Today was the day in 1968 that I began my 1st job in the nuclear industry as an accountant at a Wyoming uranium mine. There still remains some fond memories, especially remembrances of many of the people I worked with, but as time went by, and although I had a successful career, I learned how to play a game that was no longer fun, honest, nor comfortable; nor satisfactorily mentally rewarding. And then, when 3-Mile Island’s meltdown event happened in the spring of 1979 I knew what it was that was so ‘muddy’ in my mind, but when one of our industry leaders at a hastily called meeting took to the pulpit and the first words out of his mouth were, in reference to concerned citizens, protesters, industry worries, the media curiosity and questions, and the abject failure of his common sense, “Let the Bastards Freeze to Death in the Dark.” After that my career became intolerable, and I resigned in May of 1980, turning my attention to my own minerals exploration company that did not include anything to do with the nuclear industry.
Earlier today I watched a well done documentary/historical movie called “Einstein and the Bomb”, and I have to say that the guilt Albert Einstein felt about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though on a much more grand and sensitive scale, was similar to my own guilty-by-association and acute awareness of the same likely inevitable final climax of the coming failure of the entire nuclear world, now not only a war weapon of mass destruction, but also another potential weapon of mass destruction as a commercial power producing industry that has become a burden upon our very ability to survive its dark and dangerous existence today.
And though Einstein’s role had little to do with war — as mine also had little to do years ago with today’s nuclear industry — nor the bombs, other than the scientific knowledge of creating the basic science that allowed the USA to be built by Oppenheimer’s government sponsored Manhattan Project, nor did Einstein have anything politically dismaying other than his wrongful exile from Germany, including his intense dislike for Hitler and the Nazi party, he explains clearly, in the movie depiction, the minor role he played in the project to build the bomb was, to him, his biggest mistake.
And it is because of this overactive feeling of ‘guilt’, that I have, but probably shouldn’t, inspired me to begin this nightly Posting of “All Things Nuclear” as a quick tool for readers to apprise themselves of the most important daily news about the threats of war and the dangers of nuclear energy, and why both should be eradicated now and forever before it is too late for humanity to survive. Every day that nothing moves us toward that world-wide goal, is one day less for our survival — as well as other life’s survival — on Planet Earth. ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There are twoYellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available tonight.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available tonight.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
“We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth. That said, we’ve been closely …
Russian military doctrine states that Russia would use nuclear weapons in the event of attacks against key Russian assets or threats to the existence …
Russia launched a supply mission to the International Space Station Thursday. The ISS, with Russian cosmonauts aboard, would probably be affected by any nuclear explosion in space. (Roscosmos State Space Corporation/AP) ~Washington Post
LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS (02/16/2024)
More proof that international moratoriums, agreements, rules of war, or any man-made pact isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. So when these kinds of contracts are made between or among nations, they are already fabrications or, more to the point, lies as soon as the ink dries, simply waiting to be dishonored and relegated to File 13 at a convenient time. What it proves is that a man’s word is no better than than his dishonest approach to all things political.
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As I have said so many times before, the only way to avoid ‘all things nuclear’ from destroying both ourselves and other living things, is to permanently rid ourselves of all manner of everything related to radioactive uranium fuel and nuclear products forever where no man can venture to recover in the future. If we continue to fail to do that, we will perish, creating by our own ignorance, the 6th Extinction. ~llaw
With a dire warning, concerns rise about conflict in space with Russia ~ from the Washington Post
Revelations that Russia may be seeking to deploy a nuclear weapon in space raise fears that go back to Sputnik and the dawn of the Space Age
Russia is developing a space-based capability to attack satellites using a nuclear weapon, an aggressive move that has alarmed U.S. national security officials and lawmakers who worry that Russia could interfere with or disable critical communications and intelligence systems, according to people familiar with classified intelligence on the matter.
“This is not an active capability that’s been deployed,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday. Kirby didn’t address questions about whether the system was designed to use a nuclear weapon or was perhaps powered by nuclear energy. But, citing earlier news reports, he said he could “confirm that it is related to an antisatellite capability that Russia is developing.”
“Though Russia’s pursuit of this particular capability is troubling, there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety,” Kirby said. “We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth. That said, we’ve been closely monitoring this Russian activity, and we will continue to take it very seriously.”
The capability is a nuclear-armed — not a nuclear-powered — weapon, said two U.S. officials, who like others familiar with the intelligence spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. ABC News first reported that Russia was seeking to deploy a nuclear weapon.
Revelationsthat Russia is developing a new kind of space weapon have resurfaced fears about the use of nuclear weapons in space that go back to the Cold War and the dawn of the Space Age.
Space today is nothing like it was in 1957, when the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik triggered a years-long space race that culminated with the United States’ moon landing in 1969. Now, there are thousands of satellites whizzing in orbit at dizzying speeds that enable everything from the blue-dot GPS signal on your phone to the image on your television. And a conflict in space that affected those satellites would have wide-ranging implications, not just for the world’s militaries but for civilians around the globe.
Deploying such a weapon would be highly escalatory and “mark a crossing of the nuclear threshold,” said Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“It would irreparably damage the low Earth orbit environment,” Panda said. “We would potentially be looking at a cascade of collisions of defunct satellites that would render large bands of low Earth orbit effectively unusable for all of humanity.”
Since the start of the war with Ukraine, the use of commercial satellites to track Russian troop movements, provide internet and communication links to the ground, and detect missile firings and guide precision munitions has heightened concerns that Russia might target those systems as well as official U.S. military and intelligence satellites.
For years, Pentagon officials have warned that their satellites are vulnerable to attack, and Russia, China and others have proved them right. In 2007, China fired a missile that destroyed a dead weather satellite. In 2021, Russia hit another dead satellite.
Exactly what the new Russia weapon is remains unclear, but the system is a “serious national security threat,” said Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“I am requesting that President Biden declassify all information relating to this threat so that Congress, the Administration, and our allies can openly discuss the actions necessary to respond to this threat,” Turner wrote in a statement Wednesday.
In his briefing to reporters Thursday, Kirby would say only that the system is “an antisatellite capability that Russia is developing.”
He said that the administration intended eventually to declassify information about the Russian system but that the information was prematurely made public, following Turner’s cryptic public statement. “The intelligence community has serious concerns about a broad declassification of this intelligence,” Kirby said, in a not-so-subtle criticism of Turner for getting ahead of the administration’s process and setting off a media frenzy about the Russian system.
Many national security space experts believe that a nuclear-powered weapon is more plausible than a warhead. But if the weapons system Turner warned about is, in fact, a nuclear bomb, its use would amount to a “suicide kamikaze attack,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Russia has a host of its own military and intelligence satellites in orbit that also would be affected by a nuclear detonation.
“You destroy yourself but hurt the other guy in the process,” he said. “If Russia tried to use a nuclear weapon in space, it would be sloppy and reckless. It would affect satellites indiscriminately, including their own.”
The installation of a nuclear weapon in space also would be a violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.
“The one inviolable law and consensus agreed to in international space law is: Do not place nuclear weapons in orbit, on the moon or on celestial bodies,” said Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, a think tank. Given the strict nature of the treaty and its widespread adoption, detonating a nuclear warhead in space “doesn’t make sense politically,” he said. “It completely destroys any credibility they have with the United Nations, and with the Chinese.”
According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a “nuclear detonation in space would immediately affect satellites within range of its EMP [electromagnetic pulse], and it would also create a high-radiation environment that would accelerate the degradation of satellite components over the long term for unshielded satellites in the affected orbital regime.”
That could include China’s satellites as well as the inhabited space station China has assembled in low Earth orbit.
“It would turn the whole world against them, and I mean including China and Latin American countries, and India as well,” Harrison said. “They would screw everyone if they used a nuclear EMP weapon in space.”
The International Space Station, which is run jointly by the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, would also be affected by a nuclear detonation. But that hasn’t stopped Russia’s aggressive tactics in space before.
In 2021, when Russia blew up the dead satellite, it created a debris field so large it threatened the ISS and forced its occupants, including Russian cosmonauts, to prepare for an emergency evacuation.
“As space gets more and more crowded, you would not be eager to cause widespread destruction in orbit,” said Jack Beard, director of the space, cyber and national security law program at the University of Nebraska College of Law. “The Russians have shown their recklessness with their antisatellite mission. It was an irresponsible move that hurt everyone, including them. So they’re not beyond doing reckless saber rattling.”
During the Cold War, the United States looked into nuclear-armed antisatellite weapons, Panda said. “But we don’t have such a capability anymore,” he said. No country does, though U.S. officials say Russia is apparently developing one. “Militaries don’t tend to value space weapons with indiscriminate effects,” he said.
Last year, in unveiling a new strategy for the U.S. Space Force, Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, said its “counterspace activities may be necessary to prevent adversaries from leveraging space-enabled targeting to attack our forces. But we will balance our counterspace efforts with our need to maintain stability and sustainability of the orbits we are required to use.”
