The Facts about the Grave Potentiality of Nuclear War

This image was presented at moderndiplomacy.eu on Nov. 11 in conjunction with portions of an article featured in this blog post.

Throughout the 1960s and following decades while I've been residing here in Los Angeles, the essentiality of world leaders avoiding nuclear war always was an issue of great environmental concern for everyone due to—back then—the diligence of journalists while TV shows and movies also consistently featured the subject of what would result for society from nuclear war.  A recent Digital Trends article reminds us about the dire potentialities of nuclear war being part of the storyline in such movies as "Dr. Strangelove" (1964), "The China Syndrome" (1979), "Testament" (1983) and the "Mad Max" movies (1979-2015).

 

A Nov. 10 American Physical Society news article "Physicists Can Help Combat Global Threat of Nuclear Weapons, Say Experts at Nuclear Physics Meeting" by Sophia Chen reminds us about the vast degradation of common people's quality of life today due to vast expenditures resulting from international military indoctrination among government leaders while the value and effectiveness of diplomacy is evidently not comprehended nor part of their 'social programming.'  In this article scientist Alan Robock is reported as having explained:

 

Stockpiles are so large that, if a Hiroshima-sized bomb had dropped every two hours from the end of World War II until today, it would still not have used up today’s global arsenal, he said. 

 
"My reaction is to try and do something about it,” said Robock.  In 2017, the United Nations passed a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, and 68 countries have ratified it, although the U.S. and Russia have not.  He quoted Beatrice Fihn, whose organization, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017: "The story of nuclear weapons will have an ending, and it is up to us what that ending will be."

 
Here's another passage from the article.

 

Nuclear security expert Steve Fetter of the University of Maryland, who co-founded the Physicists Coalition, gave an overview of the state of nuclear weapons in the world.  He focused mainly on the U.S. and Russia, which together control more than 90 percent of the world’s stockpile.  Both countries have weapons for three different types of deployment — intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), launched via rockets, some of which can reach anywhere on the planet; submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which can launch nuclear weapons with similar range from underwater; and bombers, or airplanes that can carry and deploy nuclear weapons.  Russia’s strategy relies on more intercontinental ballistic missiles, whereas the U.S. relies on more submarine-based ones.  Both countries have around 1,000 nuclear weapons that can be launched within minutes, said Fetter.

Fetter also discussed developments in nuclear weaponry.  The U.S. government plans to spend $1.3 trillion to replace and upgrade its arsenal starting in 2030.  "Even by the standards of the U.S. Department of Defense, this is a lot of money," said Fetter.

 

Ever since I published my own TESTAMENT in 1997, the paperback and free Internet edition of the book have included the entire publication The Hundredth Monkey (1985) by Ken Keyes, Jr. who reminded: "The rapid alerting of all humankind to nuclear realities is supremely urgent.  If we are wiped out by nuclear destruction in the next few years, how important are the things we are doing today?"  This danger is becoming more crucial every day due to the metaphysical ignorance and systemic brainwashing of international military leaders who in turn manipulate elected officials.  Spiritually enlightened diplomacy would best serve humanity with expenditures better directed to the escalating needs concerning the impoverishment of people worldwide and shockingly deteriorating environmental conditions of our planetary habitat.

 

an illustration from the book

As the commercial news media has become more regulated by the company executives and 'chiefs' ranking at the top of the existing 'paperwork principalities,' mainstream news websites seldom make room for antiwar articles and data sources.  One recent timely post is "Nowhere to Hide: How a nuclear war would kill you — and almost everyone else" (Oct. 20) by François Diaz-Maurin at the website Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  Here's an excerpt.

 

Global climatic changes, widespread radioactive contamination, and societal collapse virtually everywhere could be the reality that survivors of a nuclear war would contend with for many decades.

 

Two years after any nuclear war—small or large—famine alone could be more than 10 times as deadly as the hundreds of bomb blasts involved in the war itself.

