Confronting the nuclear threat at ground zero - Reviving anti-nuclear activism

Reviewing a new comic devoted to that goal

Reading time 6 minutes

The multiple nuclear war threats

For 80 years a dark cloud has hung over the world in the shape of a mushroom, perhaps more today than at any time since the first nuclear weapon was ignited in 1945. The threat of nuclear war hovers over multiple points on the planet.

Two days ago, two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, began hurling bombs, drones, and artillery shells at each other after an Islamic terrorist attack on Hindu tourists in the disputed territory of Kashmir April 22. Together they possess around 340 nuclear weapons, and an escalation could lead to a nuclear exchange. (Note: As of the day after publication a ceasefire was announced. Very fortunate for the world as a whole.)

Israel is pushing for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities despite a recent U.S. intelligence report that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. Any such attack would almost certainly draw a devastating Iranian missile strike on Israel that could spur Israel to escalate with its nuclear arsenal. Israel is believed to have in the range of 250 nuclear weapons. Two of the world’s largest nuclear powers, Russia and China, are increasingly aligned with Iran.

Finally, the world’s two largest nuclear powers, the U.S. and Russia, are engaged in a proxy war in Ukraine in which the U.S. is supplying not only weapons, but strategic planning, the New York Times recently reported. The nuclear danger is widely seen as great as when the U.S. and Soviet Union confronted one another in 1962 over missiles in Cuba.

Since the 1980s we have understood that a full scale nuclear war between the great powers would cause a nuclear winter. The resulting fires would saturate the stratosphere with black soot, sharply diminishing sunlight, resulting in agricultural collapses and the death of billions by starvation. More recently, a 2014 study found a regional nuclear war in which 100 Hiroshima-size bombs were detonated would also cause a multi-year winter, plunging temperatures to levels not seen in 1,000 years and reducing crop yields 10-40%. It would take 20 years to fully recover. A nuclear war on the Indian subcontinent is more than capable of producing effects at least as severe.

A comic approach to a serious topic

For all these reasons, a recently published work by Seattle-based cartoonist Leonard Rifas and friends is hugely relevant, both on a global scale and to my own bioregion. Ground Zero Comics: Move Beyond Nuclear Weapons is a coproduction of Rifas’s own publishing company, EduComics, Fantagraphics and Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action. International Journal of Comic Art calls it,“An invaluable introduction that comprehensively and thoughtfully discusses the arguments around nuclear weapons.”

Ground Zero has long maintained a presence next to the Trident submarine base at Bangor, Washington 20 miles west of Seattle, so it features a section on Washington state’s extensive nuclear history. That includes uranium mining which polluted the Spokane Indian Reservation and bomb materials manufacturing at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Eastern Washington, which remains one of the most polluted sites on Earth.

I look west to the Olympic Mountains from my windows quite aware that in between me and them is the base that, as the comic says, holds “the largest concentration of ready-to-use nuclear weapons in the world.” Ground Zero has been the center of protests against the base for decades. I have written about the work of the center and one of its key activists, Tom Rogers, commander of a nuclear sub that carried nuclear weapons.

The comic tells the story of the protests which began in the 1970s and former Lockheed engineer Robert Aldridge, who spurred the movement when he realized he was being asked to design a super-accurate weapon that could take out a missile silo. That could only mean one thing. It was a first-strike weapon aimed to disarm an opponent. Aldridge resigned and alerted activists to the threat.

Rifas has a history going back to 1970 of using comics to educate the public on critical issues. Topics have ranged from globalization and renewable energy to food politics. He published All Atomic Comics in 1976 to warn of the dangers of nuclear power. His EduComics has also published mangas by Hiroshima bombing survivor Keiji Nakazawa, Gen of Hiroshima and I Saw It. A bibliography and more of Rifas’s story are here.

Rifas was 11 when the Cuban Missile Crisis took place. It had a deep impact on him. (I was 10. It had a similar impact on me.) “My mother was visibly worried.” She was stockpiling jars of food in the basement.

