After Eighty Years, Nuclear Threat Remains Grave

A nuclear war would be catastrophic. We must eliminate nuclear weapons to ensure events like the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happen again.

By Ira Helfand, The Progressive

As we approach the eightieth anniversary of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this month, on August 6 and 9, respectively, the danger of nuclear war is great and growing.

So far this year, five of the nine nations that possess nuclear weapons have been engaged in active military operations that could have, and might still, escalate to the use of those weapons. Russia continues its war of conquest in Ukraine and its oft-repeated threats to use nuclear weapons. Israel and the United States have attacked sites in Iran that might be used to build nuclear bombs.

The world can no longer indulge in the denial which has marked our thinking since the end of the Cold War. Nuclear war is a real and present danger that we must acknowledge and confront.

A large-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia, according to the best available science, would kill hundreds of millions of people in the first afternoon, and lead to a global famine that kills some six billion people, three quarters of humanity, in the first two years. Even a more limited nuclear war, as might have taken place between India and Pakistan, could trigger a global famine that kills two billion people worldwide, including 130 million in the United States.

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara famously observed that we did not survive the Cuban Missile Crisis because we knew what we were doing. Rather, he said, “We lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.”