"Remember yout humanity, forget the rest"

Almost 57 years ago two of the greatest minds the world has ever known put their collective brilliance together to write one of the most significant manifestos ever written. While the manifesto is significant it is unfortunately not influential. The Russell-Eisntein Manifesto concerns the prospects for survival of humanity as a species, if the proliferation of nuclear arms is continued. Although it is tipping on towards being sixty years old, its continued relevance has been significantly reinforced owing to the fact that today there are many more nations either seeking, or actively controlling a nuclear arsenal than there were then. The words of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto put the paltry pronouncements of Obama, and others, who call for 'bipartisan cooperation' into context i.e. perhaps a real 'leader' would speak in terms of our species, instead of requesting that politics be momentarily sidelined. Other great minds and great communicators have also weighed in on this issue and present the stark realities of what a nuclear war might look like.

I was also reminded when writing this of the BBC docu-drama Threads, which after watching it made me an absolute write-off for the rest of the day. Although it may no longer be the Russians causing the most serious concerns the grim depiction of Threads cannot be considered far from what the reality of an urban deployment of a nuclear weapon would look like.

As long as there have been nuclear weapons there has been opposition to them and yet the chances now that an individual psychopath will lay their hands on material serviceable for nuclear weapons is a more real prospect than at any point in time previous. The most vocal and effective opposition group today, to both the aforementioned possibility and potential international conflicts, is the Global Zero movement, the stated aim of which is to eliminate all nuclear weapons. To this end they state that; "the only way to eliminate the nuclear threat — including proliferation and nuclear terrorism — is to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, secure all nuclear materials and eliminate all nuclear weapons". The Global Zero movement were also instrumental in the production and distribution of the rather stark Countdown to Zero documentary. Although I could only find a trailer I am sure with sufficient searching one could easily track it down online. I worry not just about nuclear armageddon but also about dead links on my blog.

Also well worth watching is the movie Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie, which is rendered all the more enjoyable by the brilliant narration of William Shatner. Again this is just a trailer.

While Trinity focusses explicitly on American nuclear tests, they are far from the only bogeymen in this particular and still evolving drama of potential atomic chaos. This is especially so given the potential for nuclear standoffs in the Middle East and between India and Pakistan. The former is ready to explode (excuse the pun) at any moment while the latter is always a fragile and uneasy peace at the best of times. Anyway even setting aside these international equivalents of UTV's Neighbours From Hell, there have still been an immensity of nuclear weapons already exploded in tests around the world.

Granted that the places this has happened have been remote; if one day they are transplanted to an urban centre the suffering inflicted would be unimaginable to anyone not already acquainted with the epicentre of such an event. One need only read the testimonials of those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9th of August 1945 respectively, which are available here. It is also worth remembering that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are completely dwarfed in scale to those available today.

Although there is the Partial Test Ban Treaty, SALT and SALT II the fact that the materials required for making nuclear weapons still abound should be reason enough to fear the prospects for what may transpire to be the terminal phase in human evolution. It appears given the fact that human beings are excellent at inventing new ways of killing themselves, the assertion that intelligence may not be beneficial in evolutionary terms may ring true. It is with this in mind that it may be time to work towards as is suggested in the title remembering our humanity and forgetting the rest.