{"id":70594,"date":"2016-03-07T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=70594"},"modified":"2016-03-07T11:36:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-07T11:36:00","slug":"march-this-month-in-nuclear-threat-history-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/03\/march-this-month-in-nuclear-threat-history-2\/","title":{"rendered":"March: This Month in Nuclear Threat History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DoomsdayClock_black_3mins_regmark\"<\/a>March 8, 1963<\/strong> \u2013 In an article published on this date in Life <\/em>magazine titled, \u201cEverybody Blows Up,\u201d author David E. Scherman extolled the virtues of the best-selling book Red Alert<\/u> by former RAF officer Peter George.\u00a0 The book\u2019s theme was a frighteningly realistic scenario of an unintended nuclear war.\u00a0 In the following year, two U.S. motion pictures based on this novel were released to wide acclaim in the U.S. and abroad:\u00a0 Director Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201cDr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,\u201d a black comedy starring Peter Sellers and the more serious thriller \u201cFail Safe\u201d starring Henry Fonda and directed by Sidney Lumet.\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 Over the seven decades since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hollywood as well as independent producers have provided many more films, miniseries, and documentaries about the unfortunately all too real threat of nuclear war.\u00a0 However, the still growing strength of the military-industrial-Congressional-nuclear weapons laboratories complex and the mainstream media\u2019s reluctance to report anti-nuclear and anti-militarist stories has resulted in a decades-long trend of growing militarism in American society.\u00a0 This is seen in a number of areas:\u00a0 Congress\u2019 rhetoric of \u201cthe nuclear option\u201d in reference to budget debates, the strong association of military terms to entertainment, sporting, and political events, the growing popularity of the video-computer game industry with titles embracing nuclear conflict and post-apocalyptic \u201cplay scenarios,\u201d and in many other segments of American life.\u00a0 Fortunately, a growing proportion of Americans and world citizenry are increasingly cognizant that nuclear conflict is not a game and must be prevented at all costs if our global civilization is to survive.\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 Mainstream and alternative media sources including CNN, The New York Times, Democracy Now, <\/em>and RT.com.)<\/em><\/p>\n

March 9, 1945<\/strong> \u2013 More than 25 years after the U.S. Army Air Force dropped 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs (containing napalm, thermite, and white phosphorus) on Tokyo destroying an area of some 16 square miles and killing 80,000 to 100,000 men, women, and children on this date, General Curtis Le May, in a filmed interview with the producers of an acclaimed BBC-TV documentary series \u201cThe World At War,\u201d noted that, \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until U.S. Army General Hap Arnold asked (me) the direct question, \u2018How long\u2019s the war going to last?\u2019\u00a0 And then we sat down and did some thinking about it.\u00a0 And (our study) indicated that we would be pretty much out of targets by around the first of September (1945).\u00a0 And with the targets gone, we couldn\u2019t see much of any war going on at the time.\u201d\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 This statement by General Le May, a military hawk who later endorsed preemptive nuclear war against both the Soviets and Chinese and criticized President Kennedy for not bombing Cuba during the October 1962 missile crisis, almost single-handedly discredits the long-held assumption that a full-scale land invasion of Japan would have resulted in massive U.S. military casualties on the order of half a million Americans.\u00a0 This flawed assumption justified the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during a time period that historians like Gar Alperovitz and others have proven that the Japanese were willing to accelerate their surrender declaration (if the U.S. had guaranteed that the Japanese emperor would not be put on trial).\u00a0 However, Le May\u2019s statement proves that the unnecessary use of this horrendous weapon was likely intended to intimidate the Soviet Union into accepting U.S. postwar global hegemony.\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 BBC-TV. \u201cThe World at War:\u00a0 Episode 24:\u00a0 The Bomb (Feb.-Sept.1945),\u201d 1973 https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AM0Ezh8CMb4<\/a>\u00a0 accessed February 11, 2016 and Gar Alperovitz.\u00a0 \u201cThe Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb:\u00a0 And the Architecture of An American Myth.\u201d\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, pp. 3-6, 15, 672.)<\/p>\n

