Barack Obama was clearly one of the most cerebral and well-spoken presidents that the United States has ever had. But as odd as it may seem, two slips of his tongue may have led to the rise of the two worst dictators so far in the 21^st Century.

In 2011, Obama spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner. One of the guests was Donald Trump. Obama showed little mercy when while looking at Trump, he said, “No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like: Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?” Obama also included a fake video of his birth and an artist’s rendition of what the White House would look like if Trump was president, further embarrassing Trump.

You can see the five-minute video here:

As you might expect, Trump was not pleased by being the butt of the jokes. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said Trump was “pissed off like I’d never seen him before.”

Trump had played around with the idea of running fore president before the 2011 Correspondents Dinner. But the events that evening truly crystallized his hate towards Obama as well as any Democrat who held him in low regard. In June of 2015, Trump announced that he was running for president in 2016. He decimated the rest of the Republican field of candidates and then lost to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million popular votes, but won the outdated and undemocratic Electoral College.

The second faux pas by Obama came in 2014. In March of that year, shortly after Vladimir Putin and Russia had invaded Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine, Obama called Russia a “regional power.” Specifically, he said, “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness.” Obama describes in in more detail in the following 50-second video:

Knowing what we know now about Putin, it is no surprise that he would be humiliated and outraged at the thought of Russia being called a regional power. After all, his dream as president of Russia was to re-establish the old Soviet Union, with all seventeen republics. He felt that Russia and the Soviet Union had a long and proud history of being a global power and he want to reassert what had been lost at the end of the twentieth century when Mikhail Gorbachev orchestrated to collapse of the Soviet Union in order to give more autonomy to each of the republics.

We cannot say that Obama’s demeaning remarks about Russia caused Putin to bully and ultimately further invade Ukraine in 2022, but it certainly did not help. Putin was also irritated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who repeatedly criticized Putin and Russia for the lack of fair and democratic elections.

Generally, Barack Obama measures his words as well as anyone. You can see it, particularly in his press conferences, when he often pauses between phrases to make sure that the next thing that he says is precisely what he is thinking and not something that he will later regret.

Life is full of ironies, and the fact that Barack Obama may well have significantly contributed to the rise of dictators Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin can be considered unexpected and certainly unfortunate. It is further evidence that we all make mistakes, even when we try our best to avoid them.

The post How Loose Lips from Obama Hurt America and the World appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Every year, just as the summer is nearing its end, the world remembers. We remember the unconscionable use of the world’s deadliest weapons—nuclear weapons—seventy-three years ago, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This year, unlike in the years past, we no longer should be comforted solely by “never-agains” in speeches and statements of government officials marking the event. This year, for the first time in world’s history, there exists a credible and widely supported framework to deliver on the promise of the nuclear-weapons free world. A group of bold women played an essential role in its delivery.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (the Ban Treaty) came into existence in July 2017. This ambitious document spelled out a commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. It banned the making, testing, possession, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.

More than 120 countries participated in its drafting, most of them from the global south – including the small island states whose populations are still reeling from the consequences of nuclear testing. Absent were, unsurprisingly, nine possessors of nuclear weapons (U.S., U.K., France, China, Russia, Pakistan, India, North Korea and Israel) and their respective allies (including almost all NATO members).

As of now, more than sixty states have signed onto the Treaty and fourteen have ratified it, slowly inching closer towards the goal of 50, when the treaty would become operational.

The road to the Treaty’s existence was a culmination of political courage and skillful diplomacy. But it is also the result of the decades of tireless advocacy by civil society movements, like the International Coalition to Ban Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize last year for its work.

ICAN follows the long line of anti-nuclear efforts which span as far back as the invention of the atomic bomb itself. They feature a diverse cast of characters, movements and well-meaning individuals from the U.S. and abroad. They have included environmentalists, hippies, young people, lawyers, physicians, scientists, and even committed nuns – Sister Megan Rice who broke into the high-security nuclear facility in Tennessee as an act of protest being among the most well-known.

