The Anti-Nuke Movement:
The anti-nuclear movement opposes nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. I’m sure we’ve all heard about that.
As you’ll recall from the Thermodynamics chapter, nuclear power is the least efficient and most environmentally destructive form of energy ever harnessed, simply because turning nuclear energy into a form that’s useful to us involves more steps—meaning more chemical reactions, or a longer food chain—than any other form of energy. And in the end you have to find some way to dispose of it that will keep it safely contained for something on the order of a quarter of a million years. Nuclear power just seems powerful because you can concentrate more nuclear power into a smaller space than you can any other form of power—which is what makes atomic bombs so powerful. But that’s a complete sensory illusion, because when you look at a nuclear power plant you have no way of seeing how much energy had to be burned to build the plant, and how much energy it takes to operate it now. In terms of calories of energy produced versus calories of energy expended in the production, chopping firewood will always be the most efficient way to harness energy.
Nuclear weapons are the key ingredient that make nuclear war possible, and that doesn’t do anyone any good. As Albert Einstein once said, “If the only tool you have to work with is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” He was referring to the way available resources affect your perception of the world, by the way.
I’m sure everyone has heard about these two parts to the anti-nuke movement already. Now here’s something you probably didn’t know:
First of all, here we are, poised to invade Iran to stop them from building nuclear weapons. The funny thing about that is, we’re already waging a nuclear war in Iraq. Yeah, you heard me.
Beginning with the U.S. military involvement in the breakup of Yugoslavia, the U.S. military has been using depleted uranium ammunition. Depleted uranium makes for heavier projectiles, which makes them penetrate armored vehicles and fortifications more easily. It’s a great idea at first glance.
Unfortunately, depleted uranium is still radioactive. A lot of U.S. military personnel who’ve been exposed to a lot of depleted uranium ammunition can’t have children when they come home after the war, or else they have horribly deformed children.
Now here’s the even bigger problem: Everyone else who is exposed to depleted uranium ammunition is affected in the same way. And whenever the U.S. military uses depleted uranium ammunition in a country, after the war there’s still a whole bunch of depleted uranium lying all over the place! So anywhere the U.S. military has fought a large battle using depleted uranium ammo, the whole section of land can be rendered uninhabitable for a quarter of a million years or something like that. That means no one can live on that land or grow food on it. Leaving the land to regrow wild doesn’t solve the problem because anything else that lives on the land will be exposed to the radiation also, so you can just imagine what that’s going to mean for the environment there. And anyone, at any time now or in the future, who unwittingly moves onto the land, or eats food grown out of it, or eats wild animals that lived on it, is going to get radiation poisoning, which is going to destroy their DNA and prevent them from reproducing.
One way to look at it is that everywhere the U.S. military fights a battle with depleted uranium ammunition, that piece of land is being permanently removed from the country’s total land area—the geographical size of the country is being reduced without their borders officially being changed, in other words. Another way to look at it is that the U.S. military is killing not only the people who fought in the battle itself, but also anyone who comes to the battlefield in the future.
That means depleted uranium weapons kill indiscriminately. And that makes them weapons of mass destruction.
That means that before we invaded Iraq there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction in the country, but now there are—because we put them there.
Here’s what the Iraq Veterans Against the War have to say about depleted uranium. Who better to ask than the people who have lived through it, right? You can find out more about it on their website—and lots of other people’s websites too.
What Is Depleted Uranium?
Depleted Uranium (DU) is a toxic, radioactive, heavy metal that is the waste byproduct of the uranium enrichment process when producing nuclear weapons and uranium for nuclear reactors. Because this radioactive waste is plentiful and 1.7 times more dense than lead, the United States government uses DU in munitions/ammunition which are extremely effective at piercing armored vehicles. However, every round of DU ammunition leaves a residue of DU dust on everything it hits, contaminating the surrounding area with toxic waste that has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the age of our solar system, and turns every battlefield and firing range into a toxic waste site that poisons everyone in such areas. DU dust can be inhaled, ingested or absorbed through scratches in the skin. DU is linked to DNA damage, cancer, birth defects and multiple health problems. The United Nations classifies depleted-uranium ammunition as illegal weapons of mass destruction because of their long-term impacts on the land over which they used and the long-term health problems they cause when people are exposed to them.
How Do I Know If Have Been Exposed to DU?
