The Mercury

Threat of nuclear holocaust increasing

- Email FAROUK ARAIE |

mercletter@inl.co.za

FINLAND and Sweden have expressed their eagerness to join Nato, an alliance that has outlived it’s World War II mandate.

As the trajectory of events in Europe unfold, the grim spectre of a full-scale nuclear holocaust becomes a potent reality as Russia deploys massive nuclear power on its borders, placing this destructiv­e first-strike capability on hair-trigger alert, using components of artificial intelligen­ce (AI) in it’s targeting software.

Russia has 6 225 nuclear warheads, the US has 5 500.

In a fist strike by either side, using only 100 warheads could result in the end of civilisati­on.

Peer reviewed studies graphicall­y reveal that the consequenc­es would include catastroph­ic disruption­s of the global climate and massive destructio­n of Earth’s protective ozone layer.

A global famine would result from such a war, and would cause up to 2 billion people to starve to death, apart from the roughly 500 million people who would be killed in Russia and the US when interconti­nental strikes are launched. Nuclear deterrence is a myth, and a lethal one at that.

It continues to dominate internatio­nal relations.

Yet, there is no proof that it ever worked, or that it ever will.

Nuclear weapons are the most destructiv­e, inhuman and indiscrimi­nate weapons ever created.

Both in the scale of the devastatio­n they cause, and in their uniquely persistent, spreading, geneticall­y damaging radioactiv­e fallout, they are unlike any other weapons.

During all its history, humanity it seems, has not learned a thing about the stupidity of war and its horrors. A nuclear exchange, in view of events unfolding in Europe, would make all the wars in history combined pale into insignific­ance should some madman activate the nuclear button.

Any civilisati­on that reaches fullscale nuclear capability is bound to destroy itself sooner or later.

Let this be a sombre warning to humanity and it’s collective future.

Benoni

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