Women have played an integral part in anti-nuclear activities in the U.S. and across the world. They organized and attended protests, produced scholarship and were instrumental in pushing for past diplomatic breakthroughs on nuclear testing ban treaties. They were also key to bringing about the Nuclear Ban Treaty.

Many of the civil society activists who took part in negotiations were women. ICAN’s leadership is made up of passionate and committed women and led by Beatrice Fihn, a proud mother of two. Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the nuclear blast in Hiroshima, also played an outsized role in speaking against nuclear weapons. She was a constant presence in the halls of the UN headquarters for the past several years, sharing her story of survival and lobbying diplomats to support the Ban.

Women were well represented in many country delegations negotiating the Treaty. The diplomats from Ireland stood out in this regard, for their team was composed solely of female Ambassador, experts and policy advisers. Despite this, women remain grossly underrepresented in disarmament diplomacy

Women who have delivered the Ban Treaty and are now working to mount a large coalition to ensure the Treaty ratified by as many countries as possible.  Their work should be supported, the role they played in bringing about the Treaty should be celebrated more widely known.

At a time when the number of social justice causes calling for our attention is ever-increasing, we must prioritize the call of the anti-nuclear weapons activists. Responding to their calls will  provide for safety and  security of our planet for many years to come.

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Anyone in the U.S. military with any connection to nuclear weapons is required to pass the Personnel Reliability Program. Donald Trump would most likely flunk it.

In his recent New Yorker article, “How Trump Could Get Fired,” Evan Osnos notes that,

..If Trump were an officer in the Air Force, with any connection to nuclear weapons, he would need to pass the Personnel Reliability Program [PRP], which includes thirty-seven questions about financial history, emotional volatility, and physical health.

The US Department of Defense  established the PRP specificially for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. According to DOD:

[The PRP is a] security, medical and psychological evaluation program designed to permit only the most trustworthy individuals to have access to nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons.

…Only those personnel who have demonstrated the highest degree of individual reliability for allegiance, trustworthiness, conduct, behavior, and responsibility shall be allowed to perform duties associated with nuclear weapons, and they shall be continuously evaluated for adherence to PRP standards.

The PRP evaluates many aspects of the individual’s work life and home life. Any disruption of these, or severe deviation from an established norm would be cause to deny access. The denial might be temporary or permanent.

PRP has many requirements for clearance. Here are the ones that would probably make Trump questionable:

For his article, Osnos interviewed Bruce Blair, a research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security, at Princeton:

[Blair] told me that if Trump were an officer in the Air Force, with any connection to nuclear weapons, he would need to pass the Personnel Reliability Program, which includes thirty-seven questions about financial history, emotional volatility, and physical health. (Question No. 28: Do you often lose your temper?)

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Trump would never pass muster,” Blair, who was a ballistic-missile launch-control officer in the Army, told me. “Any of us that had our hands anywhere near nuclear weapons had to pass the system. If you were having any arguments, or were in financial trouble, that was a problem. For all we know, Trump is on the brink of that.

But here’s the kicker:  The President is exempt from the PRP. He has already threatened North Korea, and he has the ultimate deciding vote on when to launch. Be afraid.

The post Trump would probably flunk the military’s nuke test appeared first on Occasional Planet.

At first we couldn’t talk about it. The dictums of the American Psychological Association said that not only was it inappropriate for us as citizens to talk about the mental health of our public leaders, but they as professionals could not do so either unless they had personally examined the leader. This Goldwater Rule could not withstand the pressure of laymen and mental health professional alike to want to analyze presidential candidate, and now president, Donald Trump.

It has become open season to question the president’s mental health. It may be presumptuous of all of us to do it, but we’ve clearly learned that it is not possible to assess Trump based on his “beliefs” or policies. There is a certain non-permanence to those and he tends to gravitate toward some combination of what is convenient, with a healthy dose of Republican meanness.

As many on the left question Trump’s sanity, it is interesting that the defenses of Trump from the right rarely include statements vouching for his sanity. Instead they say that he has awakened America to the concerns and policies of the conservative movement. So who is going to defend Trump when he might have moments of sanity?