The United States has led an international moratorium on destructive antisatellite attacks, which generate dangerous debris fields in space, and probably would not fire a missile in response, Weeden said. Still, the Pentagon has a “whole list of capabilities” at its disposal to thwart an attack, he said, including electronic warfare and cyberattacks on ground stations. But defending against attacks in space is complicated and depends on what the threats are, he said.
In a contingency, depending on the altitude at which such a weapon was deployed, it may be possible for the United States to repurpose a missile defense interceptor to take something like this out in low Earth orbit, Panda said.
A nuclear weapon has been detonated in space before, by the United States, in 1962. Called Starfish Prime, the 1.4 megaton bomb, more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II, detonated at an altitude of about 250 miles and knocked out about “one-third of the satellites on orbit,” Harrison said. “It affected our satellites. It even destroyed the U.K.’s first-ever satellite that was only launched a few months earlier.”
The effects of such a blast “are going to be felt for weeks and months,” Weeden said, because of the lingering radiation it would create.
Russia has grown increasingly concerned about the proliferation of the constellations of commercial satellites in orbit, such as those from companies such as Maxar and Planet, that have allowed real-time imagery of the war as it has unfolded. Other constellations, such as SpaceX’s Starlink internet system, which now has some 5,400 satellites in orbit, have allowed Ukraine to remain online during the Russian onslaught and have served as a communications lifeline for the war-torn country.
The capabilities are the result of a revolution in manufacturing that has allowed satellites to become smaller and relatively inexpensive, yet still enormously robust. Instead of putting up just a few large and expensive satellites that serve as easy targets, the Pentagon has increasingly looked to “proliferated architectures” where hundreds, even thousands, of satellites swarm around the globe. If one goes out, another can replace it.
Still, Moscow has experimented with its Tobol electronic warfare systems in a bid to disrupt Starlink’s transmissions in Ukraine, according to a cache of sensitive materials leaked online last year through the messaging platform Discord. It did not indicate whether any of Russia’s tests with the Tobol system were successful. But Pentagon officials have said that Russia has tried unsuccessfully to jam Starlink’s constellation.
The Pentagon’s reliance on commercial technology has even been codified in the National Defense Strategy released by the Defense Department in 2022: “We will increase collaboration with the private sector in priority areas, especially with the commercial space industry, leveraging its technological advancements and entrepreneurial spirit to enable new capabilities.”
Eight months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Lt. Gen. John Shaw, then the deputy commander of U.S. Space Command, said that he was “certain that my counterpart in Russia, whoever that is, is not very happy with Starlink, as it’s assisting Ukraine. And with commercial imagery, such as Maxar’s products, that are plastering all over the world news the things that are going on, I don’t think they’re very happy about that either. And we know that they’re probably going to take steps to try to stop those commercial services because they run counter to Russia’s national interest.”
A few days later, during a meeting at the United Nations, Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s department for nonproliferation and arms, said in a speech that the proliferation of privately operated satellites is “an extremely dangerous trend that goes beyond the harmless use of outer-space technologies and has become apparent during the latest developments in Ukraine.”
He warned that “quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation.”
A nuclear-powered weapon, such as an electronic warfare or directed energy system, would make more sense than a nuclear warhead, several space national security experts have said, because it could be targeted more precisely, frying onboard computers or rendering satellites blind.
Russia has been developing such weapons for some time, according to the Secure World Foundation. In a report last year, it wrote that a “nuclear reactor would be powerful enough to support jammers operating on a wide range of frequencies and interfering with electronic systems over a wide area,” including some of the orbits where the Pentagon parks its most sensitive satellites.
Such a system “is much more plausible than the ‘nuclear bomb asat’ [antisatellite weapon],” Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, wrote on X. “The Soviet Navy had a long record of launching reactor-powered radar satellites (from 1970 to 1988), so this would not be a new power capability for Russia, but it would be its first use in a space-based weapons system.”
Harrison agreed.
“I suspect they might want to use it against one of our big juicy targets,” he said. “For some of our military systems, you only have to take out a couple of satellites to have a huge effect.”
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available tonight.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
… nuclear reactor to generate on-board electricity, is a more likely scenario. … “The advantage is that a nuclear power source gives you power all the …
But reports of the new anti-satellite weapon build on longstanding worries about space threats from Russia and China. … Nuclear Information Project at …
This threat contrasts with that posed by TEM or another nuclear-powered ASAT, which would primarily threaten individual satellites. Low earth orbit is …
The Evil people are left alone, thereby empowered by the rest of us to do whatever their evil thoughts desire and it is all about Political power and Capitalistic control.
LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS (02/15/2024)
All we do is say “Ho-Hum” what else is new!? This nuclear world is completely out of control. To counter nukes in space, other countries will only put more nukes in space, believing that deterrence is an proliferation is the solution to ‘All Things Nuclear” ~llaw
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US has new intelligence on Russian nuclear capabilities in space
Washington CNN —
The US has new intelligence on Russian military capabilities related to its efforts to deploy a nuclear anti-satellite system in space, according to multiple sources familiar with the intelligence.
The intelligence was briefed to Congress and key US allies, and some lawmakers say it is serious enough that it should be declassified and made public. While the intelligence is concerning, multiple senior members of Congress briefed on the information on Wednesday emphasized that it does not pose an immediate threat to the US or its interests.
The system remains under development and is not yet in orbit, according to three US officials familiar with the intelligence. It’s not clear how far the technology has progressed, one of the officials said. A separate US official told CNN the threat does not involve a weapon that would be used to attack humans.
It was not immediately clear whether the intelligence referred to a nuclear-powered, anti-satellite capability or a nuclear-armed capability.
While members of Congress downplayed the immediacy of the threat, an anti-satellite weapon placed in orbit around Earth would pose a significant danger to US nuclear command and control satellites, said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. The US relies on such satellites – which he called “essential” – to ensure constant, seamless control over its nuclear arsenal.
Other countries have tested anti-satellite weapons in the past, but this would be an escalation, Kristensen said, and the US has made clear that it would react “very forcefully” to an attack on its nuclear command and control satellites.
“If it’s orbital, it’s a new level of threat [to the system], whether it’s nuclear or not,” said Kristensen, who added that even conventional weapons on an orbital anti-satellite system could pose a significant threat to the US.
ABC News first reported that the intelligence related to a Russian space-based nuclear capability.
Earlier Wednesday, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, ignited a firestorm on Capitol Hill when he issued a cryptic statement announcing that the panel had “information concerning a serious national security threat.”
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available tonight.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
It is unclear why Russia would need to use nuclear weapons to destroy a satellite. The New York Times said the United States does not have the ability …
… radiation safety, the mechanism for preventing further emergency situations at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, prescribed in numerous IAEA decisions.
The House Intelligence Committee chairman warned of a “serious national security threat” without providing details. Three sources said it pertained to …
El Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant at Avila Beach, California. Owned by PG&E.
LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS (02/14/2024)
Following is the first half of the drafted Prologue of the serialized novel I will be posting about half a chapter once every two weeks, similar in size to this Part I of the Prologue . . . Occasionally it may take you longer to read than you have time for, so you are welcome to copy the copyrighted material and read it later, or you can return to the Post # and date later to continue reading. This fictional novel will tell you more about the future world of humanity and our relationship to “All Things Nuclear” than you will ever read in the current affairs of media . . . but the nightly media nuclear news is posted, as always, further down this post . . . and the media section may be the sole section posted from day to day unless I have something to critique about an unusual incident or occurrence in our present real world situation . . . ~llaw
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El Nuclear Diablo
“Let the Bastards Freeze to Death in the Dark”
~ a retaliatory and unkind Nuclear Industry Quote after the 3-Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, directed at concerned Scientists, worried citizens, and public protesters.
By Lloyd Albert Williams-Pendergraft
Prologue
Juneau, Alaska
Spring, 2026
Does it really matter who, exactly, is to blame, or why humankind is savagely devouring the native resources of planet Earth until there soon will be nothing left but lichenless barren rocks, the salty seas, countless grains of sand, and a poisonous atmosphere? It ought to be not enough to just know it is a critical unvarnished ugly truth. The question should be more like, “When will it happen and is there no way out of it?” Should it not?
I can only wonder if highly intelligent, but virulent, forms of our human species have, for countless eons, long traveled through the universal cosmos continually seeking, finding, and lavishly consuming, ultimately ravaging the natural resources, the flora and the fauna, devas ting the environments of this and other living rich blue-green planets also once full of fossil fuels and innocent living resources similar to Earth’s in order to ensure and serve their own survival at the expense of all else in their way. Obviously, we are the only species on this planet who rape and ravage the earth with such savagely uncontrolled vigor on such a large scale. We are the ultimate u ultimate fungus, the ultimate lethal mushrooms. And I have to also wonder if there are not multiple, or at least two species of us.
Not to ridicule Darwin at all, but does his theory of evolution, based on studies of inbreeding pigeons and chickens, really make much sense to you in this context? Does it not seem to you that we humans may be collectively aggressively demanding, ruthless, impolite, unwelcome extra-terrestrial galaxy-trotting invaders doing our parasitic thing here on Earth rather than a native natural-born integral integrated key part of our indigenous homo-sapiens and the native animal population—as Darwin would have us believe? What about the Octopus, sir?
