In addition, the growth of the two superpowers' nuclear stockpiles makes it difficult for both the U.S. and the USSR to persuade other countries not to acquire their own, Lown says, adding that many nations now want their own bomb for status and "a national macho image." Six contries now have nuclear bombs--U.S. USSR, China, India, Great Britain, and France, South Africa and Israel are suspected of having tested bombs, and Pakistan, Iraq and Libya and Argentina are waiting in the wings.
How likely is the event of a nuclear exchange? Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of History of Science, says that "Anyone who looks seriously at the issue is deeply frightened, adding that he attributes more widespread knowledge about nuclear war to the IPPNW. Mendelsohn reocunts that at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Scientists, Richard Garwin, professor of Policy Studies at the Kennedy School of Government and a member of the Defense Department Advisory Council predicted the likelihood of a limited nuclear exchange. "Garwin said he believed the probability of a small scale nuclear exchange by the year 2000 was 100 per cent and for a large scale, 50 per cent. Among people studying the issue carefully, that's how we feel too." Mendelsohn adds.
The possibility of nuclear war is especially relevant to young people, Muller, IPPNW's secretary, asserts. There is a finite, but real chance of a nuclear exchange every year, he says, adding that no one is sure what it is. But if one assumes it is a one per cent chance. "In the 50 years life expectancy left to Harvard undergraduates, that makes a 40 per cent chance of war in their lifetime."
Lown envisions several scenarios which could provoke a nuclear attack. A crisis in the Middle East leading to the polarization of the U.S. and the USSR...a deliberate act of any government with nuclear capabilities...or simple error.
In 1977 alone, 1365 American military personnel with access to nuclear weapons were removed for drug addiction, including LSD, Lown says, quoting information readily available in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
On some levels, the problem of nuclear war is already bothering people, Muller says, adding that the primary purpose of IPPNW is to help "move this fear from the subconscious to the conscious level." He compares those who deny the threat of nuclear warfare to cardiology patients who refuse to face that their chest pains are more than indigestion--all the way to the hospital.
It is people's silence that has permitted nuclear weapons to increase, he stresses, saying. "People must stand up and reject them."
IPPNW held their first congress in Airlie, Va. this March to begin piercing that silence. The 90 participants from 10 countries, including the U.S., the USSR, Great Britain and Japan, has six days of discussion centering on the medical and other effects of nuclear warfare, and how they, as doctors, could prevent a disaster with no cures.
During the conference, the doctors drafted letters to both President Ronald Reagan and Brezhnev voicing IPPWN's concerns. Chazov, the organization's main Soviet link, co-chaired the conference with Lown, and joined the American doctors in calling "limited" nuclear war an illusion and criticizing those "military, public fuctionaries and even scientists" who perpetuate the illusion.
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Boston civil defense plans call for the city's population--in the event of a nuclear attack--to get in their cars and head north. But, Lown asks, "Why not east or south or west? They're all insane. We're resorting now to civil evacuation. But if an attack came in the winter, who'd follow insanity and go to the woods of New Hampshire? If we evacuate our cities, an adversary would think we were planning a pre-emptive strike, so we would have to wait until the last minute. And you can't tell where the radioactive cloud could go. It would depend on the wind patterns...Drowning is more humane advice than incineration."
"People have to image that it is themselves and their children...this is the penultimate image that must compel social action against the nuclear arms race."