An agreed definition of sanity is “the ability to think and behave in a normal and rational manner.” So if a human being faces a decision of whether or not to go into a danger zone, all other things being equal, it makes sense to avoid it. And this is precisely what Donald Trump has decided to do by not attending the 2017 White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 29. His tweet announcing his decision was unusually bland, “I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening.” His words neither conveyed defensiveness nor the anger that he has expressed toward the press since he announced his candidacy for the presidency in June, 2015.

Trump has previously attended only one White House Correspondents’ Dinner (2011) and it was a disaster for him. The normally compassionate President Barack Obama joined the spirit of the event and took a few jabs at his opponents. One of them was Donald Trump. In particular, Obama mocked Trump’s belief that Obama was not born in the United States. Trump was forced to sit with no place to escape and take jab after jab.

In a 2016 Frontline, PBS cited the evening as such a humiliation for Trump that it was a key motivator in his decision to run for president, and essentially seek revenge.

What is interesting now is that Trump is choosing not to take the stage at the 2017 dinner and be the “skewer-in-chief.” He knows that whatever he dishes out, he will receive far more in return. More importantly, it would be in front of a largely hostile crowd, something he has wisely avoided in his campaign and presidency.

So let’s give The Donald credit for knowing where not to go. It is indeed an act of sanity, normalcy and rational behavior. It’s good to know that when necessary, he knows what to do to protect himself.

Perhaps this is a glimmer of hope that he may not be as loose with the nuclear football as some of us might fear he could be. But as the psychologists and psychiatrists warn us, we’re all amateurs in trying to analyze what this man might do.

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How far will Trump go before it’s too late? We need to test the limits. President Donald Trump has already shown that he is comfortable taking drastic measures, foolish measures and basing decisions on false information. But what so many are concerned about, and this is what separates Trump from his Vice-President, is how dangerous he will get.

He has the nuclear code. He’s easily peeved. He does not have a good understanding of international relations. He appears to be largely blind to the consequences of his actions. How much longer can we allow him to be in this position?

There are two peaceful ways to try to curb Trump unleashed. The first is by invoking Section 4 of the 25^th Amendment:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

That is the easiest and the quickest way to do it. However, since Trump has hand-picked his cabinet members and many of them seem to be as unprepared for their job as he is, it will require a significant improvement in the wisdom and fortitude of enough Cabinet members to invoke the amendment.

The second path, one which may be more democratic but is also lengthy and drawn out, is for the House of Representatives to open impeachment hearings and initiate the process that could lead to a conviction of Trump by the Senate, thus removing Trump from office. It would not be difficult to find “high crimes and misdemeanors” that Trump has committed, beginning with his finances.

Many would argue that it would be rash to move ahead with either of these options at this point, and I would agree. However, I would suggest that two steps need to be taken to indicate whether drastic action might be needed in the near future. These two steps are intertwined.

Some Republicans are going to have to stand up to Trump. Obviously, neither the 25^th Amendment nor impeachment and conviction can occur without Republican involvement. Once some Republicans stand up to Trump, it will be illustrative to see what he does.

For example, if there were a handful of Republicans who voted against one of his cabinet nominees, how would Trump respond to that? Would he go on a name-calling tirade? Would he try to cut off federal favors to those senators? Would he try to turn his legion of voters against them?

What would he do about submitting a replacement nominee? If we were talking about Secretary of Health and Human Services, would Trump say that there is no one else in the country who could do the job as well as Dr. Tom Price? Would he insist on resubmitting Price’s name for consideration, or would he be able to move on to someone else?

Suppose that Republican members of Congress joined with Democrats to pass a law saying that the president could not place a gag order on employees in federal agencies. Or if the House of Representative rescinded its adoption on the Holman Rule which gives the president wide leeway in firing workers in the executive branch, or short of firing, actually reducing their pay down to $1 a year.

How big would the Trump tantrum be if Congress went against his will on any of these issues? What would it tell us about his stability, or instability, in situations where Kim Jong-un or Vladimir Putin would rattle his chain?