Could it be possible we or they are simply biologically genetically patterned to look and act like homo sapiens? Or perhaps vice versa? At least some of us? Maybe even a whole lot of us? How do we know the difference between the real human beings and genetically altered or cloned ones? Which one am I? Which one are you? Do any of us know? I use the terms “we”, “us” or “our” and “they”, or “them”, or “their“ interchangeably here because in this context I don’t know who or what I am—an “us” or a “them”.
I just know that I am extremely uncomfortable with our or their willfully passionate desire to destroy everything on the planet for personal power, wealth, and a life of comfort at the expense of the rest of us or them. I don’t know about you, but it sure seems to be that way to me, so that’s why I consider myself to be an us.
At the very least we need to consider the possibility of at least one species of them and one of us. The only way we will ever know who we really are is through our unfettered natural mindful emotions—our feelings of love, care, and respect for Planet Earth, ourselves, and all her fauna and flora—or, conversely, our unnatural lack of those emotions or feelings. Yet we often disguise these characteristics, presenting the opposite of ourselves as themselves, or the other way around. But despite the hidden complexity, our future may depend on solving this psychological dilemma .
If our demise (at least partially) has happened before, it will likely happen again. And there is, in today’s worlds, a very quick, relatively easy long-lasting, if not eternally, way to create such a scenario as an extinction level event, not from an act of nature or a god, but from our own actions. ~llaw (Winter, 2026)
# Before the Beginning of the End
Our small party of seven women (including two teen-aged daughters) and five men (one a teen son) left California from Carmel Bay bound for Juneau, Alaska, on a rainy Friday morning five days after the “accident” that began at Pacific Gas and Electric’s El Diablo Cañón nuclear power plant on a sunny Monday morning, disrupting the entire United States electrical power grid system in a single day before becoming a global disaster by Thursday afternoon. We all knew what had happened and we knew it was not an accident like the MSM was reporting to all of us around the world until by Thursday morning there was no reporting at all. What our little group did not know was who and what was responsible, but we all had our own suspicions. No one wanted to discuss them, because at this point it didn’t really matter anyway. The irrevocable damage was done. We also knew the rain was not a good thing now, or in the long run as time goes by. But, laughably enough, one of us who had the foresight to bring along a Geiger counter reported excitedly, a wide grin on his face, “Hey, it’s okay for now.” No one smiled back. We had a long way to go and we were no more than a mere one hundred and fifty miles north of the remains of the Diablo nuclear facility releasing massive doses of nuclear radiation from every ruptured cell it had, both internally and from its own filthy poisonous airborne waste.
# Back in the Day
More than fifty years have passed since I first learned that nuclear power plants and weapons of mass destruction were fueled by uranium, an element my well-worn dog-eared Webster’s 1940-something dictionary defined essentially as a “worthless low-level radioactive mineral found in the ground.” The reason I remember this definition is because of a letter I received in January of 1969 from a mining company in central Wyoming’s “Gas Hills”, oddly named Lucky Mc (pronounced “Lucky Mac”) Mine, inviting me to an employment interview at the mine site and to please call to set up a date and time for the meeting. I had that old broke-spine 1940s Webster’s dictionary on my bookshelf in our small trailer house, so I looked up the definition. What the hell had changed? What were nuclear plants’ and nuclear bombs’ ingredients if not refined uranium? Of course, I was pretty sure I knew the answer.
The mine, I was told in the letter, was owned by a company known as Utah Construction and Mining Company, which was then best known for building the Hoover Dam, but was now a major player in mining, primarily of coal and uranium. Intrigued, I found a pay phone at the General Store in Elk Mountain, Wyoming, and made the telephone call.
The interview took place a couple of weeks later in mid-January, and I was offered a job as a senior accountant, which I immediately accepted, ending my old job as a field office manager for a highway construction company that had recently transferred me from Grand Junction, Colorado, to a new project between Laramie and Rawlins in southern Wyoming. So I had set up shop in an office trailer halfway between the two towns, preparing for road construction to begin in early spring.
But having a growing family with two young pre-school children and an infant daughter, I was thankful for the opportunity to settle into a new life in a more permanent location than highway construction offered, so I was pleased to accept the job offer.
As I learned my new job, I soon became the chief accountant and then the administrative manager at the mine, directly overseeing more than one hundred employees white collar employees. The company grew rapidly in its uranium branch to include a new mine known as the “Shirley Basin Mine,” blossoming Utah Construction and Mining Company into a new and more sophisticated reformed Utah International Inc, and a bit later, a major subsidiary of General Electric Company, which, among other well-known products, manufactured not-so well-known nuclear reactors. Eventually, the uranium mining division was spun off as Pathfinder Mines Corp. to avoid potential conflicts of interest. During those early days, I learned a lot about the mining and milling operations, including security, health and safety, as well as how the fuel production, the multi-step enriching process, governmental regulation, and how the marketing and selling of uranium was accomplished. In the beginning the only customer the company, as well as the entire uranium industry, had was the United States’ Atomic Energy Commission, and we were the major producer and provider of relatively stable basic enriched uranium (U308), which would be refined into U238, the active isotope in nuclear reactors, to the government (including the TVA) until deregulation allowed us to sell mill refined U3O8 uranium to operational nuclear power plants as well as plants under construction and in development.
One of these new nuclear power stations was Pacific Gas and Electric’s under construction facility, known as the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, in San Luis Obispo County, California, near Avila Beach. The original facility, Unit 1 of course, began construction in 1968 followed by Unit 2 in 1970. During the following decade Utah Construction & Mining Company, by then known as Utah International Inc, profited immensely from our sale of uranium to American, Canadian, French, German, and other nuclear power facilities around the world. Doing business with PG&E was one of my first clues that rules and regulations were meant to be manipulated and broken by aggressive dollar-worshiping companies. But that’s another story, part of which I will relate later in the book.
What happened at Diablo Canyon between early 2024 and its planned decommission in late 2025, and the beginning of the horrid global devastation that followed just two short years later, is what this story is all about, and it shames me every day of my life that I was once a willing contributor to the shape of the macabre issues to come within the nuclear power industry. There are few of us left alive who know the factually complete and chronological entirety of this doomsday tale, but I am thankful and even proud to be one of the few because I have the knowledge and the motivation to relate this horrific tale. I have an absolute moral and ethical obligation to pass my knowledge of this world-class man-made armageddon (spelled here with a small but still doomsday-deadly “a”) event along to those few who will come after the rest of us, hoping to go a different way whether it be for better or for worse. Your choices and your chances are extremely limited, and I wish you, as well as all of “us”, all the best.
At an overly ripe seventy-something years old, as I write this dystopian-like tale, my mind is clear and fixed on the events that led to this catastrophe that with proper regulatory enforcement and diligent responsibility of the American government and industry corporate officials might never have happened. A common failure of mankind is to brazenly think of ourselves as collectively invincible, making us just delusional enough to fool ourselves into believing that we are smarter, brainier, and more resourceful than Mother Nature. We have proven ourselves wrong countless times concerning thousands of vital issues, but through the ages we have made and continue to make the same mistakes repeatedly. Who was the wise man who said, “The definition of insanity is making the same mistakes over and over again but expecting different results.”?
Just the relatively minor accidents at nuclear facilities (most of them politically covered up or not commonly known) over the years including the more well-known Hanford (Richland), Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima—along with the common political knowledge that several nations’—not all of whom were American allies—ability to cyber-attack our nuclear power plants and our electrical distribution grid systems, ought to have been enough to give us fair warning that—contrary to pseudo-science, corporate greed, political belief and public opinion—nuclear power was never safe, but in reality was the single most dangerous and destructive power generating concept ever developed for all kinds of reprehensible reasons. When something goes nuclear wrong, it goes irreparably wrong, most likely impossible to control or recover from the impending disaster that will last for several hundred to a few thousands, although the half-life of bismuth radiation has been measured at twenty billion billion (yes, twenty billion-billion), years so we in this lonely corner of the universe might consider ourselves lucky. In 2022 there were four hundred and fifty nuclear power plants operating world-wide and sixty more were under construction. Today, of course, there are none.
Despite Meriam-Webster’s innocent grandfatherly definition of uranium, this same earthly tragedy (but on a much smaller scale) has apparently happened on our planet at least once before — more likely twice — though much hypothetical theory (including Biblical references, quiet speculation, and outright loud conspiracy theories) have been written about the evidence of the possibility, few of us seem to understand or have ever cared that a similar nuclear world with massive devastation actually occurred, at least once, thousands of years ago, nor that the archeological and anthropological scientific community has not investigated, researched, endorsed or even acknowledged the historical evidence. This does not surprise me, but today what scientists and historians believed is immaterial because now what is left of our world is all that we need to worry and care about—events of the past, rightly so, mean nothing today. We are long past the life-saving threshold of learning from our mistakes, including our willful ignorance.