The May 30, 2016 Los Angeles Times Op-Ed article entitled "Russia’s got a point: The U.S. broke a NATO promise" by Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson reminds:

 

Moscow solidified its hold on Crimea in April, outlawing the Tatar legislature that had opposed Russia’s annexation of the region since 2014.  Together with Russian military provocations against NATO forces in and around the Baltic, this move seems to validate the observations of Western analysts who argue that under Vladimir Putin, an increasingly aggressive Russia is determined to dominate its neighbors and menace Europe.

 

Leaders in Moscow, however, tell a different story.  For them, Russia is the aggrieved party.  They claim the United States has failed to uphold a promise that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe, a deal made during the 1990 negotiations between the West and the Soviet Union over German unification.  In this view, Russia is being forced to forestall NATO’s eastward march as a matter of self-defense.

 

The West has vigorously protested that no such deal was ever struck.  However, hundreds of memos, meeting minutes and transcripts from U.S. archives indicate otherwise.  Although what the documents reveal isn’t enough to make Putin a saint, it suggests that the diagnosis of Russian predation isn’t entirely fair.  Europe’s stability may depend just as much on the West’s willingness to reassure Russia about NATO’s limits as on deterring Moscow’s adventurism. 

 

 

It’s therefore not surprising that Russia was incensed when Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and others were ushered into NATO membership starting in the mid-1990s.  Boris Yeltsin, Dmitry Medvedev and Gorbachev himself protested through both public and private channels that U.S. leaders had violated the non-expansion arrangement. 

 

. . . the evidence suggests that Russia’s protests have merit and that U.S. policy has contributed to current tensions in Europe.

 

This blog post offers examples of news that many Americans never find offered to them. 

Featured Perspective from commondreams.org:
 

"Protests in 40+ US Cities Demand De-escalation as Poll Shows Surging Fear of Nuclear War"

  
by Julia Conley (October 14, 2022)
 

 

"Anyone paying attention should be worried about the rising dangers of nuclear war, but what we really need is action," said one organizer.

 

As new polling showed this week that Americans' fear of nuclear war has steadily grown since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, anti-nuclear campaigners on Friday called on federal lawmakers to take action to mitigate those fears and ensure the U.S. is doing all it can to de-escalate tensions with other nuclear powers.
 
Anti-war groups including Peace Action and RootsAction organized picket lines at the offices of U.S. senators and representatives in more than 40 cities across 20 states, calling on lawmakers to push for a ceasefire in Ukraine, the revival of anti-nuclear treaties the U.S. has exited in recent years, and other legislative actions to prevent nuclear catastrophe.
 
"Anyone paying attention should be worried about the rising dangers of nuclear war, but what we really need is action," Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction, told Common Dreams.  "Picket lines at so many congressional offices across the country convey that more and more constituents are fed up with the timidity of elected officials, who've refused to acknowledge the extent of the current grave dangers of nuclear war, much less speak out and take action to mitigate those dangers."

  

The most recent polling released by Reuters/Ipsos on Monday showed that 58% of Americans fear the U.S. is headed toward nuclear war.
 
The level of fear regarding a nuclear conflict is lower than it was in February and March 2022, shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.  But experts said Friday the polling shows sustained fear about nuclear weapons that has been rare in the United States.
 
"The level of anxiety is something that I haven't seen since the Cuban missile crisis," Peter Kuznick, a history professor and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, told The Hill.  "And that was short-lived.  This has gone on for months now."
 
Chris Jackson, senior vice president of Ipsos, told The Hill that he didn't "recall any time in the last 20 years where we've seen this sort of level of concern about the potential for nuclear apocalypse."
 
Putin threatened the use of nuclear weapons last month, saying the U.S. set "a precedent" for using them when it dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 and adding that he would use "all available means" to defend Russia.
 
The New York Times reported this week that "senior American officials say they have seen no evidence that Mr. Putin is moving any of his nuclear assets," but that they are also "far more concerned than they were at the start of the [Ukraine] conflict about the possibility of Mr. Putin deploying tactical nuclear weapons."
 
