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Number 2: Strike from an asteroid or comet  Number 3: Climate change


Species Threat Number 1: 

Nuclear War, especially Accidental or Otherwise Caused Nuclear War Between the US and Russia

Go to Helen Caldicott's web site


5-09-17 - Bill Perry Is Terrified. Why Aren’t You?


11-15-16 - To me, Donald Trump wanting the US and Russia to be on good terms is most important and supremely good. The insane and dangerous to the upteenth degree nuclear weapons situation between us is the number one threat to the human race and higher forms of life. Almost everyone ignores this looming threat including presidents and politicians. People tend to think there's no solution. There are many. It's preventable - but not if we leave it as is with the four minutes to decide and hair trigger alerts. Just a matter of time for the wrong combination of factors to happen. We just need the unshakable will and prioritized decision  to do something about it. If Trump negotiated a reduction in nuclear weapons below the number that would destroy all higher forms of life, human civilization, our countries (Carl Sagan's suggested first goal), and got the ball rolling to bring the levels down to merely disastrous on local scales - then he would be the greatest hero in the history of the world.


8-20-16 - Thanks to a few of those who've stopped us from having an accidental nuclear war, something that's odds on to happen if we don't do something about the present intolerable situation that people just basically aren't aware of. I don't think our leaders can even keep it in mind. - dc

Stanislav Petrov

Vasili Arkhipov

Captian Heather E. Cole - top US Commander Under Arrest - for refusing to fire nukes against Russia. This last one is a bit hard to believe. Here's another post on it. I assume that these reports are exaggerated. There's a lot more on it on the net. Even if it's just a fiction it's not at all impossible.


8-13-16 - ACCIDENTAL NUCLEAR WAR: A Timeline of Close Calls

 

- from the Future of Life Institute


8-09-16 - If we have them, why can't we use them?

Trump on nuclear weapons - Vox


7-29-16 - Voting for survival


7-17-16 - Don't worry, nothing can go wrong - H Bombs in Turkey - Eric Schlosser in the New Yorker - thanks Michael Katz


7-01-16 - Most important thing in the world

A Stark Nuclear Warning 

- by CA gov Jerry Brown, a review in the NY Review of Books.


6-18-16 - Broken Arrows: Nuclear Weapons Accidents - one list


6-17-16 - Accidents Happen including Nuclear

- Union of Concerned Scientists - End Hair Trigger Alert


6-13-16 - Nukes are the greatest danger to us all - nuclear free zones map and more


5-27-16 - Hope and hype of Hiroshima can’t conceal Obama’s dismal record on nuclear disarmament - Guardian


1-27-16 - The Union of Atomic Scientists are not asleep. 'Doomsday Clock' to stand.


1-21-16 - People don't realize - The Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe Is Greater Today Than During the Cold War - former US Sec. of Defense, William J. Perry.


8-06-15 - Hiroshima Day post on cuke blog


9-01-14 - International Day Against Nuclear Tests Should Push Us All to Demand Global Zero


8-09-14 - Nagasaki day - this was the better bomb, plutonium instead of uranium, implosion rather than gun-type, Fat Man rather than Little Boy, but not dropped as accurately. In Japan I attended some meetings with hibakusha, nuclear bomb survivors, and their equivalent of PSR, Physicians for Social Responsibility. They kept talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I asked, "What about now?" Doesn't Japan support the US nuclear weapons program and policy? I'd hear, "We can't do anything about that." And now a quarter century later, again the question, What about now?

Is Japan Developing a Nuclear Weapons Program?

Japan Has a Nuclear Bomb in the Basement and China Isn't Happy


8-06-14 - On this anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima,

Noam Chomsky on national security, nuclear strategy, and threats to actual security and survival.

This is truly nuts - that there continues to be a serious species threat from nuclear weapons that people think has gone away. Not at all so. All the leaders and followers who buy into the nuclear weapons game are signing on to insanity. Individuals who acted this way on a local or personal scale would be candidates for permanent lockup. - DC


9-30-13 - One example of the US and the USSR coming very close to nuclear war - and not the only time - from the BBC


11-27-12 - Author Warns 'Second Nuclear Age' Is Here - NPR


8-09-11 - Remember Nagasaki, Japan's tradition Christian center. Sixty-six years ago, the year I came from, the nuclear bomb was created and used. Many more people had died in the fire bombings but the potential for these bombs was to waste the biosphere. So far we still haven't done that but people tend to think that the danger has passed. It hasn't. One of the greatest threats, maybe the greatest threat, to the human race and other higher forms of life is the use of nuclear bombs. Accidental nuclear war between Russian and the US is still possible. We still have thousands of missiles armed and ready to launch in an instant. President Obama has indicated an awareness of this and in a first for US presidents made early assertions that we should work toward a world without nuclear weapons in his lifetime but also threatened Iran with "all options are on the table."

Union of Concerned Scientists

Center for Defense Information

Helen Caldicott

See cuke's Species Threat Number 1: Accidental or Otherwise Caused Nuclear War Between the US and Russia

Check out the Nuke Songs section of DC's Defuser Music, featuring World Suicide and Freeze Please.