We humans, them or us or together, seem to have been running a rigged three-legged race against one another to rend asunder the entire planet against the natural environmental care and protections of Gaia, the Goddess of Nature. In a blind and greedy rush to subconsciously exterminate ourselves and fatally poison our only home—planet Earth and all her abundant bounty—we have, through American style financing of intentional international environmental degradation, hawkish threats of nuclear war, or the patriarchally personalized political, bureaucratic and corporate industrial pandemic earth-cancer super-spreaders that I call those who would allow humanity to “freeze to death in the dark.” I personally heard this same man say this same phrase, with their — often profane — variants, more than just once or twice. The phrase was coined by the President and CEO of a major mining company I was involved with, echoing his indignant objections to public protests over Three Mile Island in beginning in 1979. Note that all of these doomsday contestants during their race toward human extinction—indeed, by natural extension, including all life — had their in-common triple arsenal of the half-life of airborne nuclear radioactive emissions teamed up with ground and waste water airborne radiation, their three legs at the end entirely unbound, allowing them to overrun the basins and ranges without restrictions, making all of them self-proclaimed “winners” of their race into the likes of Dante’s, or someone’s, Inferno.
(Stay tuned for the next Episode in two weeks.)
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
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Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Today, we talk with two experts about growing tensions between the U.S. and China, including cybersecurity, nuclear … all the things happening around …
The Sprint anti-ballistic missile was an engineering effort in response to the nuclear threat posed by the Cold War. … threats outside the atmosphere, …
A US F-35A combat aircraft tests an unarmed B61-12 bomb in the Nevada Desert. Source: Sandia National Laboratory (Read the “Bulletin of Atomic Scientists” article below)
LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS (02/13/2024)
There is something seriously wrong with our (America’s) sense or concept of peace and morality, and the former president is not the only guilty one, but also our current President has done so, and is continuing to do so! We are a nation that flaunts the idea of nuclear proliferation, not only by ‘tripling our global use of nuclear produced energy” by 2050, but also with Biden’s ill-advised ‘carrot and stick’ program of selling nuclear fuel to other countries to allow them to build their own nuclear powers plants, when common sense tells us that these poorer countries cannot afford to do so, nor do they necessarily want nuclear fuel for any other peacetime purpose, but more likely to barter nuclear fuel or even build their own nuclear weapons. This is doomsday fiction story-book material disguised as factual reality. We humans must come to our senses now, if we are going to avoid self-extinction.
And now, if you read this article, it appears that the Biden administration has approved an even more deceptive and immoral project of potential war – the “nuclear gravity bomb” – which, if you read the most important statement in this article tells you why the headline to this story is so incredibly telling. Or, to make it easier to find it, I will tell you myself, here and now, what that simple single sentence statement has to say:
“That system is based on the principle that this country, to keep itself “safe,” needs to be able to kill tens or hundreds of millions of people in less than an hour.”
Need I say more? ~ llaw
Why the Biden administration’s new nuclear gravity bomb is tragic
In late October 2023, the Pentagon announced—to the surprise of many, including congressional staffers who work on these issues—that it was pursuing a new nuclear weapon to be known as the B61-13, a gravity bomb.
This is a troubling development for many reasons. First, it is merely the latest in a long line of new nuclear weapons that the United States is building or proposing, in yet another sign that a new nuclear arms race is expanding. In addition, it breaks a promise the Obama administration made to eliminate almost all types of US nuclear gravity bombs, while further undermining President Biden’s pledge to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US security. Most tragically, it further cements an absolute commitment on the part of the United States to retain nuclear deterrence as the centerpiece of its security policy for decades to come. While most of us hope the world can eventually stop relying on the threat of mass murder at a global scale as the basis for international security, the B61-13 moves everyone further away from that day.
Starting from the top, here is the entire, vast set of new nuclear bombs and warheads the United States recently developed or is pursuing:
The Trump administration’s new “low-yield” warhead, deployed on sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) carried by US submarines, with an estimated explosive yield roughly one-third the size of the gravity bomb dropped on Hiroshima. “Low-yield” is a relative term; this warhead could still kill tens of thousands in an instant.
The new, more lethal B61-12 gravity bomb that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) recently started producing, after many years of delay (and with each bomb costing more than its weight in gold).
The updated warhead for the stealthy air-launched cruise missile first proposed by the Obama administration, ideally suited to start a nuclear war.
A variant of that cruise missile warhead for a sea-launched cruise missile that a) the Trump administration proposed, b) the Biden administration is trying to cancel, but c) Congress recently required the administration to pursue.
The precedent-setting warhead for land-based missiles that, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, will be made entirely from new components, with nothing being reused except the basic design of the warhead.
The momentous new warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the first entirely new bomb since the end of the Cold War, with both the components and the design of the weapon made anew.
The B61-13.
All these new bombs and warheads are just part of a massive rebuilding of the entire US nuclear arsenal, which also includes new long-range, land-based missiles, new submarines, new stealthy, long-range bombers that will carry the new stealthy cruise missiles mentioned above, and major upgrades to the missiles carried by the submarines. The total cost to do all that while maintaining the existing weapons will be well over $1.2 trillion during the next 25 years.
In short, a new nuclear arms race is exploding across the globe, and while the Biden administration has not announced plans to increase the size of its nuclear arsenal (despite bipartisan pressure to do so), it is racing to climb what is often called a “modernization mountain”—a journey that will certainly take longer and cost far more than currently projected, all to produce a vastly oversized nuclear stockpile that everyone hopes will never be used.
The broken promise. There is a second and compounding problem with the B61-13: It breaks a promise made during the Obama administration to eliminate all but one of the types of US gravity bombs. Specifically, to win support for the B61-12—a new guided gravity bomb the Pentagon and NNSA badly wanted—the Obama administration proposed to retire the B61-3, B61-4, B61-7, B61-10, B61-11, and the B83 gravity bombs, trading six weapons for one. Unfortunately, since its inception the B61-12 has faced major cost overruns and years of delays. The NNSA initially said the bomb would cost $4 billion, then quickly raised the tab to $8 billion, while the Pentagon initially estimated it at $10 billion. The actual cost, including work the Air Force is doing, will be as much as $14 billion. The NNSA initially projected it would begin making the bombs in 2017, while the Pentagon said it would be 2022 before work started. The Pentagon was right, with the B61-12 finally entering production late in 2022.
On top of all the cost increases and delays, the associated commitment to retire the six other gravity bombs is changing significantly.
First, it is not clear the B61-11 will be retired at all; planning documents no longer include it as something the B61-12 will replace. That variant is designed to penetrate into the Earth, to attack hardened and deeply buried targets. No administration has ever explained why it was removed from the retirement list; it simply stopped being included on it. Second, the sole bright spot is the B61-10, but oddly so. Although the bomb’s retirement was tied to starting production of the B61-12, the B61-10 was removed from the stockpile in 2016. Apparently, it really was not needed at all, regardless of the B61-12.
More dangerously, the decision to retire the B83—by far the most destructive weapon in the US nuclear stockpile—was reversed by the Trump administration. The B83 has an explosive yield of some 1.2 megatons—or 80 times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In a simulation developed by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS, where I work), dropping one bomb like the B83 on a nuclear facility in Iran would kill over three million people and spread deadly radiation across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. It is this behemoth that the Trump administration declared its intention to keep “until a suitable replacement is identified.” Fortunately, the Biden administration reversed the reversal, and the B83 is currently on a path to be retired at some point, though the plan for when that will happen is classified. (Unfortunately, election results this year could again change that outcome.)
In the meantime, the Biden administration has announced the B61-13.
Significantly, this new bomb will be based on the B61-7, the most destructive of the B61 variants, with a maximum yield of 360 kilotons, or 24 times more devastating than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Just to remind you, that one bomb killed 70,000 to 140,000 people. In other words, the B61-13 will be massively destructive, accompanied by immense and widespread fallout. In other other words, this is yet another tool for nuclear warfighting—or, more specifically, seeking to win a nuclear war.
That mission should not exist. Indeed, as five of the countries with nuclear weapons—the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom—have declared, “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Yet fighting and winning a nuclear war is precisely the goal of developing the B61-13. There are, apparently, specific targets that this more powerful gravity bomb can hold at risk—ones that cannot reliably be destroyed with the B61-12, despite its vastly increased accuracy in comparison to existing gravity bombs. But existing nuclear warheads on submarine-based missiles can already hold those same targets at risk. So the B61-13, it turns out, is just another option to blow up something the Pentagon can already destroy, and many times over. In fact, each US nuclear-armed submarine carries seven times the destructive power of all the bombs dropped during World War II, including the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
The scope of the mistake. Coming from a Biden administration that pledged to seek to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, with a president who, as a candidate for office, declared his support for the policy that the United States would never use nuclear weapons first in any conflict, the decision to pursue the B61-13 is not only deeply disappointing, but a profound mistake. In short, the B61-13 is yet another sign that the United States intends to make its nuclear arsenal even more deadly and the foundational element of the existing security system. That system is based on the principle that this country, to keep itself “safe,” needs to be able to kill tens or hundreds of millions of people in less than an hour.