Campaigners at "Defuse Nuclear War" picket lines on Friday called on members of Congress to allay those concerns by:

 

• Adopting a "no first use" policy regarding nuclear weapons, to restrict when the president of the United States can consider a nuclear strike and signal that the weapons are for deterrence rather than the fighting of wars;
• Pushing for the U.S. to reenter the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which it withdrew from in 2002, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which it left in in 2019;
• Passing H.R. 1185, which calls on the president "to embrace the goals and provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and make nuclear disarmament the centerpiece of U.S. national security policy;"
• Redirecting military spending, which makes up half the country's discretionary budget, to ensure Americans have "adequate healthcare, education, housing, and other basic needs" and that the U.S. is taking far-reaching climate action; and 
• Pushing the Biden administration to take nuclear weapons off "hair-trigger alert," which enables their rapid launch and "increases the chance of a launch in response to a false alarm," according to Defuse Nuclear War organizers.

 
"We're sick of members of Congress acting like spectators instead of initiating measures that the U.S. government could take to reduce the terribly real risks of global annihilation," Solomon told Common Dreams.  "The absurdly muted response from members of Congress is intolerable — and it's time to publicly hold their feet to fire."
 
The power held by President Joe Biden, Putin, and the leaders of the world's other seven nuclear powers is "unacceptable," wrote Kevin Martin, president of Peace Action, in a column on Thursday.
 
"However," he added, "the current crisis brings with it the opportunity to re-engage on nuclear disarmament issues at the grassroots level in order to show our government it needs to get serious about reducing, not exacerbating, the nuclear threat."
 
In addition to Friday's pickets, campaigners are organizing a Day of Action on Sunday, with supporters holding demonstrations, handing out fliers, and prominently displaying banners calling for a de-escalation of the nuclear threat.

 

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A salon.com article that provides an example of overcoming regulated 'mainstream news media programming' is "Maybe the lunatics are right about Ukraine: Defeating Putin isn't worth nuclear war" by Tyler Harper.  The subheading is: "We face only bad choices — but it's time to face them.  Is a proxy war over Ukraine worth the risk of apocalypse?"  Here are some excerpts:

 

In recent weeks, a bevy of thought leaders on the political fringe have come out strongly against the war in Ukraine, arguing that the Biden administration and NATO have put us on the path to nuclear conflict.

 

 

. . . as an academic whose research specializes in human extinction — and who is very concerned that the prospect of nuclear war over Ukraine is not being taken nearly seriously enough — I am forced to admit that the conservative lunatics are right.  The current administration and popular media outlets have endorsed a course of action in Ukraine that is pushing the world inexorably toward a catastrophe that could not only spell the demise of modern civilization, but could quite possibly put us on the road toward human extinction.  

 

 

Despite initially promising that American troops would not enter Ukraine because doing so would risk World War III, Biden has quietly backtracked on that guarantee: Last week it was confirmed that the U.S. military has put boots on the ground to track weapons shipments in the country. 

 

 

The administration is able to pursue this reckless foreign policy, in no small part, because the mainstream media has orchestrated a near-flawless PR campaign on Ukraine's behalf, casting the conflict as a tale of noble David versus monstrous Goliath.  I myself am guilty of contributing to this perception, framing Ukraine as a tragic protagonist in a Slate column earlier this year. 

 

 

As conservative nuts like Musk and his friends have correctly divined, our government cares about Ukraine not because it is a true-blue democracy but because it is a chess piece in a quasi-imperialist proxy war between the United States, NATO and Russia.  It used to be the case that anti-war progressives were on the front lines of pushing back against America's foreign adventurism and nuclear brinksmanship, but in the topsy-turvy political climate of the 2020s, it is the conservative lunatics who seem most concerned about nuclear holocaust.

 

 

It undeniably sounds (and perhaps is) grotesque to talk about the comparative democratic "worth" of a nation as its people suffer at the hands of a tyrant.  But it is far more grotesque to stumble into a global thermonuclear war because our leaders and media are too polite to ask whether saving Ukraine is worth risking the death of billions.  My personal point of view is that it's debatable whether any nation on Earth, however democratic, is worth risking the extinction of the human race — the only confirmed intelligent life in the universe.  If your point of view, however, is that such risks are worth it to save a democracy or to prevent future nuclear wars, then your argument rests on shaky foundations.