“We grew up while the number of nuclear weapons was going up, up, up.” But the number peaked in 1986, with a large contribution by the nuclear freeze movement which swept the world in the ‘80s. Now much of that impetus has faded, and bomb numbers are once again increasing. Rifas wants to help revive the movement. “In the comic book, I try to teach some of that history.”

The genesis of the project was a question by Glenn Milner of Ground Zero when he was buying I Saw It at a Ground Zero event. “What would it take for Ground Zero to publish its own comic?” “I was waiting for that question all of my life,” Rifas says. Milner co-edited the work, while Rifas was joined in illustrating it by veteran cartoonists Pat Moriarity, David Lasky, Max Clotfelter and Kelly Froh.

Illuminating the role of activism

The comic is in the format of a discussion between a young woman, Earl Crow and Mo Squirrel, who illuminate the danger for her. “A nuclear war would be one way to ‘end the world as we know it,’” says Earl. “The worst way,” Mo chimes in. As the comic notes, immediate deaths would be around 360 million. The comic includes illustrations of a nuclear weapon’s impact on Seattle. A 100-kiloton weapon, and that is on the lower range of possibilities, would wipe out most of the city. The following nuclear winter would starve another 6 billion to death over the next two years. And as Mo notes, that does not include squirrels or crows. The impact on the natural world would be horrendous.

The publication busts a myth that has been central to the U.S. justification for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that this caused Japan to surrender saving many more lives. In fact, Japan had been prepared to surrender. What tipped the balance was the entry into the war by the Soviet Union on August 8, two days after Hiroshima. The Soviets routed Japanese troops in Manchuria. Japan’s leadership was terrified that the Soviets would invade the home islands resulting in a partition of Japan, much as Germany had been divided. Apparently the U.S. was as well, because it then accepted a surrender offer that it had previously rejected, that would allow the emperor to retain his throne.

The final section of the book has Earl, Mo and the young woman joined by her grandfather, who relates his own history in protest movements. That included the 1969 Moratorium against the Vietnam War. President Richard Nixon had been trying to convince the Vietnamese he was crazy enough to use nuclear weapons, the “madman theory.” “. . . he later admitted that the Vietnam Moratorium had destroyed the credibility of the his nuclear ultimatum,” the comic notes.

Then grandpa tells the story of Ground Zero, Robert Aldridge and the nuclear freeze movement, focusing its crucial role in reducing nuclear arsenals. He concludes with an answer to his granddaughter’s question, “Then could the doomsday danger be greater now when the number of nuclear weapons is much smaller than it was?”

Grandpa answers, “The US and Russia have torn up major arms control treaties . . . the nuclear powers have started ‘modernizing’ their forces,’ which is creating a new nuclear arms race.”

The comic concludes, “The US nuclear forces have been reaching the end of their useful ‘lives.’ Under the name ‘modernization,’ the US plans to replace its submarines, missiles, bombers, and nuclear weapons before they rust away. Without new ‘nukes’ we would soon have none at all.” It gives a figure of $756 billion the U.S. plans to spend on nuclear forces from 2023-2032. The lifetime cost is more like $1.5 trillion, and probably much higher.

Can we let the nuclear arsenal “rust to zero” when other nations have nuclear weapons? Realistically, the U.S. could dramatically cut its arsenal to a few hundred weapons and still have a deterrent against attack. An agreement with the other large nuclear powers, Russia and China, could achieve similar cutbacks. Then we would be on the road to the entire elimination of these weapons by all nations holding them. Their power to end civilization is so great, and the threat of nuclear winter is so serious, that there is no other rational course in the long run. Ground Zero in its short comic presentation leaves no other conclusion.

Since I started The Raven 4 years ago, I have sought to point out ways we can navigate the multifaceted crisis facing us, ecological, social, economic and political, to make a truly better world. It’s challenging work, especially in times like these. I appreciate any support you can offer to sustain my efforts, either through a paid subscription or one-time donations in $5 increments through the Buy the Raven a coffee button. Subscriptions are a modest price, only $6/month or $5 with an annual subscription. And please like and share.