 "Photo: Jimmy Doole")
The average man is five-feet-nine-inches standing straight. The Sears Tower is 1,500 feet tall. The mushroom cloud that burst over Hiroshima reached a height of 450,000. You look at yourself in the mirror every morning. You see the Sears Tower everyday, living in Chicago. You catch the mushroom cloud on television sometimes, or in history books, but you've never seen one. Imagine that you did. That you saw a cloud miles and miles in the distance and it's dwarfing the skyline. It's dwarfing the clouds. It's dwarfing the world.
Wouldn't that be amazing? Terrifying, really, but you don't think about that. Never have, have you? Why would you pay any attention to the glowing, four megaton 500,000-foot elephant in the room? After all, it's not doing any tricks (well, except for the destruction of cities and the vaporization of men; but that's only "hypothetical," right?) It isn't advertised as an issue on television (maybe if it had a Super Bowl commercial starring Rex Grossman waiting to detonate you'd pay attention.) And it isn't even modern, is it? Nukes are ancient relics, right? (You'll pay attention to 'Happy Days' re-runs and read Norman Mailer but you won't focus on the issues that dominated those days, harumph.) Besides, Ronald Reagan tamed the Russian Bear and therefore ended the threat of nuclear annihilation. Am I right?
More like, you're wrong. That radiated beast still stands.
Atomic warfare was controversial before the first atomic bombing occurred, frenzying during the Cold War. Since? It has fizzled from the public eye, garnering almost as "much" attention as environmental issues do. This is fitting, as it only has the potential to one day destroy the very environment we need to live but ignore on a daily basis.
Not that you've noticed, but that elephant is trumpeting its intention to erupt at any moment. That elephant has made its intentions clear since it was created 62 years ago. 62 years ago! Your grandfather might be older than weaponized atoms and your grandfather will die before atomic weaponry does. While his generation, your parents' and ours have been fortunate not to witness nuclear war, it is inevitable unless the world understands that nuclear weapons are an unacceptable threat to humanity and therefore disregards them. To be sure, an immediate end to nuclear weaponry is hard to envision. What would that encompass? There are questions to ask, too, about the circumstances surrounding such a turn of events.
How would you know that, say, the Pakistanis have destroyed all of their weapons? How would you know that the Israelis haven't hidden their stockpiles? The Americans? The British? The Indians? The Russians? The Chinese? Even the French.
There is no easy answer.
Nuclear weapons contain countries, keep them level and prevent them from launching attacks, knowing that they'll face ultimate destruction if they start a war. You believe in containment, don't you? Sure you do. It's worked, well. But eventually, someone will gamble that they won't be nuked for their actions and they'll start a war. Might happen in Pakistan. Could happen in Iran. Israel. Over Poland. Sri Lanka. Anywhere, and it'll bring nothing but ruin. Nuclear weapons have been contained and have contained for 62 years, but that is but a blink in human history and assures us of nothing. Churchill's axiom 'Those who forget history are bound to repeat it' is prophecy, and so it is best not to forget that aging four-megaton elephant.
The solution to nuclear weapons may not be political insomuch as it is unlikely to reach its end through treaty or dialogue. It is my contention that science is capable of disabling every nuclear weapon, if certain concepts are developed and researched. How? Through atoms and molecules, electrical currents, isotopes and the nucleus. Research must be done to figure a way to disable a nuclear device with a trigger that will disable all nuclear devices in a range. Sound infeasible? So did the idea that all electricity could be wiped out of an area in a heartbeat without an explosion or the flipping of a light switch, but it has been done by the military and happens in Iraq all the time. Why not do that to nuclear devices? Why not try? All great technological advances are considered absurd until they become reality.
A solution is out there, somewhere. It is unlikely to be political, though it is all-too-possible that someday, the destruction of nuclear devices will happen to coincide with the destruction of all humanity because nobody thought it would be better to let the elephant out of the house before it dropped dead on top of us all.
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