Scottish Panorama Faslane, home to Trident, a symbol of humanity’s power and folly

ON the northern shore of Gare Loch, washed by salt waters, is the naval base, Faslane, home to Vanguard-class submarines. The UK has four such Tridentcarrying submarines, each armed with eight missiles, each carrying on average four warheads. This sea loch, and the wildlife it sustains, knows little of the destructive capacity contained within it.

Each warhead is said to be eight times as destructive as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, which killed over 140,000 civilians. The UK currently has

225. They are dark pearls of latent horror; symbols of humanity’s power and folly.

This stretch of shoreline has, for this reason, been one of the most controversial sites in Britain since the 1960s. Concern over the threat of nuclear weaponry has waxed and waned with global politics.

The call to scrap it was a key message of the independence referendum, and 2016 saw debate around whether the programme should be renewed at an enormous cost: CND estimated something like £205 million overall. Only one Scottish MP voted in favour of renewal. Last year, Boris Johnson announced a lift on the cap on the number of Trident nuclear warheads it can stockpile by more than 40 percent, ending 30 years of gradual disarmament.

We are now in another chilling moment. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, his threats of “consequences you have never seen”, have meant that the word nuclear is on our lips again. The threat, which not long ago had seemed half-forgotten, a childhood nightmare demoted down the current list of existential threats, was there again: “the nuclear option”.

The SNP describes removing Trident as “one of the most important tasks of an independent Scotland”. Ian Blackford recently confirmed continuing support of this, saying, “The idea that having nuclear weapons provides a deterrence that removes that threat is far-fetched, to say the least.” Others say that in these threatening times, it is invaluable as a deterrent. But is that a popular myth? Where’s the hard cause and effect evidence?.

Above all Faslane is a reminder of the ridiculous nuclear arsenal the world has built. We may have already clambered down from a global peak stockpile of nuclear weapons in 1986, but there is a long way to go.

Approximately 13,080 nuclear warheads exist worldwide and almost 90 percent of them belong to two countries: the United States and Russia. More than enough, if such maths made any sense, to kill every human on the planet, one hundred times over.