Childhood fears have been resurrected
However, recent events have once again brought up the fear of the use of nuclear weapons into our consciousness. While the consequences of the “bomb” part of a nuclear warhead are well-known — intense fireball, heat, infrastructure damage — generations born after the Cold War may not understand the devastating effects radiation has on human health for those not killed in the initial blast.
According to the Mayo Clinic, radiation sickness is damage to your body caused by a large dose of radiation over a short period of time. (It’s important to note that routine exposures to very small amounts of radiation, such as in an X-ray or CT scan, doesn’t cause radiation sickness.) Some symptoms happen immediately — nausea and vomiting, dizziness. Weakness, fatigue, hair loss and decreased blood pressure happen quickly after. This can be followed by diarrhea, headache, fever, uncontrolled bleeding and neurological issues. Cancers can follow — leukemia and thyroid, lung, and breast cancer are the most common.
Radiation effects occur not just at the site of the explosion. Vaporized radioactive material forms particles and falls back to Earth, known as fallout. As informational pamphlets of the day described in chilling detail, fallout can be carried long distances from the explosion, contaminating food and water supplies. Because the type of radioactive material used in these types of bombs lasts for decades, if not centuries, these things necessary for human survival would be poisonous for a very long period of time. It is difficult to predict exactly how intense the effects of a nuclear explosion would be, but scientists also worry about a “nuclear winter” when many bombs are detonated, lifting large amounts of sooty smoke into the atmosphere so that sunlight is blocked to a great degree. Without the sun, crops can’t grow and food production is severely limited.
We knew during the Cold War how destructive the use of nuclear weapons would be. President Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 State of the Union Speech, addressed the danger in stern but wise counsel: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” he said. “The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely.”
How little we seem to have learned.
In 1991, with the end of the Cold War, the “Doomsday Clock” — which the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created in 1947 to keep tabs on the consequences of new technology — registered 17 minutes before midnight. Since that time, the second hand has inched closer and closer to midnight, and earlier this year it was moved as close as it ever has been to midnight since the early 1980s, at 11:57:30, only two and a half minutes in front of a nuclear catastrophe. One of the reasons for this alarming prophecy is apparent from daily headlines: world leaders who talk of using nuclear weapons loosely and irresponsibly, without considering the devastating and lasting effect their use would have on the world’s population and environment.
Again, Reagan’s sage words urge us to reflect on these developments: “Our moral imperative is to work with all our powers for that day when the children of the world grow up without the fear of nuclear war.”
The fears and nightmares of my childhood have been resurrected, but now I fear for my grandchildren Alice, Natalie, Vanessa and Charlie, not for myself. I fervently hope that leaders understand the devastating effects their words and actions can have, that today’s complex problems elicit the thoughtful and considered policy responses that they require, that cooler heads prevail. The consequences of nuclear war are too terrible to imagine and too serious to consider carelessly.