They have so far have succeeded in pushing the Russians to revise their nuclear strategy to a dangerous level, and have crossed numerous red lines that the Russians have declared unacceptable. The fact that Russia has not yet responded with nuclear weapons is a testament to restraint, but the lack of real Russian expertise in the present U.S. government, and its failure to have maintained and nurtured the kind of contacts with Russia that helped save us during the Cuban missile crisis, allows the administration and NATO to interpret this restraint as "weakness." As a result, the real American experts in nuclear weapons, procedures, and policies have stated that we are closer to nuclear war (in the next few weeks) than at any time in our history. And the potential horror of this situation has been brought home by a recently-released book on the systemic weaknesses of the people, procedures, and hardware that would otherwise help us avoid total nuclear war.

I hope that any visitors to this page will share it — https://dickatlee.com/issues/nuclear — and the possible counter-actions it offers, with friends, family, and colleagues. To understand the scope of the issue, I particularly recommend the "essential primer" discussion referenced below — or at least the yellow-highlighted excerpts and presentation. We are running out of time. The Doomsday Clock" has been at 90-seconds-to-midnight since January. It is now seriously out of date.

• Nuclear War
• Counter actions we can take
• No Nuclear War gathering — December 7-8 events in Washington, D.C.
• Sending letters to Congress — Arms expert Scott Ritter provides a letter to send to the members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to pass on to the White House, with links to those members; you can also send it to your own reps.
• Essential primer — November 2024: Ritter, Postol, McGovern (2:59:39, audio)
  Though long, this discussion is IMHO essential, covering information important for understanding the situation: the context, the players, the technology, the Russian response. The expert discussants are:
  • Scott Ritter: former nuclear weapons treaty compliance inspector, long experience with the Soviet Union / Russia
  • Dr. Ted Postol: MIT emeritus professor of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy; foremost expert on nuclear weapon and missile technology
  • Ray McGovern: former CIA briefer for the President during the Reagan administration;
    founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (beware Wikipedia disinfo)

  • Significant audio excerpts — The dangers of government ignorance

  Postol: on the incompetence and/or cluelessness of nuclear planners, targeters, and briefers about what nuclear war means (12:32) Ritter: on the ignorance about Russia — its governance, economics, frame of reference, and people — on the part of of U.S. "experts" and Donald Trump (15:33).       Why are these dangerous? Try these: Close call 1 — Ritter and McGovern on the nuclear war almost caused by Able Archer 83, nuclear war averted only due to the actions of a single thinking man: CIA Soviet-analysis Division chief Mel Goodman (4:25) Close call 2 — (non-audio text article) Nuclear war almost caused by the Cuban missile crisis, nuclear war averted only due to the actions of a single thinking man: Soviet submarine officer Vasili Arkhipov

• No Nuclear War: A Call for Reason (3:26:11)
  Hosted by Scott Ritter, streamed live from the National Press Club on December 7, 2024
  Panel 1 (@32:36): The danger of nuclear war today — Ted Postol and General (ret.) Larry Wilkerson (audio, 1:00:07)

  Postol's presentation slides — Use these clear slides while watching the video below (time limits permitted the use of only the first 13 slides) Postol's presentation — video of Postol's portion of Panel 1 (above; 18:43)

  Panel 2 (@1:20:30): Getting Congress to act — Dennis Kucinich, Dan Kovalik, Margaret Kimberly, Max Blumenthal (audio, 1:05:17)
  Panel 3 (@2:26:20): Awakening MAGA — Garland Nixon, Anya Parampil, Jose Vega, Wilmer Leon; Moderator Medea Benjamin (audio, 59:02)
• The Book — Nuclear War: A Scenario, by Annie Jacobsen — a book of increasing blood pressure, stress hormones, and nightmares
  Jacobsen spent years interviewing many of the key players in the history of our nuclear weapons program — scientists, engineers, politicians, policy people. She used the insights so gathered to create a scenario in which the launch of a North Korean ICBM toward Washington results inexorably, in the course of 72 minutes, in the destruction of most of civilization as we know it, and the subsequent demise of most of those unfortunate enough to survive into the resulting radiation wasteland, nuclear winter and subsequent ultraviolet bath.
  The fact that this process and outcome is inevitable, and would be in almost any scenario, is born out by the countless weaknesses in our nuclear response and command-and-control architecture that she weaves into the story — weak links in the chain of procedures, people, and hardware that break, one by one, as Jacobsen pursues her second-by-second, minute-by-minute relentless unfolding of the disaster.
  That Secretary of State Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and the neocons in the Biden Administration talk of nuclear war as if it were a chess piece indicates that they have no clue as to what nuclear war actually involves, and that is the scariest part of our current situation.
• Films on Nuclear War
• Hiroshima and Nagasaki aftermath — U.S. Army documentary (30:52)
• The Day After — ABC, 1983, the film that caused Reagan to finally take nuclear war seriously (2:06:43)
• Threads — BBC, 1984, the punch-in-the-gut film, the showing of which caused Britain "the night the country didn't sleep," involving nuclear winter, much more powerful than "The Day After" (1:55:52)
      Description — BBC, 2019, "the scariest tv show ever made?"
• Other important materials
  • The Oreshnik missile — 11/23: Postol on technical details: how it works, geopolitical significance (43:10)
    (audio, no slides; video, with slides)
  • First risk — 9/28: Ritter on earlier close call — Biden refusal of ATACMS permission for Ukraine (11:00, video)
  • Hiroshima — Gar Alperovitz's classic 1994 lecture on the real reason the U.S. dropped the bomb
• Nuclear Power (to be continued)