81 YEARS ON, TREMBLING ON THE BRINK LIKE NEVER BEFORE

 

HIROSHIMA DAY 2026 6 AUGUST

‘IF WE DON’T MAKE A MOVE WE WILL BE ROADKILL’

 

81 Years ago today at 8.15am on 6 August 1945, a lone US plane discreetly shadowed by a couple of other planes, dropped the 15Kt ‘Little Boy’ device on Hiroshima.

 

This event was commemorated by an event at Sydney Town Hall on 1 August, and by an event in Wollongong at 8.15 this morning Sydney time. Major commemorative events will take place in Hiroshima itself and worldwide.

 

The little boy ‘device’ was what is known as a ‘gun type’ fission bomb in which a ‘bullet’ of uranium of just less than critical mass is fired into a hole in a mass of uranium, also just less than critical mass, making a more-than-critical mass of uranium, which then fissions.

 

At 15 Kt it would be regarded as a smallish tactical weapon these days, in which a standard US weapon is between 200 and 500Kt, while Russian warheads are between 300 and 800Kt with some in the megaton range.

 

On 9th August 1945, an ‘implosion-type’ plutonium device known as ‘fat man’ of 20Kt detonated over the city of Nagasaki. It wasn't as devastating as the device detonated over Hiroshima, as its was dropped some distance from the city centre, and the blast was blocked by mountains.

 

In 1963, the largest ever nuclear explosion was conducted by Russia, at just under 60megatons, vaporising the sacred hunting grounds of the nenets people in Novaya Zemlya.

 

With explicit threats to use nuclear weapons emanating particularly from Russia, and with the erratic finger of Donald Trump over the US nuclear briefcase, and with a deterioration in international relations particularly between Russia and Europe, the consensus amongst nuclear weapons experts is that the likelihood of nuclear weapons use and of global thermonuclear war is as great or greater than it has ever been. The ‘doomsday clock’, a metaphorical indicator of the likelihood of a civilisation- ending event sequence, stands at 85 seconds to ‘midnight’ (where ‘midnight’ is the end of the world or of civilisation), and while both climate change and AI are also factors in this guesstimate made by roomfuls of nuclear policy experts and Nobel prizewinners, its clear that even during the cold war, we were never this perilously close to destruction.

 

Large-scale use of 2000 or so nuclear weapons in the 200-800Kt range, on cities in Russia, Europe, the US, China and inevitably Australia, would irrevocably destroy what we call ‘civilisation’.

 

The transformation of roughly 2000 cities worldwide into firestorms that would burn, as at Hiroshima, till there is nothing left to burn, would loft roughly 150 million tonnes of very black soot into the upper stratosphere, where it would block sunlight, dropping global temperatures to those of the last ice age or lower, for at least decades, creating global starvation for the roughly 50% of humanity that did not die in the first terrible 90 minutes.

This is, obviously, an event sequence that is in no one’s interest, and that over 90% of the worlds governments in numerous UN resolutions, have made it clear they wish to avoid.

 

The Labour Party has at various times reaffirmed its commitment to have Australia sign and ratify the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and the government itself has at various times indicated it would like to promote measures (such as No First use) that would reduce the risk of nuclear war.

 

Nothing whatsoever has been actually done to achieve either goal.

 

The impact on Australia of a nuclear exchange between the US and either Russia or China or both would be cataclysmic. Pine Gap and NW Cape effectively make Australia amongst the topmost priority nuclear targets in the world. The elimination of nuclear weapons and the reduction of nuclear risk (turning back the hands of the Doomsday Clock) are profoundly in Australia's national security interest.

 

Yet we stand like a Kangaroo in the headlights of an oncoming prime mover.

 

If we don't make a move we will be roadkill.

 

John Hallam

Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner

People for Nuclear Disarmament

Human Survival Project

Co-Convenor, Abolition 2000 Nuclear Risk Reduction Working Group,

Member, No First Use Global Steering Committee,

Member, UN Abolition Day (sept26) Committee

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