Checkpoint: From Hiroshima To Banning Nukes
Enzo Brandi / EyeEm
On August 4 tragedy struck in Lebanon. Explosions in the capital city of Beirut, later found to be the result of a fire in a warehouse storing a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate, caused widespread damage to the city. Windows were shattered up to 15 miles away from the blast site, while closer by at least 220 people have been confirmed dead and up to 6,000 were injured. Given the sheer scale of destruction wrought on the people of Lebanon by this unforeseen tragedy, it is no wonder that in the first few hours after the explosions some jumped to a worrying conclusion about the cause.
Rumours spread in those hours that a nuclear weapon had been detonated in Beirut. These rumours were quickly dispelled, however they speak to the very real fear lying just beneath the surface of society that one of the world’s nearly 14,000 strong stockpile of nuclear weapons could be used at any moment. Two days after the Lebanese disaster, the world reflected on the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the first instance of a nuclear bomb being used in war.
Countries With Nuclear Weapons Stockpiles
In a way, the very idea of nuclear weaponry has always been tied to fear. The U.S. Government’s formation of the Manhattan Project in the 1940’s was a direct response to the fear that German scientists were already building a nuclear weapon for Hitler. Robert Oppenheimer gave the first successful detonation of a nuclear device the gravitas it deserved when he famously quoted a piece of Hindu scripture: “ Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
When the uranium-based “Little Boy” bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and the plutonium-based “Fat Man” bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, the goal was to create enough fear in Japanese society to force the Emperor to surrender. These two bombs leveled their target cities and killed over 100,000 people. Throughout the decades of the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union invested heavily in growing their stockpile of nukes, both hoping to scare their opponent out of using the weapons at all.
The fear these weapons inspire is completely justified, and for the last 75 years it has completely permeated society. Books, movies, and even video games have made the Nuclear Apocalypse a staple of popular culture, although sometimes the picture they paint is far more optimistic than reality. If nuclear armageddon were to occur, today’s society doesn’t have the luxury of large-scale fallout shelters big enough to save enough people to restart the world. Even if these shelters did exist, fiction tells us that those left outside, who survive the initial blast, will experience radiation-induced mutations like something out of a comic book. In fact, some of the world’s most popular comic book heroes gained their abilities from exposure to radiation. The truth is, the mutations that radiation causes are less like superpowers and more like cancer.
Beyond that, it is not just humans who will have to bear the brunt of the suffering should the nukes be launched. The planet is already experiencing its sixth mass extinction event. The radioactive fallout from the bombs of a nuclear war would contaminate ecological systems far beyond the blast radius. Plant and animal life would die out on a scale not seen since a meteor impact helped wipe out the Dinosaurs, a scale the world is already heading towards without any help from nuclear weapons.
Nuclear energy can be a force for good. Despite unfortunate disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima the potential for nuclear energy to help alleviate the energy crisis facing the earth cannot be understated. It is already America’s largest source of clean energy. Every year, nuclear-generated electricity saves our atmosphere from more than 528 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions that would otherwise come from fossil fuels. That’s the same as taking all 111 million passenger vehicles in the United States off the road. Solar, wind, hydroelectric and other sources of clean energy are just as worthy of attention and investment, but to avoid the impending environmental collapse facing the world society must also invest in improving nuclear energy options.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by the United Nations on July 7, 2017. This Treaty includes a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear weapon activities. These include undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. The Treaty also prohibits the deployment of nuclear weapons on national territory and the provision of assistance to any State in the conduct of prohibited activities. The U.S. is one of a number of countries who have thus far refused to adopt the terms of the Treaty, and with President Donald Trump currently in power it is highly unlikely that America’s stance will change on the issue.
The fear of nuclear annihilation did not end with the Cold War. It will continue to permeate society as long as there are any countries with nuclear weapons stockpiles ready to repeat the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a new generation. Instead of building these weapons of war, the countries of the world should be focused on harnessing nuclear energy in order to save the planet from the climate crisis fossil fuels have helped to create. Once society changes the direction of its nuclear ambitions, the people of the world can stop being afraid of a nuclear apocalypse and start looking forward to a brighter future of clean energy.