On moral grounds, and under international law, that prospect alone should be evidence enough to conclude that such an approach to security is grievously wrong, and that the United States should do everything it can to move away from that system.
But the reality is far worse, because Russia already has and China is now moving toward nuclear arsenals that will give them similar capabilities. Even with their vastly smaller arsenals, the other six nuclear weapons states—the UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—also have the capacity to kill tens of millions of people in hours. That horrible reality is the basis of the world’s security system. If everyone can kill everyone else, and no one can be safe from that threat, then—in the supreme irony of nuclear deterrence—everyone is supposed to be safe.
The mutual assured destruction precept of deterrence theory is ludicrous. For such a system to make sense, it would have to work perfectly and for all time. If it doesn’t, then we are all dead.What human system has ever worked perfectly for any significant length of time? In just one example of far too many, nuclear war was barely averted when a Russian officer refused to go along with two colleagues who wanted to use a nuclear-armed torpedo against US Navy ships harassing their submarine at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As has been noted, it was as much luck as careful choices that avoided the start of a nuclear war that would almost certainly have spiraled out of control.
Rather than develop a new nuclear weapon that adds fuel to a rapidly growing arms race, the Biden administration should launch a concerted effort to rid the world of nuclear weapons. It should publicly announce this intention, invite representatives from other nuclear-armed states to the table, and begin talks about what would be required to eliminate nuclear weapons from Earth. In an ideal world, we could turn the tragedy of the B61-13 into the launching point for a global effort to push for that outcome.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available, normally, at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
The updated warhead for the stealthy air-launched cruise missile first proposed by the Obama administration, ideally suited to start a nuclear war. A …
It will involve a one-minute sounding of all 91 sirens within the 10-mile St. Lucie plant emergency planning zone. Before and after the sirens sound, …
From the end of WWII to the fall of the Soviet Union in the ’90s, the fear that plagued Americans—the existential terror that threatened the sanity of …
“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS (02/12/2024):
LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS (02/12/2024):
Though well intentioned and carefully crafted, as in the following Nation Magazine article intellectually but uselessly comparing history to now and the future is futile. The future has nothing to do with previous politics nor the outcome of prior results or even the lack of them. Today’s nuclear world is much different and far more dangerous than the nuclear world of the 1960s or any other time before or after. The insane atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that promptly ended WWII was a lesson that we never learned. Politicizing the future is the wrong way to approach our future nuclear world(s).
JFK himself said, “We must destroy nuclear weapons before they destroy us.” That was the best suggestion he ever had in his short political life, which was politically cut short, but just like now and tomorrow, the politicians pay no attention to this “idea”, which just happens to be the only way to assure prevention of nuclear war. The reason for this international ignorance is all about the world of Capitalism and its inalienable greed filled with pyramid schemes. Money is more important than survival, I hate to say, but it’s true.
So this ‘truth’ tells me that until we force ourselves to awaken and understand that human and other life is more important than wealth and war, we are marching directly toward doomsday and eventual extinction. There is only one way to avoid WWIII, which will essentially be the end of us and other life, and that is to destroy “all things nuclear”, including nuclear power plants and all uranium fuel so that it is just not available to humanity in the future, and then we may have a good chance at surviving. But we will never do that until the day comes that we should have, and that day will arrive too late. ~llaw
Despite two years of war in Ukraine, rising tensions over Taiwan, and a metastasizing conflict in the Middle East, our 21st-century world has yet to experience a major nuclear blowup—a moment when the risk of thermonuclear annihilation is real and imminent, as was the case during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Yes, we have experienced nuclear jitters over North Korea’s repeated threats to attack South Korea and Vladimir Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but none of those incidents has brought us to the edge of extinction. If current trends persist, however, we are likely to encounter a succession of major nuclear crises in the months and years ahead, each potentially more dangerous than the one before. To prevent these from triggering a nuclear apocalypse, we will need wise and prudent leadership by our top officials—and a mass public campaign to insist on such prudence.
During the Cold War, of course, the potential for a catastrophic nuclear crisis was ever-present. We were all aware that any major US-Soviet confrontation could trigger a nuclear exchange, obliterating every one of us. The end of the Cold War was, therefore, an enormous psychic blessing, allowing us to live without the constant dread of imminent nuclear annihilation. For younger generations, moreover, other vital concerns—racism, global warming, economic insecurity—have come to replace nuclear anxiety. These concerns persist, as potent as ever. But now we must all brace ourselves for the return of incessant nuclear crises.
The reemergence of pervasive nuclear instability is the product of two interrelated factors: the outbreak of a tripolar military rivalry between the US, China, and Russia on one hand, and the proliferation of potential nuclear flash points on the other. Each is contributing to the risk of a nuclear conflict, but the combination is making the danger infinitely worse.
The Emerging Three-Way Nuclear Arms Race
Until very recently, the nuclear arms race was widely perceived as a two-way affair, involving the United States and the Soviet Union (later the US and Russia). During the Cold War, the two superpowers built up their atomic arsenals to terrifying heights and then, following the trauma of the Cuban missile crisis, took steps to control and reduce their respective stockpiles. Still, both sides continued to maintain vast nuclear stockpiles after the Cold War’s end, claiming that these munitions were needed to deter a possible nuclear strike by their opponent. They did, however, agree to further reductions in their atomic arsenals, culminating with the signing, in 2010, of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).
Although the number of “deployable” strategic warheads possessed by the US and Russia—that is, weapons aimed at the other side’s homeland and poised for rapid delivery by a bomber or missile—were significantly reduced by the New START agreement, both powers continued to maintain vast stockpiles of nuclear munitions in storage or set aside for “tactical,” or “non-strategic” use. Both also undertook the modernization and enhancement of their arsenals, replacing older systems with more capable weapons, including land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bomber-launched bombs and missiles. Thus, despite the gradual reduction in “deployable” warheads, the US-Russian arms race was actually gaining momentum, not slowing down.
Still, before 2018, the nuclear arms race was largely considered a two-way affair, with both the US and Russia approaching the 1,550 deployable warhead limit set by the New START agreement and each possessing another 4,500–5,000 warheads in storage or configured for tactical use. China, at that time, was said by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute to possess zero deployed nuclear munitions while holding an estimated 290 warheads in storage. China’s rudimentary nuclear force was configured solely to retaliate against an enemy first strike and possessed limited capacity to attack the continental United States. Accordingly, it was viewed by US strategists as a trivial, or “lesser included” problem when devising nuclear war plans.
But this two-way dynamic began to change in 2018, as the US adopted a new grand strategy identifying China, as much as Russia, as a vital threat to US security, while the Chinese—fearing an increased threat from the US—began the expansion and modernization of their own nuclear capabilities.
The new US approach was unveiled in the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy (NDS) of February 2018, which identified “long-term, strategic competition” with Russia and China as the greatest future threat to US security. Both rivals were said to be building up their military capabilities, but China was said to pose a particular threat because of its more robust technological capabilities. To prevail in future conflicts with these countries, the NDS affirmed, US forces would have to be equipped with the most advanced weaponry available—and be backed up by a modern, highly capable nuclear force. “Modernizing the Nation’s nuclear deterrent delivery systems…is the Department’s top priority,” Secretary of Defense James Mattis affirmed in a 2018 statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee (emphasis in the original).
In this, and every subsequent Pentagon presentation on the global security environment, US officials have stressed that the nuclear arms race is no longer limited to a US-Russia competition but has become a three-way affair, involving a growing threat from China. “The global situation is sobering,” Mattis testified in 2018. Not only is Russia modernizing its full range of nuclear systems, but “China, too, is modernizing and expanding its already considerable nuclear forces, pursuing entirely new capabilities” [emphasis added].
Misleading statements like these were repeated year after year—despite the fact that China then possessed a minuscule nuclear capability (at least when compared to those of the US or Russia) and had done little, before 2018, to expand or modernize its forces. Nevertheless, the US military’s embrace of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, accompanied by the Trump administration’s increasingly hostile stance towards China, prompted top Chinese officials, led by President Xi Jinping, to conclude that China’s small nuclear force was inadequate to deter a disarming US nuclear attack and so had to be expanded, enabling it to survive a devastating US first strike and still manage to deliver a retaliatory attack on US territory.
Evidence of this shift in thinking first surfaced in June 2021, when The Washington Post reported that it had obtained satellite images showing the construction of a hundred new ICBM silos in western China. Reports then surfaced of additional silo fields under construction and of accelerated Chinese ICBM production. According to a recent report from the Federation of American Scientists, moreover, China has increased its nuclear arsenal to 500 warheads, with more supposedly on the way.
While China’s nuclear buildup can largely be viewed as a defensive response to the 2018 NDS with its call for enhanced US military capabilities, that buildup, in classic arms-racing fashion, is being cited by congressional hawks in their strident demands for an accelerated US nuclear modernization effort—and, increasingly, for the abandonment of New START warhead limits when that treaty expires in February 2026.
