No nuclear weapons

Nuclear weapons recently became illegal under international law. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, negotiated by 122 UN member nations in 2017, “entered into force” on Jan. 22.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization ICAN, which spearheaded the nuclear weapons ban, issued a report titled “Schools of Mass Destruction.” This report revealed the University of Arkansas was one of 50 schools involved in nuclear weapons production. In 2017, the UA Engineering College entered into a nuclear weapons “collaboration agreement” with Honeywell.

This is unacceptable because nuclear weapons endanger all of us, even threatening our extinction, and this can occur more easily than most understand. A great book, “The Doomsday Machine,” by famous whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, details his experiences as a nuclear war planner. He highlights how many falsely believe the president alone can launch nuclear war. In reality, the authority to start nuclear war is delegated to many lower-level commanders, and it can be started by false alarms, unauthorized attacks, and accidents.

Also, too few people understand the dangers of nuclear winter. Full-scale thermonuclear attacks would cause ferocious firestorms in bombed cities, sending massive amounts of smoke into the upper atmosphere, blocking out sunlight and lowering temperatures worldwide for a decade or more. Within a year or two, this would destroy nearly all plant life, and humans and other animals that require plants for food. Too many rationalize this danger, but as Ellsberg writes, “No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral. Or insane.”

For these reasons, we held a UA protest on Jan. 22 when the nuclear bomb ban treaty became law. We are committed to a sustained campaign calling for UA to cancel its nuclear weapons program. Please join our call. ABEL TOMLINSON

Fayetteville