nuclear weapons
Prevent a New Nuclear Arms Race: Replace the New START Treaty
by John Whitehead The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is the last significant nuclear arms control agreement that is still in effect between the United States and Russia. New START will expire in a matter of months, on February 5, 2026. Once New START is gone, the door would be open for the…
Mourning the Dead and Protecting the Living: Remarks from the August 9th Peace Vigil
Our quarterly peace vigil against nuclear weapons fell on August 9th, the 80th anniversary of the US bombing of Nagasaki. The vigil was an occasion both to mourn all those killed by the nuclear weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to call for action against the threat posed by nuclear weapons today. Below is…
Reasons to Fear, Reasons to Hope: The Nuclear Threat after 80 Years
by John Whitehead The nuclear threat is now 80 years old. Nuclear weapons became a reality with the first successful test of a nuclear weapon, the Trinity test, in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. These weapons’ ability to destroy human lives and societies was demonstrated with horrific clarity a few weeks later when two…
Persuading People to Act against the Nuclear Threat: Some Findings and Recommendations
by John Whitehead A perennial question for activists is “How do you get people to join you?” Persuading people to accept your views on an issue and then to act on these views is a major challenge. Addressing this challenge, specifically regarding activism against the threat of nuclear weapons, is the subject of the recent…
A More Hopeful Path: Working for Peace in a World at War
by John Whitehead The following is adapted from remarks given November 9th, 2024, at the quarterly peace vigil in Washington, DC, sponsored by the Consistent Life Network. We are here today to witness for peace and for the protection of human life. We are here today to oppose the greatest threat to peace and human…
“Oh, the Hateful A-Bomb!”: Survivors’ Stories from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
collected by John Whitehead August 6 marks the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and August 9th the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. Below are some testimonials from hibakusha [bombing survivors] about their experiences. These stories serve as a reminder of both the evil done in 1945 and the fate that may…
Apocalypse Imagined: The Urgent Message of Nuclear War: A Scenario
by John Whitehead Among the recent signs of renewed attention in the United States to the threat from nuclear weapons, perhaps the most important is the book Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen. Published earlier in 2024, the book was a New York Times best-seller for several weeks and the focus of a well-attended…
Are We Finally Waking Up? Signs of New Awareness of the Nuclear Threat
by John Whitehead Nuclear weapons have threatened humanity’s survival for almost 80 years. During the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the nuclear threat received substantial attention and inspired significant anti-nuclear activism, such as the June 1982 rally against nuclear weapons in New York City that drew roughly 1 million people….
The Safety of Incredibly Dangerous Things
by Rachel MacNair A common method used to try to justify violence is to make comparisons to innocent-sounding things, saying that the violence being justified is actually safer than things that people don’t normally fear much. Here are three examples Nuclear Weapons and Radiation In my youth, when we were opposing nuclear weapons as…
Sleepwalking toward Nuclear War: The Lessons of the Able Archer Scare
by John Whitehead Since nuclear weapons were created, nations have repeatedly come close to nuclear war. The most famous episode was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Another terrifying near miss occurred 40 years ago this November. In 1983, with extreme Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, a NATO military exercise…