Mobilization for Survival (MFS) is one group of people which has had the courage to say in response to these and other facts: "We are frightened at the determination of military leaders in all nations to press ahead with weapons systems. We are horrified that our money, the product of our labor, is drained away from human needs and invested in machinery of unspeakable destruction...we will educate ourselves. We will raise the consciousness of our communities. We will move into the streets. We will shake the foundation of any institution which tries to turn our future into a radioactive zone."

MFS has four stated goals: eliminate nuclear weapons, ban nuclear power, stop the arms race, and fund human needs. These goals are deliberately broad and comprehensive as a movement too narrowly focused can collapse if its single aim is achieved or its stated goal ceases to be relevant.

When the Vietnam War ended in 1975 it was hard for many people in the anti-war movement to realize that what they had been participating in was just that--a movement to end the American military presence in Indo-China. Many tried to maintain the energy of the movement, but without a concrete focus the previously united activists drifted away into their own areas of interest. Even the U.S. complicity in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile was unable to revive the old coalition.

Now, the "new morality" of the Carter administration dismisses the horrors of Vietnam and Chile as characteristic of a bygone era. The U.S. is in the process of re-thinking and re-aligning itself to protect what remains of its global power. Admiral T.H. Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed this shift in testimony before the U.S. Senate:

"Our relative military power throughout the world has peaked and is declining. We no longer possess that substantial strategic superiority which in the past provided us with such a significant margin of overall military power that we could with confidence, protect our interests worldwide. Henceforth we will have to chart our course with much greater precision and calculate out risks much more cautiously,"

Since Vietnam, then, the Pentagon has been forced to adopt a lower profile, but it has lost none of its militarism nor has it modified its insistence on continuing nuclear armaments production and arms race escalation.

Nuclear arms production began 32 years ago when an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped a 15-kiloton atomic device on Hiroshima. Prior to this, the largest bomb developed had been the "blockbuster," so named because it was capable of devastating an entire city block. The Hiroshima bomb had a destructive force equivalent to 1300-2000 blockbusters and the one A-bomb virtually pulverized a city of more than 300,000 inhabitants. When President Truman heard the news, he said: "This is the greatest thing in history."

As of 1976, the U.S. possessed a nuclear stockpile of 8000 megatons (million tons of dynamite equivalent), according to Ruth Sivard, the former chief economist of the Arms Control Disarmament Agency. That is equal to 615,385 Hiroshima bombs. When one considers that the rest of the planet possesses another 8000 megatons, one realizes that human history has clearly moved into the age of overkill.

There would perhaps be room for complacency in all this if the policy accompanying such awesome weaponry were that of use only as a last resort or at least that of mutual assured destruction (MAD), thereby insuring what General Douglas MacArthur said of nuclear war, that any conflict at all would be a form of "double suicide."

But the U.S. military has not been satisfied with such a policy. Instead it has argued for the development of first strike capabilities, personified in such weapon systems as the B-1 bomber, the cruise missile, and the M-X missile. It has also argued for the acceptance of the concept of "counterforce" which legitimates "limited nuclear wars" and "surgical strikes" against "enemy" positions. The fruits of this doctrine have been the neutron bomb, the first nuclear anti-personnel weapon: it kills only people. Within hours, an invading army can move in and take over the dead "enemy's" economic political facilities which would have been left standing. The Pentagon has tried to blur any distinction between conventional weapons and both tactical and strategic nuclear weapons and within this context to win acceptance for the credibility of a "limited nuclear war." These policies were crystallized by former Secretary of State Kissinger and Secretary of Defense Schlesinger during the Nixon/Ford years and have been accepted in toto by President Carter.

Closely aligned to, indeed derivative of, nuclear weaponry, has been the development of nuclear power.

Each 1000 megawatt reactor (the planned Boston Edison Pilgrim II plant will be 1180 megawatts) produces as much high-level waste as 1000 Hiroshima-sized bombs each and every year. There are over 28 different radioactive substances routinely emitted from these nuclear reactors, all of which are ecologically dangerous and some of which, such as strontium-90 and cesium-131, will be a disposal problem for 600 to 1000 years. The most deadly emission, of course, is plutonium. Its lethality is such that one-millionth of a gram is sufficient to cause lung cancer--and a large reactor annually produces 400 pounds. Once produced it must be stored safely for 250,000 to 500,000 years.

In addition to this potential for ecological and human devastation, the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation must be considered: atoms for peace means atoms for war. Reactor fuel and waste can both be used to produce nuclear bombs. Only 17 pounds of plutonium, about the size of a grapefruit, is needed for an atomic device. As the nuclear industry expands, therefore, it increases the risks of nuclear war by making bomb-potential material available to countries with "peaceful" reactors, many of which, including India, Israel, Egypt, South Africa and Brazil, have not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Yet the sales of nuclear reactors and reprocessing plants goes on virtually unabated. As of June, 1977, 21 nations had a total nuclear generating capacity of 47,655 megawatts produced by 138 reactors, and 41 foreign nations have firm commitments to develop nuclear energy.

Nuclear proliferation in terms of technology, then, is linked to the growing demand by other nations for military strength. Indeed, the world trade in conventional military technology has risen from $3.8 billion per year in 1965 to $9.2 billion in 1974. Since May, 1977, when President Carter announced that military sales to foreign governments would be the "exception" rather than the rule, he has signed 45 agreements to sell armaments worth more than $4.1 billion.