A 1937-1938 World’s Fair time capsule contained predictions about the year 6939. We might journey through the next 4000 years 2018 – 6939 on one condition: Our “new abolition” will be recognized by all nations. Abolition of nuclear weapons was sought by popes and religious leaders since the 1960’s.
Many who savored life in 2017 and still vividly recall WWII, the 1945 birth of our Atomic age, and its offspring, Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) consciously offer thanks we survived seven decades during which military history mushroomed from only two atomic weapons to nearly 16,000 in 2017.
July 7, 2017 was an extremely significant date in our history when 122 countries (out of 195) during a United Nations assembly voted unanimously to abolish nuclear weapons. News of this occurrence was cunningly withheld from USA outlets.
A prominent retired general from the southern United States told me in 2017 the US is opposed to such abolition progress in history because the production of nuclear weapons is a multi-trillion dollar enterprise providing employment for tens of thousands in over fourteen different locations of the continental USA. Locations of those nuclear facilities are available on Google.
President Obama might consider returning his 2009 Nobel Peace prize after initiating a trillion dollar “modernization” of nuclear weapons over the next three decades. Modernization only makes nuclear war more of a cataclysmic possibility. Third use of such weapons by any of the nine nuclear nations might mean nobody has jobs in the future. Since 1947, scientific writers initiated an important periodical to warn humankind we are walking extremely close to the edge of a radioactive cliff. Those physicists and engineers who brought forth “weapons of mass destruction” wrote for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists BAS). They place a “Doomsday Clock” on the front cover of each issue.
In 2017, the scientists most familiar with impending dangers including prophetic warnings from Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, moved the minute hand closer to midnight, the moment of nuclear conflagration. The clock in 2017 is two minutes, thirty seconds before 12:00.
Towards the end of 1980, a bold military officer in Honolulu confided to a dozen Catholic Action of Hawaii peacemakers: “I no longer believe in what my own country is doing!” The officer’s name will always remain a secret, just as he himself was sworn to secrecy through his high security clearance in the US Department of Defense. The officer was privy to stunning information that challenged his conscience. Without doubt, he was aware of the Pentagon’s Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) which was designed to carry out a US first strike nuclear attack on both China and the former Soviet Union. In the 1980’s there were only 200 Soviet cities with more than one million people. Pentagon planners clearly intended to obliterate a huge nation of eleven time zones. Barbaric nuclear strikes on thousands of Soviet cities was more than the officer could tolerate.
SIOP moved him to invite members in Catholic Action of Hawaii to enter the Nuclear War Policy office of Camp H.M. Smith on Ash Wednesday, March 4, 1981, place ashes upon the walls and thereby disrupt USA nuclear war plans for a few hours. The officer prepared volunteers for entry into the 3rd floor of building C-3 and drove them into Camp Smith without difficulty because the front bumper of his Volkswagen van had the clear blue marker – DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE. Security guards respectfully saluted a co-worker who was reporting for duty in pursuit of defense for the nation! Security had been breached without difficulty by the dozen peacemakers who carried only ashes in plastic bags. None went to prison for their peaceful Ash Wednesday entry into the room where global war was planned.
Daniel Ellsberg (1931- ) was indicted by a federal grand jury December 30, 1971 for releasing Pentagon Papers to THE NEW YORK TIMES, revealing truths, long denied about the US war in Vietnam. Henry Kissinger described Ellsberg as “the most dangerous man in America.” By contrast, Kissinger wrote his dissertation/thesis on means for “fighting and winning a nuclear war.”
Daniel Ellsberg and the courageous military officer in Hawaii both knew of a strategy whereby millions would be killed in the SIOP nuclear attack from the USA on China and the Soviet Union. While working in the Pentagon, could it have been President Kennedy who urged Daniel Ellsberg to inquire how many fatalities might result from the SIOP war plans?
Ellsberg received a curt reply from senior officers regarding the question on possible deaths. He opened a folder marked “TOP SECRET” in which the number was given “600 million.”
Almighty was written by Dan Zak, a book in which the shocking figure of “600 million” jumped from page 75 into my consciousness. Zak’s book is about resistance to nuclear insanity and serves as a dramatic prelude about three peacemakers, including an 80-year old nun Sr. Meaghan Rice.
They entered the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) where uranium is processed for bombs such as one small 20 kiloton widget that completely destroyed Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
Daniel Ellsberg hits an early “literary grand slam” homerun in the prologue of The Doomsday Machine by stating: “The death toll as calculated by the Joint Chiefs from a first strike on the Soviet Union, its Warsaw Pact satellites and China would be roughly 600 million. A hundred holocausts.” (p. 3)
The courageous officer in Hawaii did not write his memoirs regarding SIOP and potential devastation of China, the Soviet Union and other nations. His audacity was manifested by telling peace “activists” in Honolulu he no longer agreed with the insanity of military superiors.
Daniel Ellsberg in his 80’s admits to his new mission in life – “to see the plan is never carried out!” Dr. Helen Caldecott is an Australian pediatrician who gave up her practice to educate all against the use of nuclear weapons. She adds a blurb to 
Ellsberg’s book: “An absolutely imperative read in this day and age of Trump, Putin, Kim Jong-un and global instability.”
Six hundred million
Projected deaths by those who
Might claim sanity (haiku on SIOP)