March 11, 2011<\/strong> \u2013 After a large magnitude earthquake and a powerful tsunami struck northeast Japan, three of the six nuclear reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company\u2019s (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-chi facility suffered partial meltdowns resulting in the evacuation of tens of thousands of nearby residents.\u00a0 Five years later, the disaster which has claimed more than 15,000 lives so far is an ongoing catastrophe.\u00a0 During a February 2016 press tour of the site, the plant\u2019s director Akira Ono informed reporters that it may take another 40 years to complete the clean-up process.\u00a0 Currently, at the facility, around 300-400 tons of contaminated water are generated each day as groundwater flows into the plant.\u00a0 To contain this threat, TEPCO pumps the contaminated water into storage tanks.\u00a0 There are now over 1,000 tanks that contain a total of more than 50,000 tons of radiated water.\u00a0 Despite the continuing serious crisis and ever-growing concerns about the impact of radiation leaks on the population of the region, the government of Japan has approved TEPCO\u2019s restart of a second nuclear plant.\u00a0 Originally all of Japan\u2019s nuclear power plants were shut down shortly after the accident and some spoke about the need to eliminate nuclear power in that nation.\u00a0\u00a0 But reactor restarts have proceeded despite public protests.\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 In addition to the dangerous risk of nuclear power plant accidents like Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima, the tremendously out-of-control civilian and military nuclear waste sequestration, remediation, and permanent storage conundrum, as well as the terrorist targeting potential, the economic unsustainability of civilian nuclear power, and the potential for nuclear proliferation points logically to an accelerated phase-out of global civilian nuclear power plants over the next decade.\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 Eric Ozawa.\u00a0 \u201cFukushima\u2019s Invisible Crisis.\u201d\u00a0 The Nation<\/em>, Aug. 19, 2013.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/fukushima-invisible-crisis<\/a> and Yoko Wakatsuki and Elaine Yu.\u00a0 \u201cJapan:\u00a0 Fukushima Clean-Up May Take Up to 40 Years, Plant\u2019s Operator Says.\u201d\u00a0 CNN.com, <\/em>Feb. 11, 2016.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/02\/11\/asia\/japan-inside-fukushima-cleanup\/<\/a> both accessed February 11, 2016.)\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

March 12, 2013<\/strong> \u2013 At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on a January 2013 Defense Science Board report titled, \u201cResilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat,\u201d that warned of the possible vulnerability of the military\u2019s command-and-control of nuclear weapons to large-scale cyberattack, General C. Robert Kehler, head of U.S. STRATCOM, testified that in his opinion \u201cno significant vulnerabilities exist.\u201d\u00a0 Nevertheless, General Kehler did report that he had ordered an \u201cend-to-end comprehensive review\u201d of the threat.\u00a0 When asked if Russia and China was vulnerable to nuclear missile command-and-control cyberattack, he replied, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 Unfortunately the American public were unable to discover what was said on this extremely critical issue in the closed door, classified segment of this hearing.\u00a0 Cyber threats might result not only in deactivating parts of or even the entirety of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, but theoretically could also result in the launch of unauthorized nuclear strikes anywhere in the world.\u00a0 While many experts consider this possibility far-fetched, it nevertheless represents a current and future area of concern that must be addressed by all of the nuclear weapons states.\u00a0 This is yet another reason why the global nuclear doomsday machine must be permanently dismantled before the unthinkable happens.\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense \u2013 Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.\u00a0 Defense Science Board Task Force Report.\u00a0 \u201cResilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat.\u201d\u00a0 January 2013.\u00a0 Washington, DC\u00a0 20301-3140.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.acq.osd.mil\/dsb\/reports\/ResilientMilitarySystems.CyberThreat.pdf<\/a> , accessed February 12, 2016.)<\/p>\n

March 14, 1961<\/strong> \u2013 A U.S. B-52F-70 BW Stratofortress carrying two Mark-39 hydrogen bombs departed Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento, California and experienced an unexpected decompression event that caused it to fly at a lower altitude, miss its rendezvous with a tanker aircraft, and as a result run out of fuel much earlier than expected.\u00a0 The aircrew was forced to eject only after steering the aircraft away from populated areas.\u00a0 The aircraft crashed 24 kilometers west of Yuba City, California tearing the nuclear weapons from the plane on impact.\u00a0 The nuclear weapons and the high explosive conventional charges jacketing the nuclear components did not explode due to failsafe protections installed on the bombs.\u00a0 But it was never revealed how many fail safe switches were tripped in this Broken Arrow nuclear accident.\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 Many of the hundreds if not thousands of nuclear accidents involving all nine nuclear weapons states still remain partially or completely classified and hidden from public scrutiny.\u00a0 These near-nuclear catastrophes provide an additional justification for reducing dramatically and eventually eliminating global nuclear weapons arsenals.\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 Elizabeth Hanes.\u00a0 \u201cNine Tales of Broken Arrows:\u00a0 Thermonuclear Near Misses Throughout History.\u201d\u00a0 History.com<\/em>, May 22, 2012.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.history.com\/news\/9-tales-of-broken-arrows-thermonuclear-near-misses-throughout-history<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 accessed February 11, 2016.)<\/p>\n

