Nuclear Weapons must go. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has created a situation which puts humanity at risk of nuclear war. I read in today’s Truthout an article by Ivana Nikoli Hughes in which she said that the Ukraine War has resurfaced conversations about nuclear weapons. Then she said, “but are we having the right conversations?

The Nuclear Threat

I’ve followed the work of Cynthia Lazaroff, a documentary film maker who has worked endlessly to bring attention to the risk of nuclear war. She founded a number of initiates (mentioned later) and actively promotes US – Russia relations, at time when very little is being done to undo the lack of communication between these two nations who hold 90% of humanity’s nuclear weapons. She is promoting the conversations that we need to rid the earth of these weapons of mass destruction. Here is a conversation she led among Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, and Ivana Hughes for the Nuclear Peace Foundation.

The nuclear threat is rarely discussed.³²⁷ But it should be. These are weapons of mass destruction. I decided to examine the cost of the US spending on its nuclear program. Here is what I found. From 1940 to 1998, the United States spent $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and weapon-related programs.³²⁸ Most of this money (86 percent) was spent on launch systems—B52 bombers, nuclear submarines, and missiles.

During the period of 1999–2019, the US spent on average $45 billion each year. The Congressional Budget Office is required by law to project the ten-year costs of nuclear forces every two years. For the period of 2021–2030, the Department of Defense’s and the Department of Energy’s combined costs would be $634 billion, or slightly more than $60 billion a year.³²⁹ Over two-thirds of the costs would be for ballistic missiles and nuclear laboratories.

In 2016, Congress approved a nuclear weapons spending plan that will cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion between 2017 and 2046. This expenditure represents 6 percent of all national defense spending for that period. The plan calls for improved nuclear delivery systems, nuclear warheads, and supporting infrastructure. Furthermore, China and Russia are also investing in their nuclear capabilities, continuing the Cold War arms race. The United States possesses 1,650 strategic nuclear warheads, while Russia has 1,700 nuclear warheads (Figure 1).

There are seven additional countries that have nuclear arsenals: China (350 weapons), France (300 weapons), UK (225 weapons), India (150 weapons), Pakistan (150 weapons), Israel (80 weapons), and North Korea (20 weapons). Throughout Trump’s term in office, many had great concern about his mental stability and feared that he might unleash a nuclear attack on China, Iran, or North Korea.

After the 2020 election, General Mark A. Milley called his counterpart in China and assured him that the US would not launch a nuclear attack on his country. If it did, Milley told General Li Zuocheng of China’s People’s Liberation Army that he would call to warn him. Milley called Li Zuocheng again on January 8, 2021, after the attack on Congress.

I know what I’m about say sounds bizarre, but Trump wondered: If we have so many nuclear weapons, why don’t we use them? He even threatened North Korea with nuclear weapons. He said, “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States.” If they do, “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” But, later he met a couple of times with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and made up.

A Brief History of Nuclear Weapons

In 1945 the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing between 129,000 and 226,000 civilians and soldiers.

The United States conducted 1,032 nuclear tests between 1945 and 1992: at the Nevada National Security Site; at sites in the Pacific Ocean; in Amchitka Island of the Alaska Peninsula; and in Colorado, Mississippi, and New Mexico. Fallout downwind contained radionuclides and gases transported thousands of miles away from the Nevada National Security Site by wind. A radionuclide is a radioactive form of an element. When a nuclear explosion occurs, about twelve different radionuclides are produced, including iodine and cobalt-60. People living in the US during these years were exposed to varying levels of radiation.

Project Plowshare

The American government released very little information warning people of potential effects of nuclear fallout. Fallout of radiation moved through the food chain causing cancerous diseases. In Area 10 of Yucca Flat at the Nevada National Security Site, a shallow (636 feet) underground nuclear test was conducted on July 6, 1962, to investigate the use of nuclear weapons for mining, cratering, and other civilian purposes such as open-pit mines, railroad and highway cuts, and dams.

The program was called Project Plowshare. Plumes of radioactive fallout from this test contaminated more people in the US than any other nuclear test carried out by the US military. Radionuclides carried east over Nebraska, South Dakota, and Illinois and continued eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean, bringing lower levels of nucleotides. At the time, I was living in Boston, which would have been in the path of minor levels of fallout. The test released 7 percent of all radioactive fallout on the US since testing began. The government dropped the idea of using nuclear weapons for excavation; however, it continued testing devices until 1992.

