EDITORIAL

Scientists Call To Stop a New World War

EIR welcomes the following statement and encourages its widest circulation. It was released on July 31 by Steve Starr for rapid circulation to scientists and others. Starr’s video on the horror and finality of nuclear war, opens with the question, “What happens to the world if we use Ukraine to stumble our way into Thermonuclear War?” It is available here.

Shall We Put an End to the Human Race, or Shall Mankind Renounce Nuclear War?

Almost seventy years ago, Albert Einstein and 11 other Nobel Prize winners issued this warning:

Shall we put an end to the human race, or shall mankind renounce nuclear war?

Today, in Ukraine, the U.S., NATO, and Russia are moving toward a direct military conflict—and a U.S./NATO–Russian war will almost inevitably result in the use of nuclear weapons, because neither side will be willing to back down if a conflict begins.

The U.S., Britain, France, and Russia keep 2,000 strategic nuclear warheads at launch-ready status. Each strategic warhead is 7 to 53 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Once the order to launch is given, these warheads will hit their targets in 35 minutes or less. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles can hit their targets within 15 minutes of presidential authorization.

Russia has three hundred and forty 800-kiloton nuclear weapons at launch-ready status (800,000 tons of TNT explosive equivalent). The detonation of this warhead creates temperatures of roughly 200 million degrees Fahrenheit (about 100 million degrees Celsius), or about four to five times the temperature at the center of the sun.

To detonate a nuclear weapon over a city is like igniting a piece of the sun, which will create solar temperatures that vaporize anything beneath it and set fires for many miles/kilometers in all directions. This creates a massive nuclear firestorm.

The detonation of a single 800-kiloton warhead over a large city, on an average weather day, will ignite a nuclear firestorm that will cover 152 square miles (389 square kilometers). In a matter of tens of minutes, air temperatures within the fire zone will be above the boiling point of water.

Anyone within the fire zone will be confronted with a “hurricane of fire.” No living thing within the fire zone will survive.

In a full-scale nuclear war, it is likely that in less than one hour, significantly more than 1,000 nuclear firestorms would be created by burning cities in North America, Europe, and Russia (and quite possibly China). These firestorms would cover tens of thousands of square miles. Peer-reviewed studies estimate that up to 180 million tons of black smoke and soot, created by these firestorms, would rise above cloud level into the stratosphere, where it would form a global stratospheric smoke layer.

The stratospheric smoke layer could not be rained out and would remain for ten years or longer. The smoke layer would block enough sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere to quickly create average surface temperatures colder than those experienced at the height of the last Ice Age. For one to two years, temperatures would fall below freezing every day in central North America and central Eurasia. It would be too cold to grow food crops for many years. Most humans and large land animals would perish from starvation.

We must not allow this to happen. It is time to act, before it is too late.

We must speak out against a new World War, which will destroy mankind.

If you are a scientist, an artist, a religious or political or military leader, please join with us to call upon the United States, NATO, and Russia to stop any further escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. NATO members must not send military forces into Western Ukraine that can come into direct conflict with Russian forces. This is a direct pathway to World War 3 and nuclear oblivion.

Recall the words of Einstein and his colleagues:

We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt….

Here lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

Resolution

In view of the fact that in any future world war, nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.

Therefore, we the undersigned, endorse the urgent mobilization of Humanity for Peace (https://humanityforpeace.net), and call for all to participate in the August 6 International Day of Action, with a flagship rally at the United Nations in New York City, and sister rallies around the world.

#NoMoreHiroshimas #NoMoreNagasakis

Initiating Signer:

Steven Starr, Assistant Clinical Professor and former Clinical Laboratory Science Program Director at the University of Missouri