Speech given by Holly Adams at Genesee Valley Citizens for Peace 45th Hiroshima Day Commemoration, August 7, 2024
Nuclear weapons do not make us safe. In January this year, the Union of Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, for the second year in a row, the closest to global catastrophe it’s ever been. It may well be the most dangerous moment in modern history. There’s increasing tension amongst nuclear armed countries, climate change, famine, rising authoritarianism, vast economic inequality, and ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Russia’s president threatened in his 2024 annual speech that more direct Western intervention in Ukraine could lead to nuclear conflict. In 2026, New Start, a treaty that limits U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces, the last remaining major arms treaty, is set to expire. The latest generation of nuclear technology can inflict unspeakable devastation. A nuclear exchange between the US and Russia could end civilization. One nuclear weapon detonated over NYC would cause close to 600,000 fatalities (Federation of American Scientists). Yet despite mounting global instability, world leaders aren’t turning to diplomacy. Instead, they are building more technologically advanced weapons. Russia and the US hold the vast majority of weapons with over 5,000 each, followed by China with 500 and France, the UK, India and Pakistan with 170-290 each. Israel and N Korea have between 50-90, for a world total of 12,121 nuclear weapons. (statistica.com) The US has about 100 of its nuclear weapons based in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.
The US is planning to upgrade their nuclear arsenal in Europe with B61-12 missiles. These weapons each have the destructive power of 83 Hiroshima bombs. The US has about 400 ICBM’s (Intercontinental ballistic missiles) sitting in underground silos in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, S Dakota, Wyoming, and California, ready to be launched at a moment’s notice. If our incoming missile detection system detects “enemy” ICBM’s hurtling toward our US silos, our president has mere minutes to decide whether to launch all or some of our 400 ICBM’s. Either way, the incoming missile cannot be stopped, people will die, radiation will spread, like the smoke from last summer’s northern Canada wildfires. The destructive force of each warhead is 335 kilotons. With 3 warheads, 1 ICBM has a destructive force 50 times the destructive force of the 1 bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which killed 140,000 people outright, 210,000 eventually succumbed to their injuries, survivors faced leukemia, cancer, and other effects from radiation. But what if the president receives a false alarm? There’s no calling back a launched missile and we end up with retaliatory nuclear weapons exploding in the Midwest.
Besides these land based ICBMs the US has 14 submarines in operation carrying 24 Trident ll missiles, 6-8 warheads per missile, 9 in the Pacific, 5 in the Atlantic Ocean. Also 94 B-52 H bombers, each carrying 20 cruise missiles, 21 B-2 bombers, each capable of carrying 16 nuclear bombs. The US has 5,000 nuclear bombs, ready to be launched at the order of the President, with no restraints from Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or anyone.
https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Experience/Americas-Nuclear-Triad/
The US continues Obama’s program, launched in 2014, to rebuild the country’s entire nuclear weapons complex and replace all major weapons systems with new versions. The plan’s nearly $2 trillion cost- a proposed 30 year long avalanche of weapons industry contracts- continues in the face of the devastating global climate crises of ocean-level rise, droughts, wildfires, flooding, deforestation, desertification, famine, water shortages, with growing climate and war-displaced refugee populations. (Nukewatch Quarterly, Winter 2022-23)
We must raise public awareness of the growing danger of war among nuclear armed nations, and the humanitarian and financial impacts of nuclear weapons on communities. Every year, the 9 nuclear armed nations (the US, Russia, France, China, the UK, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea) squander billions of dollars on their nuclear arsenals ($82.9 billion in 2022). In 2022, the US alone spent approximately 44 billion dollars on nuclear weapons, the highest of any country in the world. In 2023, the 9 nuclear armed nations spent a total of $91.4 billion, or $2,898 per second, on nuclear weapons. (ICAN)
The US and the other nuclear armed countries continue to divert public funds into weapons of mass destruction and away from the real needs of their people. Physicians for Social Responsibility have a formula to calculate the cost of nuclear weapons programs to communities. In 2024, the average cost of nuclear weapons to each man, woman and child in the US is $282.12, based on a national per capita average income of $41,261. Based upon population and per capita income numbers from Syracuse Census data, the community tax cost for nuclear arms for Syracuse is approximately $26,346,500.