In October 2023, for example, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States reported that “the size and composition of the [US] nuclear force must account for the possibility of combined aggression from Russia and China” and, given the expansion of the Chinese arsenal, US strategy must “no longer treat China’s nuclear forces as a ‘lesser included’ threat.” This requires that “The US strategic nuclear force posture should be modified to…[a]ddress the larger number of targets due to the growing Chinese nuclear threat.”
As in the 1960s, then, we face the prospect of an unbridled nuclear arms race involving the development and deployment of increasingly capable and lethal atomic munitions—except, this time, it’s a three-way contest, not just a two-way race. This is sure to enflame tensions among the major powers and make it exponentially harder to negotiate limits on nuclear stockpiles like those adopted in the Cold War era.
Proliferating Nuclear Flash Points
Complicating this picture even further is the proliferation of potential nuclear flash points—contested areas that encapsulate the strategic interests of two or more of the major powers and so possess the ability to ignite a major military encounter with ever-present nuclear implications.
During the Cold War, there were several such hot spots, with Berlin and Cuba the most prominent among them. Both of those sites prompted nuclear crises on more than one occasion, the most famous being the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when both sides readied nuclear weapons for immediate attack. It was only through tortured diplomacy and sheer luck, notes historian Martin Sherwin in his magisterial account of the crisis, Gambling with Armageddon, that the world was spared a thermonuclear catastrophe. (The United States also threatened to use nuclear weapons in Korea, Vietnam, and during the Quemoy-Matsu crisis of 1954; those episodes were largely kept secret at the time.)
Today, we can identify at least four such potential flash points—Ukraine and NATO’s Eastern Front, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula—with more likely to emerge in the coming months and years. Each has the potential to ignite a Cuban missile crisis–like confrontation.
Ukraine and NATO’s Eastern Front. At present, with both sides in the Ukraine conflict seemingly trapped in a war of attrition and neither side making appreciable gains on the battlefield, the likelihood of a nuclear exchange appears relatively low. Should battlefield conditions change, however, the nuclear risk could increase. Were Ukrainian forces to be on the verge of capturing Crimea, for example, Moscow might employ tactical nuclear weapons to prevent such an outcome, saying it was defending sovereign Russian territory. Nuclear tensions could also erupt along NATO’s border with Russia in east-central Europe, as the NATO powers bolster their military presence there and Moscow—voicing opposition to what it views as threatening Western behavior—takes steps to counter those efforts.
Taiwan. Of equal danger is the possibility of a US-China war erupting over Taiwan. That island, deemed a renegade province by China, has become a source of growing tension as Taiwanese leaders steer the country ever closer toward independence and Beijing threatens to counter such a move with force. With a pro-independence Taiwanese politician, Lai Ching-te, taking office as president on May 20, many in Washington fear a Chinese military move of some sort. Although the United States is not bound by law or treaty to come to Taiwan’s aid under such circumstances, the likelihood of its doing so is growing as anti-China sentiment continues to grip the capital. Given that virtually every simulation of a US-China clash over Taiwan results in catastrophic losses on each side, any such an encounter would undoubtedly possess a substantial risk of nuclear escalation.
The South China Sea. The South China Sea dispute, like the conflict over Taiwan, could easily result in a full-scale US-China conflict. This danger arises from the fact that Beijing has declared sovereignty over nearly the entire part of the western Pacific bounded by China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo, and Vietnam—while bordering states have repudiated Beijing’s assertions and advanced claims of their own in the area. To assert its expansive claim, China has used its coast guard to harass and drive off the fishing and oil-drilling vessels of neighboring states. In response, officials in Washington have repeatedly asserted that the US will come to the aid of any country victimized by what they characterize as Chinese “bullying.” Accordingly, any future clash between China and its neighbors in the South China Sea could lead to US military intervention—a step that would almost certainly provoke a fierce Chinese reaction, setting off a spiral of escalation.
The Korean Peninsula. North Korea’s current dictator, Kim Jong Un, has repeatedly threatened to employ nuclear weapons in response to US and/or South Korean provocations, and regularly conducts tests of his various missile and artillery systems to back up these warnings. The intensity of his verbal assaults and the frequency of accompanying weapons tests have fluctuated over the years, but seem to have reached a new peak in early 2024. On January 5, the North fired hundreds of artillery shells into waters near South Korean border islands, and, on January 16, Kim formally renounced peaceful reunification with the South as a long-term goal—calling instead for the eventual subjugation of South Korea and its incorporation into the North. These steps, along with an increase in missile testing, have led observers to warn of a new period of instability on the Korean Peninsula, potentially resulting in a full-scale war with a high risk of nuclear escalation.
Other Potential Flash Points. These four hotspots currently represent the most likely sites of a future Cuban missile crisis–-like event, but others are sure to arise in the years ahead. Among those that appear most likely to fall into this category are the Arctic, South Asia, and the Middle East. The Arctic constitutes a potential nuclear flash point because both Russia and the NATO powers are building up their forces there—the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO will surely accelerate this process—and because Russia has concentrated a large share of its nuclear retaliatory forces in the Murmansk area, near northern Norway. South Asia and the Middle East pose a threat of nuclear conflict because both areas house nuclear-armed states—India and Pakistan in South Asia, Israel (and, possible soon, Iran) in the Middle East—with a long history of hostility and many fresh antagonisms.
What Is to Be Done?
The picture presented above is not an optimistic one. The combination of a seemingly intractable three-way arms race and the proliferation of potential nuclear flash points suggests we will face a never-ending cycle of nuclear crises in the years to come. Whether we will survive any of these, as we did the Cuban missile crisis, is entirely unforeseeable. We were fortunate, back then, that the top leaders involved—John M. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev—were able to overcome their martial instincts and seek an escape route from catastrophe. Will be so lucky the next time we face such a crisis? Who’s to say?
If we hope to prevent the next nuclear crisis from ending in catastrophe, there are many specific things that could be done to reduce the risk of uncontrollable escalation. These include, for example, persuading the US and Russia to resume their “Strategic Stability Dialogue”—high-level talks intended to devise steps for reducing the risk of nuclear escalation—that was paused at the onset of the fighting in Ukraine. The US and China could also commence talks of this sort. All three countries could also agree to slow or freeze their nuclear expansion and modernization efforts.
But none of this will occur in the current political environment, with leaders of all three countries under pressure from powerful domestic forces to bolster their nuclear capabilities vis-à-vis their rivals. These include, among others, a deeply entrenched military-industrial-nuclear complex with a strong ties to elite governing circles. And these forces will not be overcome without a global grassroots movement calling for nuclear restraint and human survival.
I am no starry-eyed idealist. As a veteran of the 1960s Ban the Bomb movement and the 1980s Nuclear Freeze Campaign, I know how hard it is to build a mass movement around nuclear issues. It will be even harder today, with so many other existential perils competing for people’s attention, especially climate change. But I do not see how we humans can expect to survive the coming years of recurring nuclear crises without building such a movement.
Fortunately, there are many others who share this outlook. Here and there across America—and in the world as well—people are becoming more aware of the rising threat of nuclear war and taking steps to reduce that danger. I particularly commend the work of Peace Action New York State, Massachusetts Peace Action, and other local and statewide groups that have addressed the nuclear danger, and Back from the Brink, a national campaign seeking to mobilize grassroots activism on the issue. These are still undersized efforts; but they are a start, and they point us in the direction we must go if we are to ensure human survival.
Michael T. Klare, The Nation’s defense correspondent, is professor emeritus of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College and senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C. Most recently, he is the author of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change.
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A second reason for the renewed interest in a possible European nuclear deterrent is the war in Ukraine and the recurring threats by Russian President …
A second reason for the renewed interest in a possible European nuclear deterrent is the war in Ukraine and the recurring threats by Russian President …
Best Super Bowl game ever! Maybe the best football game ever, as Chiefs defeat 49ers in overtime 25 to 22. Suspense beyond comparison . . . and Quarterbacking beyond belief by both. Watch for a repeat next year from the same two clubs! No more to say tonight, but tonight’s ‘All Things Nuclear” is still available below if you’ve a mind to! ~llaw
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This is a great anti nuclear war article, and everyone should read it. But, for one thing among many others it doesn’t deal with the other side of the ‘all things nuclear’ coin that is just as dangerous — the nuclear power plant proliferation projections and the potential unintended, but just as possible nuclear radiation fallout for any number of reasons, including using them in international war situations, terrorism, design failures, nuclear radiation fallout from accidents affecting grid systems, and nuclear waste.
But solving the nuclear war situation by nuclear disarmament and destroying all related refineries and other equipment for manufacturing weapons of mass destruction in the future would be achieving half the battle, so I’m all for common sense prevailing on the war threat issues. But, sadly, it ain’t gonna happen because binding agreements and pragmatic practicality are not bound or considered by those who are ‘in charge’. Those eight guys in charge of the nuclear war world are not going to be 100% inclined to destroy an ounce of their nuclear power if just one of-em says hell no, and of course such an agreement would never be fully carried out either. ~llaw
The United States has not seen a widespread nuclear disarmament movement since the early 1980s. A new one is desperately needed — but with a twist.
