The Hundredth Monkey/4 Today Protective Measures Are Ineffective, And Ultimately Futile

Nuclear bombs are so hopelessly devastating that at the November, 1980 Conference of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Dr. H. Jack Geiger said,

It is my belief that any physician who even takes part in so-called emergency medical disaster planning—specifically to meet the problem of nuclear attack—is committing a profoundly unethical act. He is deluding himself or herself, colleagues, and by implication the public at large, into the false belief that mechanisms of survival in any meaningful social sense are possible.

Albert Einstein warned: "We must never relax our efforts to arouse in the people of the world, and especially in their governments, an awareness of the unprecedented disaster which they are absolutely certain to bring on themselves unless there is a fundamental change in their attitudes toward one another as well as in their concept of the future.

"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our way of thinking."

Nothing is worth playing Russian roulette with the journey of Homo sapiens.

As you and I live out our lives and set up the way for future generations, let us resolve to avoid nuclear destruction.

Why let ourselves be wiped out by not responding to the clear signs of future catastrophe?*

(*See The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell. Alfred A Knopf, Inc., 1982. It places the issue in a large perspective with a brilliant analysis of the forces at play. The Fate of the Earth is an important guide at this crucial time.)

Carl Sagan, professor of astronomy at Cornell University and creator of the "Cosmos" series, said:

What a waste it would be after 4 billion tortuous years of evolution if the dominant organism contrived its own self-destruction. We are the first species to have devised the means. There is no issue more important than the avoidance of nuclear war. It is incredible for any thinking person not to be concerned with this issue. No species is guaranteed tenured life on this planet. We are privileged to be alive and to think. We have the privilege to affect the future.

Since nuclear missiles fly both ways, neither the United States nor Russia can make itself more secure by making the other less secure.

Nuclear weapons can no longer provide us with security.

Our choice is clear:

A non-nuclear future or none at all!!!

Our life on the planet is more important than money or military power!

Do we have to be such fanatics that we destroy the world by squabbling over conflicting ideas?

Is a "cerebral itch" more important than life itself?

Is human destiny a hectic trip from Adam to Atom?

All around us we're getting messages loud and clear:

The danger of the annihilation of human civilization should not be made the subject of theoretical arguments, but be used as a basis for creating a common awareness of the alarming situation the world is facing today and of the need for exercising the political will to search for acceptable solutions.

Report of the Secretary-General Of the United Nations*

(*"General and Complete Disarmament, Comprehensive Study on Nuclear Weapons," (A/35/392, page 151, September 12, 1980.)

And again:

The overwhelming priority to do away with nuclear arms has not penetrated the collective consciousness or conscience of the general public. . . . Nuclear arms must not just be limited, they must be eliminated.

Rev. Maurice McCrackin, Community Church of Cincinnati

Rear Admiral LaRocque warns us:

It's very important for all of us today to realize that the Soviet Union is not the enemy. Nuclear war is the enemy. We're going to have to learn to live with the Russians or we and the Russians are going to die at about the same time.

So urgent is the situation that we must shortcut through our usual ways of thinking.

Humanity and world peace must be given priority above everything else.

As individuals we must act affirmatively and stop supporting the drift toward nuclear holocaust.

Dale Bridenbaugh, Richard Hubbard and Gregory Minor took their stand and resigned from highly paying positions as nuclear engineers at General Electric on February 2, 1976.

They told the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy:

When we first joined the General Electric Nuclear Energy Division, we were very excited about the idea of this new technology—atomic power—and the promise of a virtually limitless source of safe, clean and economic energy for this and future generations. But now. . . the promise is till unfulfilled. The nuclear industry has developed to become an industry of narrow specialists, each promoting and refining a fragment of the technology, with little comprehension of the total impact on our world system. . . . We [resigned] because we could no longer justify devoting our life energies to the continued development and expansion of nuclear fission power — a system we believe to be so dangerous that it now threatens the very existence of life on this planet.

The problem of nuclear poisoning of the planet can only be solved by educating the people on earth about the nuclear facts of life.

The people of the Soviet Union, the United States and all other countries can be made aware of the nuclear peril —

When the people of this earth know the facts, they will not want to live poised on the brink of nuclear annihilation!

("Mankind must put an end to war to war will put an end to mankind." John F. Kennedy.)

"The war planning process of the past has become totally obsolete. ATTACK IS NOW SUICIDE," said Thomas J. Watson, Jr., former Ambassador to the Soviet Union and President of IBM. Watson warns us against:

". . . the illusion that we cannot sign treaties with the Russians because they systematically violate them.

