Hibakusha Rebellion

Preventing Nuclear War IV

Three days without wifi and running water puts things in perspective. Turns out, civilization is fragile. When you’re deep in the forest with what your phone calls “no service,” and you’re six miles from the closest store, and you turn the cabin faucet but nothing comes out, life suddenly involves bathing in the cold creek you have to fetch water from to do the dishes. You get real careful with the gallon of drinking water you have on hand. And you can’t wait to go to town to check your emergency emails.

This is why it’s so important to prevent nuclear war. Even a couple nuclear weapons going off in New York and London or Tokyo or Ulan Bataar would land millions of us deep in the forest. Just a few hydrogen bombs here and there would leave millions more without wifi, water, food, healthcare, television, and other basic necessities. A few dozen bombs going off over a few dozen cities would cause global darkness, which would cool the Earth, and that would be a good thing, right?

Nope, just ten percent of sunlight blocked (five million tons of soot and dust in the air) would make it difficult to impossible to grow crops where most staple crops are grown. Iowa would have killing frosts in July and August. America’s dairyland would fail to feed its cows. Canada would be out of the question. Billions would starve, and our fragile civilization would dissolve into social and political chaos. At that point, wifi and running water become luxuries of the past. Eating becomes a matter of taking food from someone weaker, and if you’re among the weak, you don’t make it. Electricity blinks out as power plants go without fuel and proper management. Lacking proper management, nuclear power plants explode, spewing radiation far and wide. Our 440-some nuclear power plants would probably make Earth uninhabitable, but it’s possible some indigenous peoples in the far global south might find a way to survive. Would they declare themselves the winners of this global meltdown?

The hypercompetitive warriors who insist on defending their turf with doomsday machines are enemies of humanity. Because the Hibakusha Rebellion is nonviolent, polite and hates no one, we are not allowed to hate our rulers, but we don’t have to vote for them or follow them over the cliff. We can rebel. Through nonviolent noncooperation we can render business as usual mission impossible. We can encircle the Department of Energy. We can lie in the streets in front of nuclear facilities. We can boycott banks that invest in nuclear weapons. We can attend board meetings to demand divestment from nuclear-related corporations.  We can call a general strike – no one goes to work or school until nuclear weapons are disabled.

Problem is, “we” needs to be bigger. More like

WE

Prevent Nuclear War

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