Halifax Harbor, Beirut, Nuclear Weapons

Antinuclear demonstration, Hiroshima/Nagasaki remembrance,
75th anniversary, Olympia Washington August 6th, 2020

Momma said, "Don't keep tons of ammonium nitrate sitting in a big heap near where people live, 'cause someday that shit's gonna go off." But she didn't say it in Canadian or Lebanese.

Travelers to Canada's maritimes are often apprised of the events of the 6 December 1917 when a shipload of ammunition was struck by a passing vessel and exploded in Halifax harbor about 9 AM, killing 2,000 residents and injuring 9,000 more. The explosion was thought equivalent to 2.9 kilotons of TNT and was at the time the world's largest manmade explosion to date. It flattened much of the Richmond district of Halifax and precipitated international relief efforts to medicate the many wounded. It was, one for the history books. Nonetheless I knew nothing of it prior to my visit in the year 2000.

But Halifax was the first thing on my mind on learning of the disastrous explosion in the port of Beirut the evening of August fourth. How could a group of modern, knowledgeable citizens, probably familiar with the chemicals of terror weapons, sit comfortably nearby 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a hot warehouse? Had they never heard of Timothy McVeigh? Maybe not, after all they were Lebanese, not Oklahomans.

Well, the damn pile didn't explode the first day, nor the second, nor for many days after until the sixth year of its storage when it finally did explode. Despite the yearly pleas of authorities who recognized the danger, the situation seemed well in hand and demanded no immediate attention.

My next thought though was about a similar situation, recognized as dangerous--imminently so--which has also failed to receive immediate attention. So far this situation hasn't yet gone critical despite its teetering on the knife edge of history for close to seventy years. I refer to the horrific destructive potential of hair-triggered nuclear weapons scattered about the nations of the world: tunneled into prairies, aloft on bombers, roaming wastelands on trucks, and undersea in submarines.

Currently we are in danger of a new arms race of nuclear weapons and delivery systems as the US, North Korea, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan have all recently rattled their nuclear sabres and let existing restrictive treaties expire left and right. Waiting in the wings are the small fry wannabes of Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia who gaze longingly at their future of nuclear threatening among the big boy gangs of the earth.

Can these Rube Goldberg contraptions of Mutually Assured Destruction stay balanced long enough to let humanity think in generational terms? Or as contraptions with an expanding diversity of wobbling intricacies isn't it the bettor's favorite that they won't--sooner than later? Eat, drink, and be merry for the next day, or the day after that, if not tomorrow of course, we shall certainly die.

And on the other hand we shall certainly kill. It won't really make that much difference if we kill in a first strike or we kill just as certainly in retaliation. Some are disturbed by the thought of dying and would like to avoid it at all costs so they make a deal with the devil and relax--as much as is possible--relying on MAD to keep their chestnuts out of the fire. But there are those of us who are equally appalled at the thought of killing people who have personally posed no threat to us, killing in massive, horrendous, tortuous ways that likely will end all life on earth.

How arrogant that course would be--to risk ending the human experiment over some matter of national pride or power! Yet we seem unpersuaded there is any other way--only the way of domination--been that way for centuries and it won't change in the foreseeable, if rather brief, future.

But no man, no nation, can have the authority to risk the world's end, or further, to wreak such suffering on the innocent whether the world ends or not. Powers who propose use of such weapons, stockpile them as reasonable deterrents to obliteration, or constantly rob their citizens of wealth to develop and assemble even more destructive varieties cannot claim they have the authority to do so. Their declared intentions label them as madmen, whether they are heads of democratic or authoritarian states, they have no authority to risk worldwide suicide.

The people of nuclear states have every right to remove such authorities and to dismantle all these instruments of terror and death universally so that humanity can finally be free of fear.