Let us be clear about this: there are major differences between our two countries. Soviet values are diametrically opposed to ours. Contention between us on a global scale is a fact of life. Suspicion is the keynote of our relations.

But having said that, let me add this: on the evidence, the Soviets do keep agreements provided each side has an interest in the other's keeping the agreement, and provided each side can verify compliance for itself."*

(*Keynote address at Harvard's 330th commencement on June 4, 1981.)

In 1958 a Russian nuclear installation exploded at Kyshtym. Radioactive clouds devastated the countryside for hundreds of miles. This area of the Ural Mountains is now a wasteland that cannot be safely inhabited for millennia.

It's interesting to note the U.S. Government hid this CIA report for almost 20 years.

It only came to light in 1977 under the Freedom of Information Act.

In 1981 George Kennan, former Ambassador to Moscow, and one of our foremost authorities on Russia, called for immediate, across-the-board 50% reductions in all kinds of nuclear arms as a first step by both sides. He pointed out:

We have gone on piling weapon upon weapon, missile upon missile, new levels of destructiveness upon old ones, helplessly, almost involuntarily, like victims of some sort of hypnotism, like men in a dream, like lemmings heading for the sea.

And the result is that today we have achieved—we and the Russians together—in the creation of these devices and their means of delivery, levels of redundancy of such grotesque dimensions as to defy rational understanding. What a confession of intellectual poverty it would be, what a bankruptcy of intelligent statesmanship, if we had to admit that such blind, senseless acts of destruction were the best we could do!

Dr. Jim Muller of the Harvard Medical School reports that:

In March, 1981 at a conference held by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Dr. Yevgeni I. Chazov, Deputy Minister of Health of the U.S.S.R. and cardiologist to Chairman Brezhnev and other Kremlin leaders, revealed that he had spent 35 minutes on national Soviet television discussing the medical consequences of nuclear war. The conference itself was covered in detail by Pravda, with a circulation of over 10 million, Izvestia, over 8 million, and so on. Statements about the impossibility of surviving nuclear war and appeals to world leaders to prevent it were printed intact.*

(*In June, 1982, Dr. Muller, with Dr. Bernard Lown and Dr. John Pastore, appeared on Soviet television with Dr. Chazov and two other Russian physicians. Dr. Chazov said, "We have come here openly and honestly to tell the people about our movement, whose main objective is the preservation of life on earth." They discussed such topics as the effects of a one-megaton bomb on a city, medical care for the victims and the long-term effects of radiation fallout. The one-hour telecast was seen by an estimated 100 million Russians and it was not censored.)

Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served as a five-star general in World War II and who also served as President of the United States, could speak as ". . . one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly built over thousands of years . . . ."

In 1953, Eisenhower said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed — those who are cold and not clothed.

"This world in arms is not spending money alone — it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

By 1959, this general and statesman said,

"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than are governments.

"INDEED, I THINK THAT PEOPLE WANT PEACE SO MUCH THAT ONE OF THESE DAYS GOVERNMENTS HAD BETTER GET OUT OF THEIR WAY AND LET THEM HAVE IT."

The Council for a Livable World has pointed out that military expenditures of themselves are destructive to human life — even if the weapons they stockpile are never used.*

(*The Council for a Livable World was founded in 1962 by the eminent nuclear physicist Dr. Leo Szilard to combat the menace of nuclear war and strengthen national security through rational arms control.)

The people of Earth are now spending one million dollars per minute on armaments!

Once we stop preparing to blast each other apart, we will find that we can easily solve all the world's hunger, water and shelter problems.*

(*More than $18 billion in arms sales were made to Third World countries in 1980 — up from $8 billion in 1975. Let them eat — guns?!?)

What can you and I do about the biggest problem our world has ever faced?

In case you are feeling that there is nothing you can do about the increasing nuclear menace that hangs over our heads, remember the story of the Hundredth Monkey.

You may be the Hundredth Monkey!

Your own awareness and action can be the added energy needed to make the difference between life and death for you, your family — and all of us.

Dr. Caldicott reminds us,

The power of an aroused public is unbeatable. Vietnam and Watergate proved that. It must be demonstrated again. It is not yet too late, for while there is life there is hope. There is no cause for pessimism, for already I have seen great obstacles surmounted. Nor need we be afraid, for I have seen democracy work.*

(*Nuclear Madness by Dr. Helen Caldicott, p. 93. Bantam Books, 1980. Copyright 1978, 1980 by Helen M. Caldicott.)