DU is used throughout Afghanistan and Iraq, mostly in aircraft, tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle ammunition. You can be exposed to DU by coming into contact with any area that has been fired upon by DU munitions, any equipment that has been exposed to DU dust or anywhere DU dust has settled.
What Are The Symptoms of DU Exposure?
Depleted uranium has two different effects on the body, chemical poisoning and radiation poisoning. Symptoms are similar to those described as Gulf War Syndrome. DU may also cause respiratory problems and is known to elevate the risk of lung cancer and leukemia.
* Chronic Fatigue
* Neurological signs or symptoms
* Signs or symptoms involving upper or lower respiratory system
* Menstrual disorders
* Kidney problems
How Do I get Tested For DU Contamination?
As of now only a few states in the USA care enough to provide soldiers with DU testing. Connecticut and Louisiana have passed such legislation. However, you should keep a detailed set of records on when and where you may have been exposed, report symptoms and information to a physician and get them on record. If they persist, do not be discouraged by military doctors who seem to brush them off. If you are still on active duty, you should immediately register with DOD by calling 1-800-796-9699. Those who have left active military service should call the Veterans Administration at 1-800-PGW-VETS.
As for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A lot of people are still debating whether it was right or not. On the one side, the Japanese did start a war against the United States, and if they lost the war they started, whose fault was that?
On the other side, the Japanese had been trying to surrender for 3 for months, but the United States government didn’t accept it until after they’d dropped the atom bombs. The Japanese had been offering to surrender on the one condition that they would be allowed to keep their emperor. The Americans refused. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, the Japanese offered to surrender unconditionally. The Americans accepted it, and let the Japanese keep their emperor. I must say, that looks suspiciously like the Americans prolonged the war for the extra three months not because they had a problem with the Japanese keeping their emperor after all, but because they wanted guinea pigs for their experiment in dropping atom bombs on cities.
And of course, as we all know, killing civilians to drive a country’s political decision-making through fear is called terrorism.
But regardless of the motivation or intentions of the American politicians, to be fair, let’s consider what happened as a result of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being bombed.
First of all, quite simply, the physicists who built the atom bomb fell into the trap that I am very consciously avoiding and that the rest of the evolutionary psychology movement has fallen into. That is, those physicists understood how horrific of a weapon they built, but the politicians who made the decision on whether or not to use didn’t. So some of the greatest scientific minds in the world stretched their abilities to their limits for years in the biggest scientific endeavor that had ever been undertaken in history, and then left their discoveries in the hands of a bunch of stupid monkeys. Disaster was inevitable.
(That’s why I produce all of my work in terms everyone can understand—or I try to anyway. If official scientists don’t want to recognize me for my work, oh well, f*ck ‘em. If that’s the price of preventing my work from being turned into the next atom bomb, I’ll be glad to pay it.)
With the exception of the physicists who built the atom bomb, nobody on Earth had any way of understanding what the atom bomb was or what it could mean for their futures. People had been building ever more powerful weapons since the dawn of warfare. So why should anyone suspect this would be any different? The development of the atom bomb was just like the development of agriculture in a lot of ways—a new development that seemed to people to work better than what they’d been doing before, but no one had any way of knowing how it would turn out.
So American political leaders had no way of comprehending how powerful, and how dangerous, atom bombs were. Neither did American citizens. Neither did Soviet political leaders. Neither did Soviet citizens.
The Americans and the Soviets were using two political systems that were completely incompatible, which meant their goals were mutually exclusive. That meant that each posed a permanent threat to the other.
Now the Americans had built a huge new type of bomb. The American political system was a threat to the Soviet political system. The Soviets knew that their political system was a threat to the American political system, and they knew that the Americans knew that too. So to keep themselves safe from the Americans, the Soviets had to start building these new super-powerful bombs too.
So my question is: If two superpowers whose political systems made them mortal enemies had gone into their political conflict both armed with lots of atom bombs and no politicians or citizens on either side had any way of knowing what an atom bomb would do to a city, what do you think would’ve happened?
I think it’s safe to say that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t end World War II so much as they prevented World War III. (Or at least, they prevented the Americans and the Soviets from fighting it with nuclear weapons.)
So despite the fact that the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t make their sacrifices willingly, we owe it to them, more than to anyone else, that World War III wasn’t fought between the Americans and Soviets with nuclear weapons.