There certainly is good cause for Republicans to immediately stand up against Trump. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have both spoken of the need for the United States to stand strong against Russia. They both have expressed serious concerns about Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson’s close ties with Putin.

Surely there is someone else in the United States who could be a better Secretary of State than Tillerson. If either of these senators had constructed a “short list” of twenty possible nominees for Secretary of State, they would have had quite a few who were (a) far more capable than Tillerson, and (b) acceptable to Republicans, and perhaps even some Democrats.

McCain and others have to back Trump to the wall on non-nuclear issues to see how he responds. If he fails those tests, then serious consideration must be given to peaceful means to remove Trump from office.

The post The imperative to test Trump’s limits appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Rewind to Trevor Noah’s Daily Show this past Halloween. The show is set during the presidential campaign. Not the 2016 one, but the 2020 one as Donald Trump “runs” for reelection. The setting is literally and figuratively underground as Noah surreptitiously tries to continue the comedy program that had had been wildly successful when the press was still free.

As Noah goes from correspondent to correspondent, it is clear that America has become largely inhospitable to African-Americans, Hispanics, women, just about anyone who is not like Donald Trump. The program reveals (in hopefully a hyperbolic fashion) virtually everything that could go wrong in the first term of a Donald Trump presidency.

But one thing has not happened. Nuclear war. It reminds me of the perils that the people of Russia, in fact the people of the entire world, live under so long as Vladimir Putin is president of the world’s second strongest nuclear power. Putin has committed a litany of outrageous violations of human rights, he has invaded sovereign countries, he has taken cyber mischief and espionage to unprecedented levels, but he has not unleashed his nuclear arsenal.

It is no small coincidence that Trump and Putin seem to have a mutual admiration society. They both love to take just about everything to the limit, with little regard for the actual or perceived consequences. Neither seems capable of admitting a mistake. Each seems to think that the entire world is against them. Each is someone whose presence in a room would make everyone else wary.

Fast forward to now, three days after the Trevor Noah episode. The fear of a Trump presidency is only growing as the polls tighten and we are reminded of how in 1980 Ronald Reagan took a tight race the week before the election and turned it into a landslide victory for himself. Like Trump, the arguments against Reagan were that he was not ready for prime time, that he was not smart enough nor temperamentally fit to serve as president. Somehow as the clock ticked down to Election Day, there was a tsunami of sentiment that these fears were unfounded and Reagan became acceptable and then desired.

Is that what is happening with Donald Trump now? It has been sixteen months since he announced his candidacy and he has said and done everything and more that is outrageous. For those of us who oppose Trump, he has given us an almost daily diet of words and actions that clearly demonstrate that he is the most unqualified person to receive the nomination of a major party in American history.

But this seems to matter to fewer and fewer people. Could the unthinkable happen? On the day after the Cubs (deservedly) won the World Series, Trump seems primed to do what hardly anyone thought possible. I hope that I am wrong. I hope that the polls are flawed. I hope that the American people might be just a little bit wiser than I fear. But should the unthinkable happen, it might be the best we can hope for with a Trump presidency is “Putin-West.” Let’s hope that we never have to find out if that would be true.

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What happens when a landfill fire meets a radioactive waste dump?  St. Louis, Missouri, may be the first metropolitan area to find out.

In North St. Louis County, near the St. Louis Airport, and a mile from Pattonville High School, the Westlake Landfill is on fire. It’s not a flaming, above-ground fire, but something more insidious and potentially more dangerous: a smoldering underground fire caused by years of decomposing garbage, the methane gas it produces, and the oxygen that has seeped in.

Close by – some say within 300 feet—is another [previously hidden] burial ground, where high-grade uranium leftovers were dumped during the 1970s.

The smoldering fire is spreading. The boundaries of the radioactively contaminated soil are not clearly delineated. The timing of the merger of the two entities is anybody’s guess. And having never encountered this situation before, no one really knows what the result would be.

A mushroom cloud is not going to happen; and there probably won’t be an explosion. But many speculate that the situation is akin to a slow-motion dirty bomb [without the boom], poised to spread some very nasty stuff into the environment.