Nuclear Disaster Close Calls

Nuclear Missiles in Cuba. In 1962 the US and the Soviet Union came close to a nuclear holocaust when the US learned that the USSR was installing medium- and intermediate-range missiles in Cuba. Although the United States held an overwhelming nuclear weapons advantage over the Soviet Union, the nuclear age became front and center of international policy and politics. The American and Soviet people did not know the truth about nuclear weapons until many years later. We were told to shield ourselves with aluminum foil and newspaper and hide in the bathtub. Weapons were being used like chess pieces as one side confronted the other. Little has been done to make the world safer from nuclear weapons. No country should have these weapons.

Plan to Bomb North Korea. In 1969, President Richard Nixon ordered nuclear bombers to be put on standby for an immediate strike after North Korea shot down an American spy plane.³³⁰ Recent documents show that there was a plan to target twelve military targets each with a nuclear bomb. These bombs were at least twenty times as powerful of those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The plan was scrapped soon after it was ordered. However, in 1974 on the eve of Richard Nixon resigning as president, many were so concerned about his drunken state that the nuclear football that normally accompanies the president was removed from his presence during his last two hours before flying Nixon back to California after he resigned.³³¹

The Man who Prevented a Nuclear Holocaust. In September 1983, while I was in Moscow in a meeting among AHP and Soviet researchers just days after Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot out of the skies by the Soviets, a Soviet satellite report showing incoming US nuclear missiles was received at Serpukhov-15, the secret bunker outside Moscow.

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, the duty officer, felt the report was a false alarm. He acted on a hunch that the report, which indicated only five incoming American missiles, was wrong. If it were an attack, there would have been hundreds of missiles. He was right. And because he reported a false alarm to his superior officers, the world escaped nuclear war.³³² The false alarm was triggered by reflections from the tops of clouds. A similar episode happened in 1995 when, again, Russia thought it was under attack and nearly launched a nuclear strike.

Inbound Missiles to Hawaii. On January 13, 2018, a ballistic missile alert was accidentally issued over television, radio, and cellphones in Hawaii. The alert stated that there was an incoming ballistic missile threat to the state and that citizens should seek shelter; the message concluded, “This is not a drill.” After more than a half an hour, officials called off the alert, blaming the message on a miscommunication during a drill. However, millions of people were traumatized.

Cynthia Lazaroff, founder of Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy and NuclearWakeUpCall, lives in Hawaii on Kaua’i. She actually made phone calls to loved ones.333 Cynthia is also founder of the US–Russia Exchange Initiatives, a project that began in 1983 at the same time that the AHP Soviet Exchange Program began. Lazaroff documents the Hawaii nuclear incident in an article, “Dawn of a new Armegeddon” in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.³²⁷

There are more than 13,000 nuclear weapons in the world spread unevenly among nine countries. The US and Russia account for more than 90 percent of them. There are several organizations that report on nuclear weapons. These include the Ploughshares Fund, the Federation of American Scientists, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Nuclear Notebook.

Footnotes and some of the text in the article are from Hassard, Jack. The Trump Files: An Account of the Trump Administration’s Effect on American Democracy, Human Rights, Science and Public Health. Northington-Hearn Publishing LLC. Kindle Edition.

328 Stephen I. Schwartz, “The Hidden Costs of Our Nuclear Arsenal: Overview of Project Findings,” (Presentation, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, June 30, 1998), retrieved September 15, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/the-hidden-costs-of-our-nuclear-arsenal-overview-of-project-findings/.

329 Congressional Budget Office, May 2021, retrieved September 15, 2021, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-05/57130-Nuclear-Forces.pdf.

330 Chris McGreal, “Papers Reveal Nixon Plan for North Korea Nuclear Strike,” The Guardian, July 7, 2010, retrieved September 17, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/07/nixon-north-korea-nuclear-strike.

331 Garrett M. Graff, “The Madman and the Bomb,” Politico Magazine, August 11, 2017, retrieved September 17, 2021, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/11/donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-richard-nixon-215478/.

332 Tony Long, “Sept. 26, 1983: The Man Who Saved the World by Doing…Nothing,” Wired, September 26, 2007, https://www.wired.com/2007/09/dayintech-0926-2/.