The 1980s movement was based on fear. In 1982, a million people, alarmed by President Ronald Reagan’s nuclear buildup, gathered in New York City’s Central Park to oppose the nuclear arms race — still the largest one-day protest in U.S. history. The next year, 100 million people — almost half the population of the United States — watched the television movie “The Day After,” which horrifically depicted the nuclear destruction of Kansas City.
Fear can generate a fight-or-flight reaction, but it’s ultimately counterproductive. People become so scared that they think nothing can be done and give up. Or they ignore the issue entirely, at least on a conscious level.
There are still plenty of things to fear. Nuclear treaties are lapsing. National leaders have threatened to use nuclear weapons against their enemies. New research, now being reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, has strengthened the case that even a limited nuclear war could shut down agriculture for years and doom billions to starvation. A large-scale nuclear war could smother agriculture for more than a decade and end civilization.
But fear isn’t necessary to spur action. There are two very practical reasons to abolish nuclear weapons.
The first is their outrageous cost. The U.S. government is on track to spend at least $1.5 trillion over the next 30 years modernizing its nuclear weapons. That’s as much as the federal government currently spends on the National Institutes of Health. Or, to put it another way, four years of that spending, evenly divided among the 50 states, would buy us an entirely new ferry fleet.
Key parts of the modernization effort, like the new Sentinel ballistic missile program, are already massively over budget. Taking apart nuclear weapons systems would cost a small fraction of the money now slated to build new ones.
The second reason for getting rid of nuclear weapons is that they are far more dangerous than they are useful. Nuclear bombs are too large and destructive to deploy effectively in warfare. They would kill soldiers and noncombatants on both sides of a conflict. Nuclear fallout would drift far from a battlefield. Weapons have been getting smaller and smarter, not bigger and dumber.
Nuclear weapons also don’t make sense politically. If a nuclear weapon were detonated in a war — assuming that a general nuclear war did not follow — the responsible nation would face devastating conventional attacks and be ostracized internationally. No country has been willing to face those consequences, at least not since the very different circumstances that prevailed at the end of World War II.
The existence of nuclear weapons supposedly deters their use. No one has been able to figure out what that nonsensical statement means. Making a threat implies being willing to carry it out. The idea that deterrence has worked ignores the history of crises, miscalculations, and accidents that almost triggered nuclear war. Deterrence works until it doesn’t.
Nuclear weapons are a federal responsibility. For us as Washingtonians, that means working through our 10 U.S. representatives and two U.S. senators to change nuclear policy. Except for U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the members of our congressional delegation have been, at best, guarded in their statements about nuclear weapons. Washington receives about $20 billion a year in defense spending. Reducing that flow of funds would seem to be a recipe for electoral disaster.
But couldn’t at least part of our defense funding be spent in more socially productive ways? After all, flying a nuclear bomb-carrying F-35A jet for two hours costs as much as a nurse makes in a year. Keeping more than 55,000 mostly young men and women here in Washington well-trained and outfitted for future conflicts may help us feel more secure. But it doesn’t build infrastructure, spark innovation, or improve the health and well-being of the population at large.
In 2021, the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which prohibits the development, production, use, and threat of use of nuclear weapons, entered into force after being ratified by 50 countries. The nine countries that have nuclear weapons have so far opposed the treaty, but they are nevertheless bound by the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to negotiate an agreement “on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” That they have not yet done so is both a bitter disappointment and a betrayal of their stated intentions.
Nuclear disarmament will not be unilateral or immediate. Nations will need to negotiate stepped reductions and means of verifying progress. An especially urgent task is to eliminate the ground-based missiles now clustered in underground silos in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming, as well as in Russia and China. These weapons are inherently destabilizing and dangerous. They have to be launched within minutes if a president thinks a nuclear attack is underway. A mistake, miscalculation, or moment of madness could spell the end of the world.
Unlike efforts to slow climate change, which will require widespread changes in how we live, the threat of nuclear annihilation could be eliminated if nine men agreed to destroy about 12,500 pieces of elaborately machined metal. Reagan and then-president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev almost agreed to junk their nuclear weapons in 1986. The only stumbling block was Reagan’s commitment to a nuclear weapons defense program that was canceled a few years later.
True, people will always know how to rebuild nuclear weapons. Also, nuclear power will almost certainly be part of the global response to climate change. But the world will be a safer and less oppressive place once our nuclear arsenals are gone.
Nuclear weapons are humanity’s most obscene invention. Our nuclear arsenals threaten not only us and everything humans have ever created but a natural creation that is inconceivably intricate and interdependent. Getting rid of them will be a wonderful human accomplishment.
Steve Olson is a Seattle author whose most recent book is “The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age,” a history of Hanford and its impact on the world.
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Timothy reports on energy and environment policy and is based in Washington, D.C. His coverage ranges from the latest in nuclear power, to environment …
… War · Japan · Middle East · United Kingdom · United States · US Elections · Ukraine and Russia at War · Reuters Next. Latest in World. Malaysia’s top …
This is a replay of an old movie from 1983 that I played for readers on my birthday last November 23rd that only a couple folks other than me watched; so I’m wondering if it might draw a few more “watchers” now because the “threats” of nuclear war continue to escalate, and the threats either have to go away, no longer lies acting as ‘deterrents’ to nuclear war, or forbidden, or war. Nuclear threats cannot continue ad infinitum because such behavior will eventually lead to nothing more than yawns from other nations that will no longer listen nor take any of them seriously.
But this movie gives us some concept of how it might affect you and me given an actual nuclear war, although the real thing, given the number of nuclear armored nations and the greater power of nuclear weapons such a war would no doubt be much, much, worse . . . ~llaw (Current February 9th nuclear news is available following the link to the 1983 movie.)
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LLAW’s COMMENTARY (on November 23, 2023):
About 1983’s movie “The Day After” and how a nuclear war would affect the average public citizen from their normal lives before, some about their lives during, and a little about their lives after. As the filmmakers said at the end of the movie, they felt their depiction of nuclear war was likely less harrowing, less difficult, less problematic, less destructive, and less painful in all-life threatening ways than portrayed in the film — indicating that the real thing would be even more horrible to bear than shown. I would agree, but still it was horrendous enough to force everyday citizens back then who watched the film to seriously consider what would happen in an actual nuclear war.
By today’s potential WWIII standards, and considering the number and power of today’s weapons of mass destruction, and instead of two countries involved as portrayed in the movie, there could be eight primary countries as well as their allied countries facing the worst of war, too.
And then there are today’s ‘sitting duck’ nuclear power plants spread around the globe that these days are also considered by major countries and their political and military leaders to be an attacked country’s gift from the invading countries to help destroy themselves — what I call nuclear power plants a ‘two-fer-one’ weapon of mass destruction. The Russia/Ukraine war has shown potentially how that could happen, and since that war remains ongoing, it could still actually happen because Ukraine has four huge and powerful nuclear power plants with 15 nuclear reactors, ranking that country 7th in the world in commercial nuclear power. Of course the USA is far and away the country with the most reactors and plants.
Should Russia nuke all four of the Ukraine plants (or even one) WWIII would begin immediately. This scenario clearly tells us how all nuclear power plants just like ‘all other things nuclear’, including all uranium fuel, must be removed from existence on this planet in order for humans and other life to survive . . . In an all-out nuclear war, their are no winners, no survivors, likely including Mother Earth Herself.
So, if you did not watch that film last night and still would like to get a watered-down version of the reality of nuclear war and what it does to human society, I have added the You Tube link you can copy for your convenience again tonight, but don’t forget today’s number one categorized world news, as always, is on down this Post for you to read and personally select articles of interest . . . ~llaw
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(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Mailbag: Commentary offered ‘scary’ reminder of potential for nuclear war … KTLA made history with its 1952 live broadcast an atomic bomb blast. KTLA …
Did Donald Trump ruin the United States’ Superpower status as #1 in the World? Apparently so and it is pretty obvious. I won’t bother to attempt a one-up on this remarkably thoughtful, cogent, and believable article, courtesy of “The Nation” Institute and magazine with original author Tom Engelhardt ~llaw
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I was born on July 20, 1944, almost two years after Joe Biden arrived on this planet and almost a year before You Know Who, like me, landed in New York City. The United States was then nearing the end of the second global war of that century and things were about to look up. My dad had been the operations officer for the 1st Air Commandos fighting the Japanese in Burma and, by that July, the tide had distinctly turned. The era that Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and I would enter feet first and naked would quickly become an upbeat one for so many Americans—or at least so many white Americans in the midst of a war economy that would, in some sense, carry over into a growing peacetime economy. Of course, World War II would end dramatically with the dropping of two new weapons, atomic bombs, on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, signaling, though few fully grasped it at the time, that we humans would soon be capable not just of making war in a big-time fashion, but of all too literally destroying humanity.
