posture draft calls for new low-yield nuclear warheads for US Navy submarines and for the development of sub-launched, nuclear-armed cruise missiles, which is prima facie in violation of the United Nations Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). SputnikNews
The Campaign for Treaty Compliance is about getting individuals, businesses, faith communities, schools, organizations, cities and states to be in ‘compliance’ with the Nuclear Ban Treaty. This will put pressure on the nuclear weapons industry and eventually force the federal government to implement the Treaty. Campaign for Compliance with the Nuclear Ban Treaty

What will it take to ban the bomb? Frida Berrigan (5/30/2017)

US leads boycott of UN conference to ban nuclear weapons (3/27/2017)

Why Is There So Little Protest Against Recent Threats Of Nuclear War? (4/22/2017)

The UN is discussing a ban on nuclear weapons...but the US is boycotting it.

Donald Trump’s Remarks Signal He Could Start a New Nuclear Arms Race (2/23/2017)

Countdown to nuclear ban negotiations (2/16/2017)

Bulletin of Nuclear Scientists Moves Clock closer to Midnight- Thank Trump (1/26/2017)

10 Big Nuclear Ideas

See Command and Control (the film) on-line from PBS

Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap." Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation
"The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it." Harold Pinter Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech.
Richard Nixon in 1974, when he was threatened with impeachment. Revealingly, he told reporters, “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” (quoted in Elain Scarry's book: Thermonuclear Monarchy)
"It is my profound conviction that nuclear weapons did not, and will not, of themselves prevent major war. To the contrary, I am persuaded that the presence of these hideous devices unnecessarily prolonged and intensified the Cold War. In today's security environment, threats of their employment have been fully exposed as neither credible nor of any military utility." General Lee Butler
"...Every time a president has signed a nuclear arms control treaty, the Senate has demanded an increase in spending -- or, at times, the approval of new, more lethal nuclear weapons -- in exchange for its ratification. It's unlikely that the military or Congress would tolerate unilateral reductions, however sensible they may be." Rethinking Nuclear Policy, Foreign Affairs September/October 2016.
No Use
"On the issue of nuclear weapons, the record is similarly interesting -- and frightening. It reveals very clearly that, from the earliest days, the security of the population was a non-issue, and remains so. There is no time here to run through the shocking record, but there is little doubt that it strongly supports the lament of General Lee Butler, the last commander of the Strategic Air Command, which was armed with nuclear weapons. In his words, we have so far survived the nuclear age “by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.” And we can hardly count on continued divine intervention as policymakers play roulette with the fate of the species in pursuit of the driving factors in policy formation." Noam Chomsky
Rather than continue testing its Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, the U.S. needs to become serious about meeting its obligations to achieve a world free of nuclear threats. This would require a world free of nuclear weapons, and is every bit as important as ending the dangers of climate change. David Krieger
the regular five-year NPT review conference, which ended in failure in April when the U.S. (joined by Canada and Great Britain) once again blocked efforts to move toward a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Middle East. Such efforts have been led by Egypt and other Arab states for 20 years. As Jayantha Dhanapala and Sergio Duarte, leading figures in the promotion of such efforts at the NPT and other U.N. agencies, observe in “Is There a Future for the NPT?,” an article in the journal of the Arms Control Association: “The successful adoption in 1995 of the resolution on the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East was the main element of a package that permitted the indefinite extension of the NPT.” The NPT, in turn, is the most important arms control treaty of all. If it were adhered to, it could end the scourge of nuclear weapons."  Noam Chomsky (8/20/2015)
"In periods of heightened tensions and reduced decision times, the likelihood of human and technical error in control systems increases. Launch-on-warning is a relic of Cold War strategy whose risk today far exceeds its value. Our leaders urgently need to talk and, we hope, agree to scrap this obsolete protocol before a devastating error occurs." General James E. Cartwright
the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China – each possess nuclear arms. They are legally obliged, under Article VI of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to pursue in good faith and conclude negotiations for the complete elimination of their nuclear forces. They are prohibited from engaging in activities (such as warhead modernization and the construction of new nuclear delivery vehicles) that would make this goal less likely or impossible to achieve. DontBankOnTheBomb
Plans for the future are hardly promising. In December the Congressional Budget Office reported that the U.S. nuclear arsenal will cost $355 billion over the next decade. In January the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies estimated that the U.S. would spend $1 trillion on the nuclear arsenal in the next 30 years. Noam Chomsky (2/2014)
the United States still refuses to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, despite being a signatory. Russia, on the other hand, ratified the agreement in 2000. Despite initially identifying the CTBT as a “top priority” during the President’s second term in March of 2013, the administration later acknowledged that getting Congress to move on the Test Ban fell somewhere between highly-unlikely and hopeless. Alex Ely 9/11/2014

Trump expands on tweet, explicitly endorses a nuclear arms race (12/22/2016)

Trump Says the U.S. Should Expand Its Nuclear Capacity (12/22/2016)

The UN makes history on a nuclear weapons ban. Does the US care? (11/2/2016)

US Votes 'No' As UN Adopts Landmark Resolution Calling to Ban Nuclear Weapons (10/27/2016)

Donald Trump, the Nuclear Arsenal, and Insanity (8/11/2016)

Preventing an American Fukushima (2016)

Ghosts of the Cold War: Rethinking the Need for a New Nuclear Cruise Missile (4/2016 REPORT)

The Pentagon wants to spend $1 trillion on new nuclear weapons over the next three decades. (2/29/2016)

The Invisible Epidemic: Radiation and Rising Rates of Thyroid Cancer (2/5/2016)

James Hansen’s Nuclear Fantasies (11/23/2015)

Russia Says Leak of Secret Nuclear Weapon Design Was an Accident (11/12/2015)

Mikhail Gorbachev: US Military an 'Insurmountable Obstacle to a Nuclear-Free World' (8/7/2015)

Obama Pledged to Reduce Nuclear Arsenal, then came this weapon (7/14/2015)

Revolving Door In the Nuclear Weapons Industry (7/1/2015)

US blocks nuclear disarmament document over Israel (5/23/2015)

Take Land Based nuclear Weapons off "hair-trigger" Alert

Call on Obama to cut big nuclear weapons spending

How the Obama Administration Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb: Theodore A. Postol (12/2014)

There's No Such Thing as Nuclear Democracy (9/26/2014)

Major Renewal of US Nuclear Arms (9/21/2014)

No One wants you to know how bad Fukushima Might Still Be (8/19/2014)

Why National Security Has NOthing to do with Security (8/5/2014)

Eliminate All Nuclear Weapons: Noam Chomsky (4/5/2014)

U.S. Planning to Spend 60 Billion to Modernize Nuclear Weapons (10/18/2013)

Letting Go of Our Nukes: Lawrence M. Kraus (7/6/2013)

In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (1/14/2011)

The Deeper Meaning of Hiroshima

US wants more 'usable' nuclear weapons in Europe

Bibliography

UN Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons

Thermonuclear Monarchy: Elain Scarry

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, Karl Grossman (available for FREE, thanks to the publishers, Martin and Judith Shepard.)

The Fate of the Earth: Jonathan Schell

The Unconquerable World, Jonathan Schell

The Doomsday Machine, Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner: Daniel Ellsberg

The Age of Deception, Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times, Mohamed Elbaradai

Command and Control: Eric Schlosser

The Green Cowboy: An Energetic Life, S. David Freeman (2016)

Confronting the Bomb, A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement: Lawrence S. Wittner

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster: Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich

Nuclear Power is Not the Answer: Dr Helen Caldicott

No Breathing Room, The Aftermath of Chernobyl: Grigori Medvedev