End To War Now: An animation that lasted 25 years...

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One of the most compelling scenes I can remember from a war-themed movie was from "Testament," a film from 1982 that depicted a mother's struggles after a nuclear war. While not as graphic as "Threads" or even "The Day After," the slow pace of the film allows us to share in the family's humanity, as the ties that hold life together unravel.

The mother washed her youngest son in the bathroom sink. He is gravely ill from radiation poisoning. As she tries to comfort him, the wash basin quickly fills with blood. She grabs him, wraps him in a towel, which becomes blood-soaked as well. She then rocks him gently and sings to him. He passes away, bleeding to death.

I saw my little boy there.

And I wept.

At that instant, I felt her grief, and the tapestry of humanity that binds us all.

The unspeakable cruelty of a mother having to bury her baby points directly at the selfishness of war.

In truth, mothers-from the United States, Russia, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Israel-are no different than any other. People are caught in the middle of the Power's struggle to destroy itself. Had the people of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden, to name a few, been represented by their governments? Who will speak for the dead?

This site is dedicated to sharing ideas, and maybe finding ways for us to show our strength. We can do this in many ways. We can protest. We can pray. We can share ideas. We can vote, responsibly.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

An animation that lasted 25 years...

There are certain events in your life that once you are exposed to them, you're never the same.

I experienced that on the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I was an 18 year old kid. I, like countless other kids my age, had been tramautized by "Threads" and "The Day After." We constantly looked up in the sky, searching for conspicuous vapor trails.

This was an age of terror.

I was convinced that I would not see my 19th birthday.

Yet, the one thing that terrified me, and yet gave me hope, was not these well-made television docudramas, but rather a Japanese animated short depitcting the atomic attack on Hiroshima.

It is very powerful stuff.

The images are very stylized, but very graphic. There is charred, melting flesh everywhere. The suffering is of mammoth proportions.

But, there is hope. The shorts starts, and ends with a little boy throwing a paper airplane. The first time, it is in old Hiroshima. The second, it is in a re-built, modern Hiroshima.

The film has lived in my mind for all these years. I had googled it recently, and to my surprise, it was there.

It's every bit as powerful to a 43 year-old father as it was to an 18 year-old boy.

WARNING:
The scenes depicted are very graphic.
This is not recommended for young or sensitive viewers.

-END TO WAR NOW

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A very brief history of the nuclear arms race....

A very brief history of the nuclear arms race...

1)1945-the first atomic bomb ever detonated. "I am the destroyer of worlds-"J. Robert Oppenheimer

1945-the first use of atomic weapons against a civilian population. The casualties are listed in the as over 100,000, but this is a conservative estimate. Nuclear fallout, and the effects of radiation will kill and wound many thousands more.

3)Operation Crossroads, Bikini Atoll. The US Navy detonates 2 atomic bombs-one above the water(Able), another 90 feet below the surface of the water(Baker). The tests subjected thousands of American servicemen to high levels of radiation, and many of them to suffer from radiologically-based illnesses and death. It also was the beginning of the America's displacement of native people of the Pacific.

4)RDS-1, Semipalatinsk, 1949-the first Soviet test of an atomic weapon. In order to evaluate the effects of the weapon, a town was constructed with wood-frame houses, vehicles,and over 1,500 animals. They were subjected to the heat, blast, and fallout effects of the bomb.

This type of testing, as well as that with human subjects, would be conducted on both sides of cold war. The hysteria that followed this would pressure the United States to develop a thermonuclear weapon.

5)Ivy Mike, 1952, Enewetak atoll-the first fusion device. The world enters the thermonuclear age.With the yield now exceeding 10 megatons, these are truly weapons of mass destruction. The upon the detonation, core is three times hotter than the sun, with temperature reaching 8000 degrees within a15 mile radius.

6) Joe-4,1953, Semipalatinsk-the first Soviet thermonuclear device. The thermonuclear gap was closed in less than a year.

7) Castle Bravo, Bikini Atoll, 1954-the largest nuclear explosion in U.S. history. With a yield twice as large as expected, it was the greatest radiological contamination committed by the U.S., poisoning islanders who lived near the test site, as well the crew of the Japanese fishing boat Diago Fukuryu Maru. This test raised international concern over the safety of atmospheric nuclear testing.

8) Sputnik, 1957, USSR-the first human-made object to orbit the earth. Though it was a mission for scientific research, the concern over the possibility of nuclear-tipped missiles intensified in the United States. Sputnik's booster rockets, the R-7's, had been successfully tested previous to Sputnik-the world's first Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile.

>9)Tsar Bomba, Novsys Zemlya archipelago, 1961. At 57 megatons, it was the most powerful bomb ever built. Originally designed for a yield of 100 megatons, it was scaled down to reduce fallout. The fireball as over 5 miles wide, and the heat emitted could cause third degree burns 62 miles away. The mushroom cloud was 40 miles high-the height of seven Mount Everests.

10) 1962, Cuban Missile Crisis. We looked death right in the face. We almost blinked. I don't know how else I can say it....

11) Partial Test Ban Treaty, 1963. Banned the atmospheric, underwater, and outer space testing of nuclear weapons. The ban was intended to slow the arms race, and reduce the effects of nuclear fallout. It was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union.

12) As of 2010, The United States, Russia, France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan, Israel (undeclared), Iran(assumed), and North Korea have nuclear weapons, with United States, Russia, France, Britain, and China possessing thermonuclear capabilities.

Though the Cold War is over, the specter of a nuclear war still looms. India and Pakistan pose a great threat as their decades long dispute, unsecured stockpiles, and fiery rhetoric is alarming to the international community. Combined with their dense population and close proximity, a nuclear exchange would be disaster for over a billion of the world's population.

Iran, Israel, and North Korea are also a cause for concern, with North Korea active in its ICBM program, and Iran and Israel both with "undeclared" status. There are seismic tests that reveal Israel's nuclear capability, and satellite picture of craters in Northern Iran suggest underground nuclear tests.

Still, the greatest nuclear threat is posed by nuclear terrorism. A small yield nuclear weapon or "dirty bomb," concealed by terrorists, pose a great risk.

-End To War Now

End To War Now

Testament (1982)

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