Environmentalists say that this situation is unique and unprecedented in the U.S. Neighbors, “radio-activists,” fire officials, EPA regulators, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and Republic Services–which operates the landfill-—agree that something must be done. But no one knows precisely what that something is, or who should be responsible for doing it.

Here’s my [unscientific, unofficial, and possibly factually flawed] understanding of the situation:

How did this happen?

It all started in 1942, when the US decided to try to develop an atomic bomb. A St. Louis chemical company—Mallinckrodt—won the contract to process the uranium needed for the bomb. The source material came from a mine in what was then the Belgian Congo. It was uranium of a radioactive strength unmatched anywhere else. But the enrichment process left tons of highly radioactive waste, and Mallinckrodt had to find a way of getting rid of it. At first, they dumped it downtown, where their main processing plant was. In 1946, Mallinckrodt started dumping it on a 21-acre property just north of the St. Louis Airport. [It’s known as SLAPS.]

In the 1960s, a different company bought the waste ore from the airport site and transported it [sometimes in open trucks] to a nearby storage site. [The Latty Avenue site.]  There was a lot to move: 74,000 tons of Belgian Congo soil, containing approximately 13 tons of uranium; 32,000 tons of Colorado soil containing about 48 tons of uranium; and another 7 tons of uranium from somewhere else.

Finally, in the 1970s, another 47,000 tons of soil mixed with radioactive waste wound up in the nearby West Lake Landfill. At the time, there were no safety regulations for landfills regarding this kind of waste. One activist recently told me that, at the time the landfill operators did ot know that the radioactive waste had been mixed with topsoil. “So, they used those enormous piles of dirt to cover and level out garbage daily,” she said. “Sadly, that radioactive waste now lies nearly on the surface of the landfill, which is why it more easily becomes airborne in the form of dust.”

That toxic stew decomposed and bubbled for years, but almost no one knew that it contained radioactive waste. Then, in 2013, Republic Services reported that an underground area of the landfill was smoldering. That development made some people begin to take notice.

A few years earlier, a group of women who had attended a nearby North County high-school began realizing that many of their classmates—and members of their families– had been diagnosed with various cancers. It seemed like too many of them. They remembered that, as children, many of them had played in nearby Coldwater Creek—a tributary of the Missouri River—which some industrial companies had used as a dumping ground over the years. They also recalled roaming around the open fields and railroad tracks near St. Louis Airport. After looking into it more closely, they were shocked to discover that their neighborhood was ground zero for radioactive waste dumping.

In the early 1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency made SLAPS and Latty Ave into Superfund sites. The cleanup at those sites is nearing completion, under the direction of a federal sub-agency called FUSRAP.  [Of course, it’s hard to know when you’re really finished:  The boundaries of the radioactive areas are squishy, because wind, rain and flooding tend to move soil around.]

But Westlake remains a problem. Several groups of activists have been persistent and outspoken in pushing for a resolution to the problems in the area. [Some call themselves “radio-activists.”] But they’re trying to navigate a dizzying matrix of agencies with conflicting jurisdictions and agendas: EPA, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, local politicians, the Bridgeton Fire Department, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—to name a few. Some have proven helpful, but many seem to be in denial. [At one community meeting, an EPA official is recorded on video saying, “We have no evidence that the radioactive waste is near the fire.”]

In 2008, EPA proposed sealing off one of the waste areas with a 5-foot cap. Very little happened to that plan, but just this week [April 18, 2016] at another community meeting, EPA revived the idea. It received a chilly reception from  many residents and activists, who have been pushing for years for removal, rather than further burial, of the contaminated waste. Westlake Landfill activists also are leading an  a effort to secure a voluntary buyout of properties within a one-mile radius of the landfill.

Even the “good guys” can be difficult: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control [CDC] has been reluctant to accept the notion that there are cancer clusters in the area. A separate group of activists–“Coldwater Creek – Just the Facts” — is focused on a federal health assessment aimed at determining if there is a link between the elevated cancer rates in the area and radioactive contamination.