 

My heart breaks for everyday Ukrainians whose lives have been upended, and lost, in this brutal conflict.  But to date, less than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in eight months of fighting.  That figure, while horrifying, is about 30 times less than the number of innocents that were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki over two days in August 1945, the last time (and only time) that nuclear weapons were used in combat.  It is also worth remembering that the bombs we dropped on Japan would likely be considered small, "tactical" nuclear weapons by today's standards. 

 

 

The ugly heart of the matter is that we have before us only bad choices.  We can push for peace, supporting a negotiated settlement that will allow Russia to achieve at least some of its objectives.  That will mean that Putin has been partially successful in his bid to redraw the borders of Europe by force, and that he will have the opportunity to subject the annexed regions of Ukraine to further oppression and brutality.  The alternative is that we can keep climbing the ladder of escalation, risking the slow, painful death of billions through radiation sickness and famine against the background of an ash-black sky.  These are awful options, but you would have to be morally insane to believe that the latter is preferable to the former.  

  

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Today an article was published at fairobserver.com: "New Congressional Amendment Benefits War Profiteers, Risks World War III" by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, who observe: 

 

If the powerful leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed of the Democratic Party and Jim Inhofe of the Republican Party, have their way, the US Congress will soon invoke wartime emergency powers to build up even greater stockpiles of Pentagon weapons.  The amendment is supposedly designed to facilitate replenishing the weapons the US has sent to Ukraine, but a look at the wish list contemplated in this amendment reveals a different story.

 

 
President Joe Biden says he will not send US troops to fight Russia because that would be World War III. But the longer the war goes on and the more it escalates, the more it becomes clear that US forces are directly involved in many aspects of the war: helping to plan Ukrainian operations; providing satellite-based intelligence; waging cyber warfare; and operating covertly inside Ukraine as special operations forces and CIA paramilitaries.  Now Russia has accused British special operations forces of direct roles in a maritime drone attack on Sevastopol and the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

. . . the Pentagon must have drawn up contingency plans for a full-scale war between the US and Russia. If those plans are ever executed, and if they do not immediately trigger a world-ending nuclear war, they will require vast quantities of specific weapons, and that is the purpose of the Reed-Inhofe stockpiles.

 
When the Reed-Inhofe Amendment sailed through committee in mid-October, it was clearly the "demand signal" the merchants of death were looking for.  The stock prices of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics took off like anti-aircraft missiles, exploding to all-time highs by the end of the month.

Julia Gledhill, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, decried the wartime emergency provisions in the amendment, saying it "further deteriorates already weak guardrails in place to prevent corporate price gouging of the military."

Opening the doors to multi-year, non-competitive, multi-billion dollar military contracts shows how the American people are trapped in a vicious spiral of war and military spending.  Each new war becomes a pretext for further increases in military spending, much of it unrelated to the current war that provides cover for the increase.  Military budget analyst Carl Conetta demonstrated (see Executive Summary) in 2010, after years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, that "those operations account(ed) for only 52% of the surge" in US military spending during that period.

Andrew Lautz of the National Taxpayers' Union now calculates that the base Pentagon budget will exceed $1 trillion per year by 2027, five years earlier than projected by the Congressional Budget Office.  But if we factor in at least $230 billion per year in military-related costs in the budgets of other departments, like Energy (for nuclear weapons), Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Justice (FBI cybersecurity), and State, national insecurity spending has already hit the trillion dollar per year mark, gobbling up two-thirds of annual discretionary spending.

America's exorbitant investment in each new generation of weapons makes it nearly impossible for politicians of either party to recognize, let alone admit to the public, that American weapons and wars have been the cause of many of the world's problems, not the solution . . . .

