By John Miller, Director, Peace Engineering, Inc., Altamonte Springs, Florida
My name is John Miller and I am director of Peace Engineering, a small pro-peace organization based in Florida. I am also an independent candidate for the office of president of the United States in 2004. Just days ago, two friends helped develop the primary theme for the campaign: “It’s all Local Now.” An appropriate statement for our incredible shrinking world.
There are many very difficult issues facing all the citizens of planet Earth, but few are as serious as the issue of nuclear weapons. In the short term, how can we avoid using them? In the long term, how can we eliminate all of them before they eliminate all of us?
Please refrain.
The world is so small. Proof of that, proof that we all live in one little neighborhood, came to the United States on September 11 in a most terrifying way. How sadly we rediscovered the smallness of the Earth. As never before, discussions of ‘global’ versus ‘local’ have no meaning: with the spread of AIDS, with the pervasive nature of terrorism, and especially with the monstrous capacity of nuclear weapons for destruction, distance has no meaning.
Everything is right here in our single human neighborhood. With television and telephone virtually everywhere, it’s all local now. With the internet sending information at light speed all over our tiny planet, it’s all local now. With our communal ozone layer and unified recognition that its health is critical to the health of humankind, it’s all local now. Lastly, again regarding nuclear weapons, their use is most decidedly a local issue; should we cross that terrible line, the small neighborhood of all humanity may well be completely destroyed.
It’s all local now. Please refrain.
For a moment, we are back in the 1980’s, during the time of heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. There is great emphasis and widespread interest regarding the destruction capabilities of nuclear weapons. Many apocalyptic movies appear that document the terrible human toll, and many publications address the subject, often displaying city maps with concentric circles that illustrate the damage at various distances. As in New York, the dot at center is designated ground zero. The damage and loss of life vary according to the size of the weapon; the smaller weapons - the Hiroshima bomb was 13 kilotons - are, of course, quite destructive, but the larger weapons, ranging from one to twenty megatons, give entirely new meaning to the word ‘devastation’ because they cause death and destruction on a scale that is virtually beyond comprehension. Truly, distance has no meaning; there is death in all circles.
We are back in the 1980’s, and during his speech before the United Nations Committee on Disarmament, Arthur C. Clarke is attempting to present a picture of the incomprehensible by quoting a statement written by Dr. Carl Sagan in his book Cosmos: “A full-scale thermonuclear exchange would be the equivalent of World War II once a minute, for the length of a lazy afternoon.”
Please refrain.
We are still back in the early 1980’s, and in my own attempt to present that same picture, I am traveling through the south and central part of the United States, carrying with me a measuring wheel, which I roll from the center of a city - ground zero - to a one kilometer point, where I will post the destruction that results from nuclear weapon detonation.
I leave home disappointed because I’ve not acquired the book The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone and Phillip J. Dolan, which contains information crucial to data calculation. But soon I am rolling the wheel through one of the first cities, and I find myself right in front of a government bookstore, which has several copies on the shelf. As I purchase the book, I am musing about the incomprehensibility of fate.
Now I’m flipping through the pages, and now I’m rapidly becoming overloaded by the wealth of written information and by innumerable pictures, formulae, graphs, and tables. Just as my hope for understanding begins to fade, I find, at the very back of the book, a small round plastic calculator titled, “The Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer”. Included are instructions that are easy to read, even for the amateur: “Note that the dashed lines on the thermal scale which indicate as a function of yield the thermal dose necessary for first-, second-, or third-degree burns to bare, medium skin.” So now the amateur is armed, so to speak, with a little plastic weapon with which he can attack the incomprehensible.
Please refrain.
I must tell each of you that I traveled for a month, rolled the measuring wheel through several cities and small towns, made innumerable frightening calculations, and posted many terrifying results, but even at the end of the trip, I was no closer to grasping the horror than at the beginning. Though he considered it another feeble attempt to convey, a friend suggested that I print in a newsletter his small interpretation of the nightmare:
Yesterday, a nuclear device was detonated at an altitude of one thousand feet over a small city.
Every man, woman, and child within two thousand meters of center turned to spark and disappeared.
Every man, woman, and child within four thousand meters was charred by the heat, crushed by the wave of concrete and steel, or hurled and torn by the blast.
Every man, woman, and child within six thousand meters died instantly.
A burning man tumbled across the burning field, a woman blasted against the wall burst into flames, a child in the playground was crushed under the exploding school.
A man with eyes burnt out groped and wailed for his family, a blistered woman ran down the street with her screaming, blistered child.
A man, a woman, and a child stood on the scorched hillside staring through the dust at the smoke and fire.
Please refrain.
Later in his own book, 1984: SPRING, a Choice of Futures, Mr. Clarke addresses that concept of all World War II bomb tonnage exploding every single minute: “Such a catastrophe is, of course, utterly inconceivable.” Overwhelmed, we agree, but then Mr. Clarke admits he erred! Dr. Sagan had actually written, “World War II once a second for the length of a lazy afternoon.”
Once every second. Please, please refrain.
When I was a flight engineer on the Boeing 747 with Pan American, I would often fly over both Pakistan and India. Such beauty from the air! And from the air, apart from those that are natural, there appear, of course, no boundaries, no national or political lines drawn on the Earth. It seems simplistic, I know, but I always wondered, flying over that great and beautiful expanse, why there would be any quarrels at all among the inhabitants below.
I recognize that the differences are many, the obstacles difficult; nevertheless, I write with much hope for the future and with full confidence that each of you and all of you shall, with great effort, strive to resolve and surmount those differences and obstacles at hand in a peaceful manner. Should there be the slightest supposition that I may, in some small way, contribute to that process, please do not hesitate to contact me.