In the meantime, most residents of St. Louis City and County are only marginally aware of what’s going on “up there” in the North County area. Even people who now live—or formerly did—near the dump sites may not realize what they may have been exposed to. And when they receive a diagnosis of an unusual cancer, their doctors may say, “This is so rare. You are one in a million.”  The radio-activists beg to differ: “You actually are one of millions,” they counter.

I recently took a tour of “radioactive St. Louis,” guided by a very knowledgeable activist from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. We went to Latty Ave., to SLAPS and to Westlake, where we ran into a “Just Moms” founder who was making her daily rounds of the site. She was taking pictures of the latest efforts to contain the fire, tamp down the stench, and keep a lid on the situation—literally: The whole landfill is covered with a green tarp, over which is vast web of hoses and exhaust pipes, plus valves, and air-quality meters, and surrounded by a very tall chain-link fence. Iconic yellow “radioactive” signs are everywhere. It’s something you really wouldn’t want in your neighborhood.

And it’s scary. What will happen next is not within the realm of accurate prediction, said our guide. We may not even know when whatever is going to happen actually happens. Maybe it already has. And it’s possible that the consequences may not manifest themselves for years.

One thing is certain, though: The world should be watching.

The post STL landfill fire nears collision with radioactive waste: What’s next? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

“If I had foreseen Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I would have torn up my formula in 1905.” –Albert Einstein.

Next month, “Fallout 4,” a highly-anticipated video game releases. Dealing with various Americans a couple centuries after nuclear war, the Fallout series is known for its strong writing, dark humor, and bleak outlook. “War never changes,” Ron Pearlman bitterly narrates over each game’s introduction. The player character is never able to save the world or return it to what it was. Only slow progress is possible, and only if the player character chooses benevolent options. One entry’s entire quest involves bringing clean water to the inhabitants of DC. Not only does the most recent entry release soon, but we also approach the date in the Fallout universe on which nuclear war broke out: October 23, 2077, the games explain, sees a nuclear exchange between the United States and China that ends life as we know it in a mere two hours.

Some real-life anniversaries accompany this: 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the founding of the United Nations, intended to prevent another war capable of destroying the planet. The reason I bring this up (besides my love of video games) is that despite popular perceptions, nuclear disarmament is still a prevalent issue in today’s world. Here are some possibilities for the use or exchange of nuclear weapons:

• First, there is the ever-present fear, not unjustified, that a terrorist group could gain control of a nuclear weapon. As Fareed Zakaria points out in The Future of Freedom, nuclear weapons existed 70 years ago, the era of black-and-white televisions, rotary phones, and no commercial air traffic: The science of creating a nuclear weapon is not so complicated by today’s standards.

• Religious nationalists in India have recently taken power. Under Modi, Pakistan is unstable and beset by its own religious extremists, and both still claim Kashmir.

• North Korea is always as volatile as its current autocrat. It has a tiny stockpile of nukes, but their unpredictability worries world leaders across the globe.

• President Obama, along with other heads of state, is to be congratulated for negotiating the nuclear deal with Iran. However, hardline elements in Iran are still pro-expansion, which is worrying. There is also the outside possibility of an exchange with the State of Israel.

• The United States and Russia are currently at odds over the conflict in Ukraine.

Thankfully, none of these conflicts is particularly likely to escalate into nuclear war, but they are worth considering and keeping an eye on.

I should also point out our own extremists: Senator Jon Kyl nearly undermined the New START treaty with Russia in 2010/2011. His cooperation was secured only with massive pork-barrel projects for his state and a promise of tens of billions of dollars in nuclear modernization. John Bolton, meanwhile, took what appeared to be a pro-nuke stance in a New York Times piece. All this despite the fact that the United States has the most nuclear weapons on high alert in the world (closely followed by Russia, which has more nukes but fewer on high alert).

The threat of nuclear exchange did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It may not be the most pressing problem in the world, but peace activists should continue to work towards a world free of the threat of nuclear destruction.

Check out Isao Hashimoto’s visual representation of every nuclear explosion from 1945 to 1998.

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