4-18-10 - Los Alamos Lab's CMRR-NF project would send wrong message to world By Willem Malten in the Santa Fe New Mexican - another posting in the Nuclear (pronounced like "new clear") Threat section


4-17-10 -  Updating the Species Threats section - nuclear threat department.


4-17-10 - Significant movement on nuclear weapons reduction - but not really getting below species threat level, still within psychotic planet definition.

Jonathan Schell's April 2010 article Reaching Zero in the Nation with other links and reports.

Democracy Now discussion with Schell - note the related stories links there.

Huff Post on Obama nuclear policy overhaul and Obama Nuclear Conference

Monsters and Critics: Obama's nuclear conference only the beginning

Truthdig: What Obama’s Nuclear Weapons Conference Missed


1-22-09 - From this article in UK Guardian - it's all off the new White House website. This is a super big deal - dc.

The other notable shift in US foreign policy announced today was a strategic decision to move towards a "nuclear free world", through bilateral and multilateral disarmament. "Obama and [Vice President Joe] Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it," according to the agenda. It is a long term goal. The US will maintain a "strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist", but begin to take steps on the "long road towards eliminating nuclear weapons".

The development of new nuclear weapons will be stopped, a sharp change from the Bush administration that pushed for a new generation of warheads, and the new administration will work with Moscow to take US and Russian missiles off their current hair trigger alert, while seeking "dramatic reductions in US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material".


8-06-08 - Hiroshima Day - ICAN - International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. One article on the threat of accidental nuclear war with Russia, possibly the #1 threat to the human race even today.

8-06-06 - Boston Globe Article on Hiroshima nuclear attack.

Just Google the subject and look around.

Thanks to Taigen Dan Leighton for this article.
From: http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/NewsArticle.cfm?NewsID=1533

Still on Catastrophe's Edge

by Robert McNamara and Helen Caldicott

Los Angeles Times - 04/26/2004

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-caldicott26apr26,1,1734186.story

As we continue to grapple with the United States' vulnerability to terrorist attack, we fail to recognize the most serious danger, one that is overlooked by politicians and emergency management agencies alike. Thousands of Russian nuclear warheads are targeted on the U.S.

How can this be, after the end of the Cold War nearly 15 years ago? Unfortunately, the targeting strategy of Russia and the United States has changed little, despite a profound change in relations between these two nations.

Most people believe that the threat of nuclear attack - whether by accident, human fallibility or malfeasance - has disappeared. Yet a January 2002 document from the U.S. Foreign Military Studies Office, titled "Prototypes for Targeting America, a Soviet Military Assessment," states that New York City, for example, is the single most important target in the Atlantic region after major military installations.

A U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report, commissioned in the 1980s, is still relevant. It estimated that Soviet nuclear war plans had two one-megaton bombs aimed at each of three airports that serve New York, one aimed at each of the major bridges, two at Wall Street and two at each of four oil refineries. The major rail centers and power stations were also targeted, along with the port facilities.

It's also instructive that a recent Federal Emergency Management Agency report on nuclear-attack preparedness contains a map that depicts New York City obliterated by nuclear blasts and the resulting firestorms and fallout. Millions of people would die instantly. Survivors would perish shortly thereafter from burns and exposure to radiation.

And New York would not be the only devastated city. According to a report on nuclear war planning by the National Resources Defense Council, Russia aims most of its 8,200 nuclear warheads at the U.S., and the U.S. maintains 7,000 offensive strategic warheads in its arsenal, most of which are targeted on Russian missile silos and command centers. Each of these warheads has roughly 20 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Of the 7,000 U.S. nuclear warheads, 2,500 are maintained on hair-trigger alert, ready for launching. In order to effectively retaliate, the commander of the Strategic Air Command has only three minutes to decide if a nuclear attack warning is valid. He has 10 minutes to find the president for a 30-second briefing on attack options. And the president has three minutes to decide whether to launch the warheads and at which targets, according to the Center for Defense Information. Once launched, the missiles would reach their Russian targets in 15 to 30 minutes.

A nearly identical situation prevails in Russia, except there the early warning system is decaying rapidly. As always, the early warning systems of both countries register alarms daily, triggered by wildfires, satellite launchings and solar reflections off clouds or oceans. A more immediate concern is the difficulty of guaranteeing protection of computerized early warning systems and command centers against terrorists or hackers.

The two nuclear superpowers still own 96% of the global nuclear arsenal of 30,000 nuclear weapons. It is clear that their nuclear planning and ongoing targeting are the major threats to national security.

The Senate and House armed services committees and foreign relations committees must address these ongoing and unresolved threats to the people of the U.S. and, indeed, the planet.

Russia and the U.S. are now self- described allies in their fight against global terrorism. Their first duty in this effort should be immediate and rapid bilateral nuclear disarmament, accompanied by the other six nuclear nations (France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan and Israel), along with U.N. Security Council action to ensure that no other nations - particularly Iran and North Korea - acquire nuclear weapons.

According to Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a clear road map for nuclear disarmament should be established. Time is not on our side.

Robert McNamara was secretary of Defense for presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Helen Caldicott is a pediatrician and president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute.

Please visit NPRI's web site at www.nuclearpolicy.org


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