Beating the Bomb
In 1945, the United States became the first country to detonate a nuclear bomb. This one act pushed human kind violently into the Atomic Age. The experiment had a devastating impact on the world. After the first bomb was dropped, the temperature near the epicenter reached over 4,000 degrees centigrade. Everything was instantly vaporized leaving only shadows burnt into the ground and carbon shapes of what were once humans. A mile away from the epicenter, bodies ignited spontaneously and even farther away people looking at the fireball were instantly blinded. Many days later, people were still dying from the explosion. The black rain that fell has plagued the survivors for decades in the form of birth defects and cancers. In fact, today scientists are still getting new data out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The jury is still out on whether that bombing was necessary in order to bring an end to World War II. Some experts have stated that Japan’s surrender was imminent long before the first bomb was dropped. There’s a general consensus that the real purpose was to send out a clear message to the Soviet Union that the United States possessed a weapon of supreme power.
If countries are able to threaten and terrorize each other with their weapons of mass destruction as a strategy aimed at protecting its citizens, then what can be wrong with citizens having arms and claiming to keep them in order to protect their communities?
What humans have failed to understand is that if there were a nuclear war, our foes would not be any other human; our greatest enemy would be Earth. Every known source of food, water, and air would be contaminated beyond repair. We would then have nothing to eat or drink or even breathe.
Beating the Bomb is a documentary about foreign policy and those who have the power to put a stop to the threat of a nuclear war. While millions of dollars are being invested in the design of powerful weapons, millions of people continue to die of starvation and preventable diseases, and millions more live in subhuman conditions.
Until we make changes in the way in which we conceive ourselves and become kinder, then we will get rid of those weapons at a time. It was Gandhi who said, “there is no path to peace. Peace is the path.”
Loading...
