IMMINENT DESTRUCTION"
[In an article entitled “Africa Can Stop This Nuclear Madness!" published in the October issue of Africa and the World, Bertrand Russell offers the following graphic description of the peril facing humanity. ]
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- The Great Powers had stock-piled by 1963 the equivalent in “D.N.T. of 320 thousand million tons of explosives, To exhaust this nuclear stock pile would involve the use of all the explosive power of the entire Second World War every day for 146 years.
This: nuclear stock pile doubles each year, The United States has also stock-piled 130,000 Aerosal nerve gas bombs. Each one of these biochemical bombs. kills all life in an area of 3, 500 square miles,
The total stock ‘pile would kill all life in an area of 455 million square miles. This is' eight times the land surface of the earth and 151 times that of the United States,
The missiles which will carry these weapons are scattered over the planet and depend on warning margins as short as 30 seconds, These missile systems are’ connected to giant computers which take © their information from radar, which is not capable of distinguishing naturel phenomena from missiles,
It is quite clear, therefore, that with each day that passes, the danger of accidental nuclear war increases to a point of near certainty. re ee
An insurance company would say that there will be a mean number of accidents on the road each year and a certain number of air crashes involving civilian transport. We do not know which particular automobile or aeroplane will crash. We do know that if a certain number are in use, then an average number of crashes will ensue,
Similarly, there are a mean number of accidents involving nuclear: technology each year. These are owing to 6lectrical failures, false radar signals, mis-calculations and personal breakdown.
During each period of international crisis, the variables | multiply and the probability of disaster becomes quite high, It is. no exaggeration to say that every moment of each day we risk the imminent destruction of life on our planet.
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