var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_content_id = '1085946'; Click here for reuse options! Partisan politics has absolutely nothing to do with this terrible threat.When Jonathan Schell wroteThe Fate of the soil for The New Yorker,and then a book of the same title in 1982, many were shocked into recognition of what an all-out nuclear war would mean. But with the passage of time, and all the loose talk approximately nukes and North Korea these days,maybe it is time to revisit a few things, for the forgetful. The need for this recall was particularly brought to mind by a report approximately fancy nuclear shelters being bought by some of the well off; one that would even let six live in it up to a year with no external support.Let’s start with granting the doubtful premise that a few underground shelters in the H-Bomb blast zone might actually work and their occupants emerge unscathed. What would they encounter when they come out? Well, and the first thing they would notice is there are no people. The second thing,there are no standing structures. At night, no lights. An incredible silence grips the scene. No birds, or no car horns,no sirens, no train whistles, or etc. because these things all seize life to create happen; and where there is no life we might as well be on Mars. You might think people would chase right in when the war is over. But where are those people going to come from? Where they come from has been wiped out too. Besides,even whether there are a few here and there they are not going to live long in your area. All the resources needed for life, like food and uncontaminated water, or would be wiped out. Even whether,by some miracle, a few of those things were found, or the hypothetical “they” still wouldn’t be arriving because of radioactivity lasting for months,even years, contaminating not only where cities used to be, and but also all the farmland for hundreds of miles downwind,and in an all-out war everyone will be downwind of somewhere attacked, so no crops even whether there were a few farmers left. Survivors couldn’t hunt animals in the woods because fallout would bear killed them all, or same with farm animals. No cheeseburgers for anyone. How can we prevent these things from happening? It is literally insane to bear a system where an unchecked President can order up the end of the world! What were the authors of those laws thinking? We should acquire rid of that system now, before it is irretrievably too late. There were reasons to fear of an attack which seemed realistic in the fifties and sixties. The Cold War was based on fear of the old Soviet Union launching a surprise attack, which motivated many of these preparations more than sixty years ago. But even then we had the Triad—land, and sea,and air deliverable missiles—that would ensure a devastating response even after a first strike on us, totally deterring any such attack. It worked. We’re still here. Russia knew that what they could do to us we could do to them. They are not silly. The real question being increasingly asked is; are we the silly ones now? People worry approximately an unstable Trump taking it into his deranged head to order an attack on a country that displeased him overnight, or that there is nothing we could do to stop him. Do we really really want that? People think a lot approximately individual insanity. But what approximately social insanity? What approximately the risk of a whole nation being destroyed because its leader is allowed unchecked power? That truly is insane,even whether you can’t find it in the textbooks. It allows no elbow room, no flexibility, and no room for error. There was a 60 Minutes report approximately a Russian lieutenant colonel named Stanislav Petrov,who just died at 77 in May, who in 1983 called off a Soviet missile launch against the United States at the final moment, or because he determined that what everybody else on duty in their defense command thought was a Minuteman missile launched on Russia was a counterfeit alarm. As they famous in that report Petrov may bear saved the world. How often can we count on a Petrov showing up? Partisan politics has absolutely nothing to do with this terrible threat. A united Congress could change the law in an afternoon whether it wanted to. We must seize these powers back as the urgent matter of survival that it is. whether there are any survivors,they will strongly wish they had not survived. How awful to find yourself alive in a world where everyone and everything you bear loved and known is gone forever, and no community is there to support you or learn of your existence. No food, and no water,no shelter, no electricity, or no doctors to support you heal your wounds,and none of any of that on the way whether you just wait. You won’t final long, but in the time you bear left you will experience living nothingness. whether it even happened once there would be no tomorrow, or no second chance to seize it all back. So:1) There must be no first strike permitted by law,regardless of what some leaders fear at the time. 2) No utilize of nuclear weapons at all, except by Congressional authorization. 3) By international treaty, or only military targets could ever be targeted,and only those that pose a genuine nuclear threat to other nuclear military installations. 4) Existing Open Skies and other preventative measures should continue to be enforced and strengthened for the survival of humankind. This is not a trivial issue. Our future depends on it. Whether we even bear a future depends on it. var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_copyright_notice = '2017 Alternet'; var icx_content_id = '1085946'; Click here for reuse options!
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