The “peacetime” that followed the devastation of those two cities and the killing of at least 100,000 Japanese civilians in them would, for the next 46 years, be stoked by what came to be known as the Cold War. In it, a nuclear-armed America and a soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Soviet Union, as well as its “commie”—the term of the time—allies, faced off against each other globally. (Estimates done for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1961 suggested that a full-scale US nuclear attack on the Soviet Union and Communist China would then have killed between 200 million and 600 million people.) Both sides would rush to create vast nuclear arsenals able not just to obliterate the United States and the Soviet Union, but the planet itself, while, in the course of the next three-quarters of a century, seven other countries would, cheerily enough, join the nuclear “club.”
Two of the countries waging war at this moment, Russia and Israel, are nuclear powers. And today, more than 78 years after those atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with perhaps 1,700 nuclear weapons deployed (most of them staggeringly more powerful than those first atomic bombs), the United States is in the midst of a multi-decade “modernization” of its nuclear arsenal to the tune of at least $1.5 trillion and possibly far more.
All in all, consider that quite an inheritance from that childhood of mine.
We kids grew up then amid what I came to call a “victory culture”—and what a potentially devastating culture that proved to be! Doesn’t the very thought of it leave you with the urge to dive under the nearest desk (something that, in my youth, was called “duck and cover” and that we kids practiced at school in case a Russian nuclear bomb were to go off over New York City)? Yes, there would indeed be a certain amount of ducking and covering of all kinds during that 40-odd year-long Cold War with the Soviet Union. After all, for the US, it involved a deeply unsatisfying war in Korea in the early 1950s and a bitter disaster of a war in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s, fearsome anti-communist crusades at home, and Washington’s support across the planet not just for democracies but for quite a crew of autocrats (like the shah of Iran).
Still, domestically the United States became a distinctly well-off land. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement grew to challenge the racial hell that was the inheritance of slavery in this country and, by the end of the Cold War, Americans were generally living better than ever before.
Of course, a grotesque version of inequality was already starting to spiral out of control as this country gained ever more billionaires, including a fellow named—yes!—Donald Trump who would be no one’s apprentice. But in all those years, one thing few here would have imagined was that American-style democracy itself might, at some moment, prove increasingly out of fashion for a distinct subset, if not a majority, of Americans.
If I Had Told You…
Now, let’s take a leap from the end of the Cold War in 1991 to the present moment and the question is: What are we headed for? Sadly, the answer (no given, but certainly a possibility) could indeed be an all-American version of fascism, brownshirts included, should Donald Trump be reelected in a chaotic November to come, including—absolutely guaranteed!—a contested election result (and god knows what else) if he isn’t.
Honestly, tell me that you even believe this world we’re supposedly living in exists!
As I approach 80, I find just being in it increasingly unnerving. Wherever I look, nothing seems to be faintly working right. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about our secretary of defense disappearing as this year began (yes, at my age I can empathize with an older guy who doesn’t want to share information about his prostate cancer, but still…); the increasingly extreme and disturbingly fascistic—a word I once reserved for Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and the war my father fought in—bent to what’s still called the “Republican” Party; the utter madness of one whale of a guy, Donald Trump, and the possibility that such madness could attract a majority of American voters in 2024; the urge of “my” president, that old Cold Warrior Joe Biden, to bomb his way into a larger, far more disastrous war in the Middle East (and who cares whether that bombing is faintly “working” or not?); oh, and (to make sure this is my longest paragraph ever) when some of that bombing is being done to “protect” American troops in Iraq and Syria (not to speak of those who recently were wounded or died in—yes!—Jordan), who cares why in the world our soldiers are stationed there in the first place; not to speak of the all-too-unstoppable human urge to set parts of our globe aflame with war after war (and don’t forget the way those wars throw staggering amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, so that it isn’t just Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Ukraine, or Gaza burning but, in some sense, our whole planet); and, of course, the fact that we humans seem bent on all too literally heating this world to the boiling point in a fashion that, historically speaking, should (but for all too many of us doesn’t) seem beyond devastating. I mean, give us credit, since 2023 was the hottest year by far in human history and yet, some years down the line, it may seem almost cool in comparison to what’s coming.
And consider that paragraph—possibly the longest I’ve ever written—my welcome mat to the 2024 version of our world. And welcome, as well, to a country whose leaders, in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, felt distinctly on top of this planet of ours in every imaginable sense. They saw the United States then as the ultimate superpower (or perhaps I mean: THE ULTIMATE SUPERPOWER!!!), a power of one and one alone. After some rugged years on the foreign policy front, including that disastrous war in Vietnam that left Americans feeling anything but triumphant, victory culture was back in a big-time fashion. And that, unbelievably enough, was only a little more than three decades ago. Yet today, while the Biden administration pours weaponry into Israel and bombs and missiles into Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, who would claim that the United States (or any other country for that matter) was the “lone superpower” on this planet?
In fact, in 2007, with this country’s post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq already dragging on disastrously, I wrote a new introduction to my book on victory culture and it was already clear to me that “perhaps when the history of this era is written, among the more striking developments will have been the inability of a mighty empire to force its will or its way on others in the normal fashion almost anywhere on the planet. Since the Soviet Union evaporated, the fact is that most previously accepted indices of power—military power in particular—have been challenged and, in the process, victory has been denied.”
In historical terms, that should be seen as a remarkably swift fall from grace in a world where this country hasn’t been able to win a war in living memory (despite having something like 750 military bases scattered across the globe and a near-trillion-dollar “defense” budget that leaves the next 10 countries combined in the dust). These days, in fact, the former lone superpower seems in danger of coming apart at the seams domestically, if not in an actual civil war (though there are certainly enough weapons of a devastating kind in civilian hands to launch one), then in some kind of a strange Trumpbacchanalia.
Yes, if we were in 1991 and I told you that, in an election season 32 years later, the very phrase “civil war” would no longer just be a reference to a distant historical memory of the Blue and the Gray but part of everyday conversation and media reportage, you would have laughed me out of the room. Similarly, if I had told you that a strange yellow-haired man sporting an eerie grimace, a former 14-season TV apprentice (rocked by divorces and bankruptcies), would have won the presidency and then, three years after leaving office, be back at it again, reveling in the mere 91 criminal charges outstanding against him in four cases (not to speak of two civil trials) and campaigning on a promise of a one-day dictatorship on his first day back in office when he would, above all else, just “drill, drill, drill,” you would undoubtedly have thought me mad as a hatter.
If I had told you then that North Korea—yes, North Korea!—might have a missile that could reach the United States with a nuclear weapon and that its ruler (the man President Trump first called “a sick puppy” and later a “great leader”) was threatening his southern neighbor with nuclear war, would you have believed it? If I had told you then that the United States was fervently backing its ally Israel, after its own version of 9/11, in a war in Gaza in which staggering amounts of housing, as well as hospitals and schools in that 25-mile strip of land were being destroyed, damaged, or put out of action, more than 27,000 Palestinians (including thousands of children) slaughtered, 85 percent of the population turned into refugees, and perhaps half of them now in danger of starvation, would you have believed me? I doubt it. If I had told you that, more than 22 years after its own 9/11, my country would still be fighting the “war on terror” it launched then, would you have believed me? I doubt that, too.
If I had told you that, in 2024, the two candidates for president would be 81 and 77 years old (keep in mind that the oldest American president previously, Ronald Reagan, left office at age 77); that one of them would look ancient wherever he went and whatever he did, while the other, on the campaign trail, would begin slurring his words, while mixing up his Republican opponent with the former Democratic House leader, what might you think? (Oh, and don’t forget that the leader of the Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell, is almost 82 and last year froze twice while speaking with reporters.)
Honestly, could you have ever imagined such an ancient version of an all-American world—the world of a distinctly disintegrating superpower? And yet given how we humans are acting, the United States could well prove to be the last superpower ever. Who knows if, in a future that seems to be heading downhill fast in an endless blaze of heat, any country, including China, could become a superpower.
Kissing It All Goodbye?
In all those years past, the one thing few could have imagined was that democracy itself might begin to go out of fashion right here in the US of A.
Of course, the question now is: What are we headed for? And the answer could indeed be an all-American version of fascism, should Donald Trump be reelected this year, or an unimaginably chaotic scene if he isn’t.
And by the way, don’t blame Donald Trump for all of this. Consider him instead the biggest Symptom—and given that giant Wendy’s burger of a man, the word does need to be capitalized—around!
Imagine this: in a mere 30-plus years, we’ve moved from a world with a “lone superpower” to one in which it’s becoming harder to imagine a super anything on a planet that’s threatening to go down in a welter of wars, as well as unprecedented droughts, fires, floods, storms, and heat.
And if Donald Trump were to be elected, we would also find ourselves in an almost unimaginable version of—yes!—defeat culture (and maybe that will have to be the title of the book I’ll undoubtedly never write after I turn 80 and am headed downhill myself).
But don’t make me go on! Honestly, you know just as well as I do that, if the man who only wants to “drill, drill, drill” ends up back in the White House, you can more or less kiss this country (which already happens to be the biggest oil producer and natural gas exporter around) and possibly this planet goodbye. And if he doesn’t… well, you may have to kiss it goodbye anyway.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available, normally, at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
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