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The world might be different today if journalists had reported about the publication of my case study book TESTAMENT in 1997 along thereafter with the hundreds of articles about transcendental communication cases/'Divine Dispensations' available at this blog.  Altogether, knowing how fundamental for intellectual development are the noncommercial articles at this blog, I can only and without any vanity regarding my personal 'identity' compare my reporting 'Mark Russell Bell' pen name/persona to a journalist counterpart to 'science's theoretical Einstein' (however without any Arthur Stanley Eddington) — or perhaps my initiated vocation might be phrased as the chosen one to be 'press agent for The God Force.'  After having previously worked as a talent agent and then as a professional public relations/publicity executive or 'press agent', I extensively researched 'talking poltergeist' case chronologies with perhaps what has been the inevitable result — something far different than what has been conceptualized about any so-called 'poltergeist agent.'  Since 1997 I've made myself available for interviews through news releases and newswire services.  TESTAMENT was published in January 1997 and copies of the book were provided to news media.  In 1999 there was a full-page ad for the book and free online edition in Daily Variety (article).  The interviews that resulted were for noncorporate paranormal-themed shows and 'morning zoo' radio banter programs.

 

My 'paranormal initiation' to the Nature of The God Force—reported and chronicled online for more than 25 years—brought the insight that a human being best expresses love in return to the Source by working to improve the life conditions of other people and our environment in accordance with the awareness that one should always be a spiritually conscious and responsible co-creator.  Previous Metaphysical Articles posts include "Salon.com — What media didn't tell you about the UN: 66 nations called for an end to Ukraine war", "'The Spies Who Came In From The Newsroom' by Joe Trento and Dave Roman (1977)", "Warning Apparitions of 'virgin Mary' — Testimonials with Blue Light or Blue", "This Timely Photo Was Published in the 1997 First Edition of TESTAMENT (with My Email to Putin and Biden Updates)" and "Sharing Diverse Aspects of my 'Paranormal Initiation'".  

 

I've contacted UFOlogists and NASA staff members to provide them with the overlooked or 'covered-up' facts about documented interaction with visitors from other worlds only for them to do nothing with this information as far as I can tell.  (UFOlogy Articles Links Index)  Among these articles are "To Save This Planet Earth" and "Here Is UFOlogy's 'Bombshell Physical Proof'".

 

What would best always be considered is how have you expressed love to the Source this day instead of following the path of the 'sheeple' silently allowing the current paradigm to steadily progress toward nuclear war as inadvertent culmination instead of reaching to embrace a New Age realized in the knowledge of one's personal efforts.  Abandoning the programming of immoral military 'winner take all' values and relinquishing assumed imperatives of 'corporate thinking' promoting greed among governing company officials collectively will bring about the long awaited New Age of Aquarius, an epoch of Divine wonders and expanded knowledge of metaphysical cosmology resulting with the corresponding excitement and prosperity throughout the world.  Being diplomatic with the leaders of other nations is spiritually wise and vastly less wasteful than the tradition of acceding to ever-increasing self-destructive military-industrial war expenditures.   

  

Note from MRB:

This year I’ve been campaigning for a return to international diplomacy and for citizens to express themselves to stop national leaders from opting to carry out deluded military agendas that they estimate will enhance their personal prestige.  Right now throughout the world there are horrible conditions resulting from the breakdown of international diplomacy.  For many decades it has been culturally traditional for countless people to rely on military-industrial complex-controlled mainstream news and also give their attention to entertainment, instead of developing their metaphysical, spiritual and cosmological understanding of life.  Considering the many billions of dollars used for military aid to Ukraine, the money would have been better used in support of America's homeless and disenfranchised along with finding ways to help improve the lives of people internationally, in particular Russia to evade nuclear war that will destroy the environment of our planet.  Proxy war is also war against man and God.  When contemporary world leaders plainly state ultimatums to one another, only someone with a mentality indoctrinated to be passive to the mindset of 'military programming' would fail to advocate diplomatic ways of resolving problems.  Recent blog articles have focused on the circumstances related to the reasons that 'those who live as sheeple will perish as sheeple' unless collectively we may through working together express enough love and respect to our fellow humans to take society beyond illusionary devotion to nationalism-oriented paperwork principalities.  Providing intellectual and spiritual insights for us are what may be learned from being attentive to documented Divine Dispensations that have been subjects for reporting at this blog for many years.  (Metaphysical Articles Index)  Warnings for mankind have included apparitions of the blessed virgin Mary and contemporary correlations with the life of Bel-Marduk, the ancient god-king-priest who wasn't able to prevent a holocaust in the ancient world. 

