Letter to the Editor or Why I Allowed Myself to be Arrested Blocking the Road to Bangor

Letter to the Editor

or Why I Allowed Myself to be Arrested Blocking the Road to Bangor  by Larry Kerschner

Several of us, members of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, were arrested for blocking the road to the Bangor Submarine Base in celebration of Mother’s Day. I have been asked why I would allow myself to be arrested like this..

My only answer is that until enough people are awakened to the realities of the world we are living in there is no choice. Americans, through ignorance and lack of concern and or vision, are willing to accept the death of millions to maintain our level of comfort. Fr. Richard McSorley, a Jesuit priest, put it succinctly.“The taproot of violence in our society today is our intent to use nuclear weapons. Once we have agreed to that possibility, all other evil is minor in comparison. Until we squarely face the question of our consent to the use of nuclear weapons, any hope of a large scale improvement of public morality is doomed to failure.”. It is necessary that the American underclass, meaning all of us except the top 0.1%, embrace democracy, stop being apathetic and quit being obedient.

The US and Russia have thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at each other with hair-trigger alerts meaning a launch within 15 minutes. The Obama administration has budgeted one trillion dollars over the next ten years to refurbish our entire nuclear arsenal with design plans for smaller thus more easily used tactical nuclear weapons.

There remains an insane illusion within the US that a nuclear war can be won. Our leaders forget the words of President Eisenhower who recognized that the use of nuclear weapons is just another form of suicide.

The nukes used on Japan are considered small by today’s standard. Ten kilograms of plutonium, enough to make a weapon similar to that dropped on Nagasaki, when fissioned would generate a temperature of about 10 million Celsius. Following a one megaton nuclear explosion the surrounding 13,000 square miles would be uninhabitable for at least a week. The surrounding 120 square miles would be uninhabitable for one year.

The Trident submarine base at Bangor, up the road on Hood Canal, 20 miles west of Seattle, is the home of about 1,300 nuclear weapons. The Bangor base is the home of nine Trident submarines able to deploy the Trident D-5 missile system. Each of the Trident submarines carries 24 Trident D-5 missiles. Each D-5 missile contains eight 475 kiloton W-88 independently targetable warheads. The King’s Bay Trident Base in Georgia has five Trident submarines.

Additionally, the US currently deploys 1,150 nuclear warheads on 510 land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) mostly mounted on Minuteman III missiles. Each Minuteman III missile can be armed with up to three nuclear warheads. The Minuteman III warheads can be either W-62 warheads (170 kiloton) or the more powerful W-78 (335 kiloton) warhead.

How evil and insane to use our tax dollars to maintain this murderous system that, if used, will indiscriminately kill millions. Ask yourself why are we as a people continuing to be a terrorist state?