Thoughts about nuclear weapons

“A ball of superheated air would form, initially expanding outward at millions of miles per hour.”

“After one second, the fireball would be roughly a mile in diameter (…) 16,000 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly 4,000 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun.”

“Fires over a total area of about 100 square miles.”

“The fire would extinguish all life and destroy almost everything else.”

(Starr, S. ; Eden L. ; A. Postol, T. 2015. What would happen if a 800 -kiloton nuclear warhead detonated above midtown Manhattan?)

I always try to see the beauty in everything. Trees, rivers, plants, animals, art, science, humans. The last one about humans, takes a lot of time to establish a connection with my brain and creates a concept and different kinds of images through observing, analysing and creating judgements. I believe it is because we human beings, are a mix of everything. We are art, science, physics, water, nature, air, soil, all the dust, a complex of billions of atomic structures. Somehow, we have the Universe within ourselves.

So, for me, it’s very difficult to imagine that something so full of life and so beautiful can also be so bad, ugly and destructive. We create amazing things all the time, we fought against so many injustices. We create movements to move towards a better world. People over time have defended their beliefs and gave their lives to allow us to live or, at least, survive in a world with more sense of freedom, equality and justice. I’m writing this and I’m feeling so ashamed to see how people can forget about all that and simply spit into their ancestors’ graves in such an easy way. We spend so much money on wars when half of the world is dying from the lack of access to food, water and health care. We are now creating playgrounds and naval battles between each other, juggling with people’s lives. Moving towards a “rich vs poor” society.

In August 1939, Einstein wrote a letter to US President Roosevelt saying that uranium could be transformed into powerful bombs of a new type. He was afraid that the nazis may had an atomic weapon and Einstein wanted to speed up the experimental work on nuclear fission. Later on, he defended himself saying that he was not the one who released atomic energy. He believed it was only theoretically possible. This kind of thinking remains nowadays. Scientists, who know how to combine and create the components needed for a nuclear weapon, always think that this kind of powerful bomb is not gonna be used. The problem is that people choose to not look at the present facts and current conditions we live in. We choose to forget that our countries are being governed by lunatics who have the power to decide when and how to activate this kind of weapon. They can, literally and without any other opinions or thoughts, take a step to start a war, killing thousands and hurt millions. DEMOCRACY?? We cannot trust or accept that these dangerous weapons are created to be there, “just in case”, “just to be well prepared”. Bullshit. We cannot fight for peace while hypocrisy runs the world. Only the existence of these weapons means that we are waiting for something bad to happen instead of spending time and resources on something good.

On top of all that we’ve been harming the planet so much that it’s literally melting in front of our eyes. Our home is being destroyed and polluted by us, “the most creative and intelligent specie on Earth”, said someone someday. We start this war against each other and against nature and we have to stop it because it’s needed and because we can. Killing for a more peaceful and secure world is the dumbest justification ever. How can someone think that to achieve security and protection this kind of armament needs to exist for that same effect? That is so wrong. So controversial. And so so so so stupid.

For Einstein, “as long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable. That is not an attempt to say when it will come, but only that it is sure to come. That was true before the atomic bomb was made. What has changed is the destructiveness of war”. The desire for power and economic control is the genesis of all the issues and conflicts that keep existing between “nations”. We don’t need more borders, militarism or nationalism. We need unity, peaceful minds and constructive thinking. The clock is ticking and we only have two minutes before it’s too late.

By Vanessa Borges from Portugal