By Leonard Eiger July 16th marks the day 78 years ago when the United States let the nuclear genie out of the lamp. On July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 AM at the Alamogordo Test Range, on the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) desert, in the test named Trinity, Manhattan Project scientists detonated the experimental device known as the “Gadget,” creating a light “brighter than a thousand suns.” A mere 6 kilogram (13.2 pound) sphere of plutonium, compressed to supercriticality by the surrounding high explosives, created an explosion equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT (20 Kilotons). Was this, as thought […]
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Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan…
By Leonard Eiger April 4th is a day of remembrance – the day this nation lost a great prophet and truth teller, and a leader in the ways of nonviolence. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on that day in 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered an extraordinary and prophetic speech titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” at Riverside Church in New York City. Dr. King is known for many powerful speeches and sermons, and yet Beyond Vietnam […]
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Nuclear Remembrance Day: A day to say Abolish Nuclear Weapons NOW!
By Leonard Eiger March 1, 2023 March 1st is Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day (‘Bikini’ Day) which marks the anniversary of the infamous US ‘Bravo’ nuclear bomb detonation at Bikini Atoll in 1954. On that fateful day the United States tested the first deliverable hydrogen bomb, code named “Bravo”, at Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. Bravo was the largest U.S. nuclear test ever exploded, with a yield of 15 megatons, 1000 times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima (and well beyond the predicted yield of 6 megatons… OOOPS!). It blasted a crater 1.2 miles in diameter into […]
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Decommission Land-Based Nuclear Missiles NOW!
By Leonard Eiger, Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action Originally published February 8, 2023 (Updated/Revised February 10, 2023) The US Air Force conducted a test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) late Thursday night (February 9th) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. There has not been any international outcry over the launch of the missile that, under normal operational deployment, would carry a thermonuclear warhead. There will be little or no discussion anywhere by the news media about the test and its implications regarding international efforts to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons and move […]
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Subs in the Night… What Could Go Wrong?
By Leonard Eiger February 2, 2023 Imagine if you will. Down in the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean two nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines, one British and the other French, are on patrol. These huge, yet nimble giants (roughly the length of one and a half football fields), with some of the most advanced technology available, are bristling with nuclear armed missiles (each one with enough megatonage to incinerate much of a large continent – think RUSSIA). Their crews monitor the waters around them as they cruise silently (very, very silently), deep beneath the surface. Wham!!! The next you […]
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