Studies show that even a limited, regional nuclear war would have unprecedented humanitarian consequences worldwide - causing a global famine that could put at risk more than one billion lives. On Hiroshima’s 67th anniversary, world leaders must recognize that a treaty banning nuclear weapons is urgent and achievable.
LONDON – On August 6, 1945, the first uranium bomb was exploded above Hiroshima with the force of 15,000 tons of TNT. A total of 140,000 people died that year as a result of the blast and fireball that engulfed the city, falling debris, and the radioactive fallout. Three days later, Nagasaki was shattered by a plutonium bomb that matched the design of a bomb that the United States had tested in the New Mexico desert three weeks earlier.
The success of that test prompted the Manhattan Project’s lead scientist, Robert Oppenheimer, to reflect that he had become a “destroyer of worlds.” Over the next 40 years, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the US, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and China) amassed roughly 70,000 nuclear weapons, with a combined explosive force of 15 million tons of TNT.
This October will mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, when US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev managed – by luck as much as judgment – to pull back from the brink of nuclear war. Miscalculation and saber rattling led to several more near-misses before activism by civil-society groups triggered a cascade of nuclear-arms reductions, reinforced by the Cold War’s end.
LONDON – On August 6, 1945, the first uranium bomb was exploded above Hiroshima with the force of 15,000 tons of TNT. A total of 140,000 people died that year as a result of the blast and fireball that engulfed the city, falling debris, and the radioactive fallout. Three days later, Nagasaki was shattered by a plutonium bomb that matched the design of a bomb that the United States had tested in the New Mexico desert three weeks earlier.
The success of that test prompted the Manhattan Project’s lead scientist, Robert Oppenheimer, to reflect that he had become a “destroyer of worlds.” Over the next 40 years, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the US, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and China) amassed roughly 70,000 nuclear weapons, with a combined explosive force of 15 million tons of TNT.
This October will mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, when US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev managed – by luck as much as judgment – to pull back from the brink of nuclear war. Miscalculation and saber rattling led to several more near-misses before activism by civil-society groups triggered a cascade of nuclear-arms reductions, reinforced by the Cold War’s end.