 

October 2, 1990 newsletter edition

 

This is Article #50 of the Current Series of Posts that Commenced with the May 17 article.

 

 

11/15/22 Update: An article promoted today at MSN News is entitled "Vladimir Putin: Expert reveals there is another 'force' behind the Russian leader" by Luan Trimi.  Article subheadings state:

 

Yuri Felshtinsky, an expert in Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian politics, questions whether WWIII has already begun, and says that while Vladimir Putin has already lost, he is not the main problem.  

 

Yuri Felshtinsky, the American historian and writer of Russian origin has unveiled recently a new publication called World War III?: Putin's Battle for Ukraine.

Felshtinsky is quoted in this post: 

I'll be honest and it may sound strange, but . . . who cares about Putin, especially now? Although we are stuck in this belief that Putin is important, I do not think that in Russia, with its current regime and foreign policy, Putin's departure would change anything.  It really doesn't matter if he walks away, dies, or gets killed.

We are dealing here with special services (FSB), which are the only authority in this country.  They are the force behind Putin, such is the political nature of Russia.

 

Today President Biden requested $37.7 billion more for purposes explained in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young: “We are urging the Congress to provide additional appropriations to ensure Ukraine has the funding, weapons and support it needs to defend itself and that vulnerable people continue to receive lifesaving aid.”  Contemplating the vast expenditures for the proxy war with Russia, there is the obvious realization that the now-ensconced military programming among leaders derives from what was historically the perceived conflict with Russia as a republic that showed the success of Socialism and therefore threatened the stability of a Capitalist 'democracy' allowing the wealthy elite to amass greater wealth.  

 

A businessinsider.com this year reported about American wealth: ". . . in 1989 the families in the top 10% held 63% of wealth.  That ballooned: In 2019, they held 72% of wealth.  Broken down even more, the top 1% now holds about a third of all wealth — up from a little less than a quarter in 1989."  It is this wealthy elite that influences spiritually inconsiderate governmental representatives in well-known ways.    

 

 

(click on montage for a magnified view of news headlines during the ongoing present phase)

 

11/18/22 Update: A new development has been reported.

 

 

11/20/22 Update:  Today an MSN-featured headline news article is "Video: Carl Sagan predicted our current dystopia back in 1990" by Shannon Cooper.  This post reminds readers of the importance of people advancing their perceptual understanding and for government leaders expressing through diplomatic interaction kindness and understanding that people should have equal access to the standard of living.  It is reported: "A short four-minute TikTok of the speech recently went viral on the r/Damnthatsinteresting subreddit."  The scientist and author is quoted. 

 

"How much money do you think the United States has spent since 1945 on the Cold War?"  The answer is a massive 10 trillion dollars spent since 1945 (a number which has only increased exponentially in the last 30 years).

 

He then asks another series of questions.  "How certain was it that the Russians were going to invade?  Was it 100% certain?  Guess not since they never invaded.  What if it was only, let’s say, 10% certain?  What would advocates of big military buildup have said?  We must be prudent."

 

Sagan notes that "classic military thinking" always involves preparing for the worst, most threatening contingency.  Even if it's only a remote possibility, it's still vital to be prepared for an extreme, existential threat.

 

"Why doesn't that same argument apply to Global Warming?" he then asks.  "If it's only a small probability of it happening since the consequences are so serious, don't you have to make some serious investment to prevent it or mitigate it?"

 

 

Sagan calls out this logical flaw in our government’s spending a “double standard” and encourages treating climate change with the severity it deserves—in 1990.