March 21, 2007<\/strong> \u2013 Two crew members of the Royal Navy\u2019s Trafalgar <\/em>class nuclear submarine, HMS Tireless, <\/em>were killed and another crewman injured in an explosion in the forward compartment of the submarine in the onboard air purification equipment during the submarine\u2019s cruise under the ice pack of the Arctic Ocean.\u00a0 Although the Royal Navy promptly announced that the accident did not affect the ship\u2019s nuclear reactor, many nuclear experts disagreed with this assertion arguing that any <\/em>explosion onboard a nuclear-controlled submarine is a deadly serious scenario.\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 In the past, at least eight nuclear submarines, two American and the others Soviet\/Russian, have sunk with dozens of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles also lost at sea.\u00a0 Some of the nuclear reactors and warheads in these and other sunken military vessels or aircraft are leaking highly radioactive toxins affecting not only the flora and fauna of the deep, but the health and well-being of millions of people.\u00a0\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 BBC-TV America <\/em>and other mainstream and alternative news media reports and William Arkin and Joshua Handler.\u00a0 \u201cNeptune Papers II:\u00a0 Naval Nuclear Accidents at Sea.\u201d\u00a0 Greenpeace International, 1990.\u00a0 http:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/Global\/international\/planet-2\/report\/2006\/2\/naval-nuclear-accidents-arkin-pdf<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 accessed November 18, 2015.)<\/p>\n

March 27, 1983<\/strong> \u2013 Four days after President Ronald Reagan announced during a national television address that he wanted to see a world where nuclear weapons would be rendered \u201cimpotent and obsolete,\u201d by means of a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) ballistic missile defense program (later dubbed \u201cStar Wars\u201d by the news media and critics), Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov responded in a speech published in Pravda, <\/em>\u201cDefenses against ballistic missiles might appear attractive to the layman, but those who are conversant in such matters could not view them in the same way\u2026an inseparable relationship exists between offensive and defensive strategic systems and the implementation of Reagan\u2019s SDI would open the flood gates in a runaway (nuclear arms) race including all types of strategic weapons \u2013 both offensive and defensive.\u201d\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 In the decades after President Reagan\u2019s speech, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent by the U.S. and other nations to militarize and weaponize outer space despite an overwhelming global consensus against such wasteful, destabilizing, and unnecessary expense.\u00a0 The member states of the United Nations General Assembly have voted at least twice against space militarization.\u00a0 In 2000, the voting margin was 163-0 with the U.S. and Israel abstaining and six years later the final tally was 166-1 with only the United States opposed.\u00a0 There is little doubt that, although the U.S. ramped down SDI significantly many years ago, missile defense (strategic and tactical systems) research and development funding but also continued deployments may be partially responsible for renewed Cold War II spending by the U.K., Russia, China, and other nations.\u00a0 An appreciable part of the estimated one trillion dollars in increased U.S. military spending in the next 30 years, recently announced by the Obama Administration, will include nuclear weapons and missile defense systems.\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0\u00a0 Mainstream and alternative news media reports from CNN, PBS, Democracy Now<\/em>, and RT.com, <\/em>Gwyn Prins, editor.\u00a0 \u201cThe Nuclear Crisis Reader.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Vintage Books, 1984, p. 115, and Bob Preston, Dana J. Johnson, Sean J. A. Edwards, Michael Miller, and Calvin Shipbaugh.\u00a0 \u201cSpace Weapons, Earth Wars.\u201d\u00a0 Santa Monica, Calif., Rand Corporation \u2013 Project Air Force, 2002.)<\/p>\n

\"Able-Archer-83-Nuclear-Armageddon<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wagingpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March 11, 2011 \u2013 After a large magnitude earthquake and a powerful tsunami struck northeast Japan, three of the six nuclear reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company\u2019s (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-chi facility suffered partial meltdowns resulting in the evacuation of tens of thousands of nearby residents. Five years later, the disaster which has claimed more than 15,000 lives so far is an ongoing catastrophe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}