My town of Portage NY, with a population of 1,000, and per capita income of $13,717, the cost of nuclear weapons programs to our little rural community is $93,444. $10,025,849 is the cost of nuclear weapons programs for Ithaca NY. The cost of nuclear weapons for the Avon community, where we are gathered, is $516,600.These are tax dollars much better spent on human needs.
Our leaders will not disarm voluntarily. We the people must join together and demand disarmament. There’s a groundswell of anti-nuclear work in the US and around the world. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons, entered into force in January 2021. This Treaty established a categorical ban on nuclear weapons under international law. The Treaty was voted on at the UN, with 122 countries voting in favor. Currently, the UN Office for Disarmament Treaties Database lists 97 countries who have signed the Ban Treaty, 70 of which have ratified, making it the law of their land. These countries make clear they reject nuclear weapons, the most destructive of all weapons of mass destruction.
The Back from the Brink Campaign provides a coherent, focused and achievable strategy. It educates and builds support at the grassroots while promoting national and international policy from the ground up. Many organizations, local, state and national, have endorsed this campaign, as have many legislators. We work to increase this groundswell of community groups, national organizations, and public officials by presenting them with information about the Campaign, eliciting their support, and publicizing it.
This summer there is a nationwide effort to get elected officials, especially mayors, to make proclamations renouncing nuclear weapons buildup and threats to use nuclear weapons. GVCP has sample letters that can be edited and sent to local mayors and elected officials. The campaign focuses on 5 common-sense goals: no-first use of nuclear weapons; take weapons off hair-trigger alert; remove sole authority of any president to launch a nuclear attack; stop the program to upgrade nuclear weapons; and support the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. These goals are addressed in one piece of legislation: House resolution 77. (detail at preventnuclearwar.org.)
In June of 2024, the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) unanimously adopted a new resolution, titled, “The Imperative of Dialogue in a Time of Acute Nuclear Dangers.” For the nineteenth consecutive year the USCM has adopted a resolution submitted on behalf of U.S. members of Mayors for Peace. The resolution’s lead sponsor, commented:
“As an elected official and original sponsor of this resolution, I understand just how precious human life is. It is our responsibility as leaders to ensure we leave this earth in a better place than we inherited it.” It’s imperative that we look at the ways we utilize nuclear weapons and the threat thereof, and promote meaningful global dialogue in order to avoid nuclear war and create a culture of peace. I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with Mayors across the globe as a member of the Mayors for Peace initiative that has led the way.”
The USCM calls on the Administration and Congress to reconsider further investment in nuclear weapons, to find ways finite federal resources can better meet human needs. The USCM calls on member cities to take action to raise public awareness of the growing dangers of wars among nuclear-armed states, the humanitarian and financial impacts of nuclear weapons, and the urgent need for good faith US leadership in negotiating the global elimination of nuclear weapons. It encourages all its members to join Mayors for Peace. Mayors for Peace, founded in 1982, led by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is working for a world without nuclear weapons, safe cities, and a culture of peace. As of May 1, 2024, Mayors for Peace has grown to 8,389 cities in 166 countries and territories, with 227 US members. Jackie Cabasso is the Mayors for Peace North American Coordinator.
We urge people to get involved, ask your mayor to join Mayors for Peace, ask your elected officials to support House Resolution 77, also ask them to support Eleanor Holmes Norton’s bill H. R. 2775,
the Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Conversion Act of 2023. Learn more, stay involved.
Nuclear Weapons Do Not Make Us Safe, pdf
Holly Adams is a retired schoolteacher, and life long antiwar activist. She is a local expert on the TPNW (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons) and coordinator of Genesee Valley Citizens for Peace, an antiwar organization that just celebrated 50 years of activism.