We have lost our fear of nuclear weapons. But the board of the non-profit Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is alarmed. Its Doomsday Clock, which tracks man-made threats, states midnight is the time of the world’s apocalypse. In 1947, it was set at seven minutes to midnight. In January 2023, mainly because of the war in Ukraine, they reset it at 11/2 minutes.
More recently, more threats. In October, Russia simulated a nuclear strike and its parliament later rescinded ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In November, Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu said dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was an option, and the US announced its new nuclear “gravity bomb” was 25 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. I was born in April 1945, four months before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I grew up horrified by the death and suffering of Japanese civilians: about 220,000 died, half almost immediately, the rest slowly from radiation sickness, burns, injuries and malnutrition.
In the early 1980s, I joined the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, an organisation started by cardiologists Dr Bernard Lown from the US and Yevgeniy Chazov from Russia, who believed forces binding their two countries together were greater than those separating them. I and my doctor colleagues joined the NZ branch in large numbers – at one time, the highest proportion of the doctors’ workforce of any country. Our goal was to educate the public, aiming for a more peaceful and secure world, free from the threat of nuclear war. We emphasised that we doctors would be powerless to help in a nuclear holocaust.
In March 1954, a huge 13.6 megatonne hydrogen bomb devastated the Bikini Atoll surface. Locals on Rongelap atoll, 150km away, called the snow-like fallout “the ashes of death”. Adults and children suffered thyroid cancer and leukaemia; other children had their thyroid glands removed as a preventive measure. Children suffered stinging skin burns and hair loss. A similar-sized bomb detonated in Wellington would destroy the capital and the fallout would extend from at least Palmerston North to Kaikōura.
Has nuclear “deterrence” worked? Since 1945, US allies and Russia have by proxy waged numerous major wars causing millions of deaths around the world, the latest in Ukraine. But thankfully, no nuclear explosion has been unleashed so far.
How long can the nuclear stand-off last? International treaties are tenuous. Terrorism and accident are entirely possible. It’s estimated there are now 12,500 nukes in nine countries, some on hair-trigger alert. The nuclear powers are holding us to ransom. There is only one way to eliminate this threat: completely eliminating nuclear stockpiles.
What should we do? New Zealand’s unique anti-nuclear law is popular; our voices led to the International Court of Justice judgment in 1996 that threatening or using nuclear weapons is “generally” unlawful (but permissible in certain circumstances). We were early joiners of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which rules that nuclear weapons are illegal.
We are backsliding. We are a partner of Nato, a nuclear-defended coalition. Under Five Eyes, we spy on our Pacific neighbours. Being allied to the US, constantly at war, puts us in danger. We must refuse to be part of the military and intelligence operations of any nuclear power.
On its website, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists makes four promises, the last being, “We promise to be fair-minded: We are not partisan; we believe that government policies must be based on facts, not ideology. We have one prejudice: We are opposed to extinction.” Aren’t we all?
Retired surgeon Russell Tregonning was Wellington branch chairperson in the mid-1990s of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.
