Gila Friends Meeting (Quaker) invites everyone to join them at Silver City's Gough Park pavilion on Sunday, August 5, to remember the menace nuclear weapons continue to represent to New Mexicans - and the rest of the world. Bring a chair and join in a circle of silent contemplation at 12:30 p.m., followed by a period of worship sharing. Information on the history of the atomic bomb and on current efforts to abolish nuclear weapons will be available.

The 73rd anniversary of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in wartime will be the next day, August 6. Three days after an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, killing 70,000 in a moment, another A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing another 20,000. Thousands more have been killed, sterilized or sickened by the long-term effects of the radiation from those two explosions. Most of the casualties have been civilians. Exhibits at the Aug. 5 event will show the consequences of these two atomic bombings.

The advent of the new weapon - born, tested and produced in New Mexico - spurred the U.S., the U.S.S.R. and other nations to race to develop and produce their own arsenals of nuclear devices. By 1986, there were more than 60,000 nuclear warheads around the globe.

The long-lasting and indiscriminate horror of nuclear weapons was beginning to sink in by 1968, when the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was negotiated at the United Nations. The NPT, which includes a goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament worldwide, has been signed by 191 nations, including the U.S.

In 1996 - 50 years after the explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (an international panel that included former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara) concluded:

• Nuclear weapons are immensely destructive and any use would be a catastrophe.
• Nuclear weapons are militarily irrelevant.
• If no states had nuclear weapons, no states would seek them.

Progress toward reduction of nuclear arsenals has been slow, but it has been more successful than most people realize - there are "only" an estimated 14,185 warheads available for use today, a decrease of 50,000 warheads from the 1986 level! Since then, however, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea have acquired nuclear capability and Iran is an additional concern.

On July 7, 2017, almost exactly a year ago, 122 U.N. member nations approved the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which prohibits the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, as well as assistance and encouragement to the prohibited activities. None of the nuclear nations supported that treaty, and only 59 nations have signed the treaty to date.

Against this is the U.S. budget proposal to spend an average of $10 billion on nuclear weapons annually for each of the next four years. The danger to us all is still clear and present.

Gila Friends Meeting -- July 18, 2018

Media contact: Tom Vaughan, 575-590-1588, fevafotos@gmail.com