How can individual citizens prevent nuclear warfare?

Question

I saw White Light/Black Rain, a documentary about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on HBO last night:

http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?ACTION_DETAIL=DETAIL&FOCUS_ID=621813

It's hard for me to imagine something as devastating as an atomic bomb explosion occuring once and I would hate for it to happen again anywhere, but what can I do to stop it?

Answer 1

Support the governments efforts to stop countries like Iran and Korea from continuing their nuclear testing.  

Ok, hopefully you paid attention to the show.  Things like the warning of imminent attack to the Japanese and the mindless zealotry of soldiers who were unwilling to surrender.  Perhaps we should discuss the hundreds of thousands of US casualties if we'd had to invade the mainland.  Now matter how you spin it the atomic weapons saved lives.

Answer 2

We are very close to having this happen again.  With the advent of nuclear power and many of these experiments taking place, the possibility of a nuclear accident is greater than ever before.  That means we don't have to have a bomb dropped on us.  It can happen due to failure to maintain our nuclear power plants, failure to ensure that the people who are working in these plants are loyal U.S. Citizens and are not criminals, failure to maintain our infrastructures and failure to ensure that our laws are enforced.   Being aware of your surroundings and reporting suspicious behavior will do wonders to ensure that terrorists can't attack the USA and that we can thwart problems of this nature.  But don't just think about nuclear warfare because germ warfare and poisoning food and water can be just as devastating.  There are diseases that can be so devastating and painful that nuclear warfare would be welcomed and instantaneous comparatively.  Ebola, Plague, and environmental poisons could destroy the whole world as we know it.     We must realize that freedom of religion means that we don't interfere with anyone's religion regardless of its popularity or lack thereof.  By allowing others the freedom to choose, we are free ourselves.  We should not be attacking radical muslims or radical any religion because it is their religion.  Additionally, we should ensure that the laws of our land are obeyed and that no group (like illegal immigrants) get a pass on law enforcement.  When the laws are not enforced, the seeds of hatred are planted and fertilized with resentment and discrimination.   Once those seeds are grown and become generational, the lawbreakers believe they entitled to ignore the laws while demanding that the legal people obey them.  That's lawlessness and eventually the wars begin.  Today, in the USA, the gangs and drug runners and people smugglers are controlling the borders and the government.  The lawless have more rights than legal citizens and more opportunity.  The citizens are ticked off and have just realized that the government has violated their trust.   But the illegals (and we're not talking just illegal immigration -- we're talking corporate corruption, drugs, etc.)  have gotten a strong foothold.  So, the only way we can stop this is to report, refuse to deal with anyone who promotes illegal activity of any kind and ensure that we are voting for people (elected officials) who are honest.  When we find one who isn't, we need to impeach them or recall them and we need to ensure that 100% of those eligible to vote, votes.  We need to spend as much time overseeing our government as they spend in stealing from us and cow-towing to the illegal activities.  We need to do this before it is too late.  Remember anyone who would use nuclear weapons or who would use biological weapons has no conscience or morals or ethics and without morals and ethics, we are all at risk.  Therefore, exert your authority.  The government works for the law-abiding citizens.  We have the power and we must use it.   Look, listen, report, and demand law enforcement.  That's what you can do to stop the lawlessness.

Answer 3

Any danger of nuclear war is necessarily caused by people, people who believe that they need to have nuclear weapons available and that there are cases where a first strike is a valid decision. Remember, a nuclear war MUST have a first strike, it MUST have someone who launches first. After the first launch, all bets are off, because everyone is going to start blowing something up in order to maximize their chances of survival. The best we can do is try to make sure our leaders are the kind of people who respect peace and understand the moral implications of launching a first strike. Bad leaders are the cause of many of the world's problems, but they themselves are caused in turn by people who don't know who to vote for, and that's what people like you have to fix.

Answer 4

Keep a republican in office. They're the only ones the nuke whacko's in the thirdworld countries are afraid of.

If we got Nuked and Hillary is President, she'd send them a 'stern' message, then ask for a summit to discuss why they're angry at us.

Answer 5

Nuclear warfare is such a small drop in the bucket of death and mayhem that man has drizzled all over himself that I don't think it's worth trying to stop.  I understand an emotional reaction to the destruction of two urban areas full of people that had a lasting effect on the world's culture and power structure, but stopping..er... nuclear war is the same as stopping any other war, or artificial death in general.  

Here's the scoop:  Groups of people get power.  Power corrupts.  Groups of people, even ones that seem beneficial, tend to delineate themselves from the "others", then become so enraptured with what they have that they want others to be that too.  Even the Amish, who never owned a slave, have a type of negativity toward everyone else - but I'm not trying to bring them out to call, merely state that they are a peaceful people generally, and even they are capable of wrong.  

SO, in your example above, the Japanese citizens had banded together to support their emperor, who was wrong.  In essence, they took part of that wrong, and decided they'd rather die than give up fighting the U.S., who was also wrong.  Fear prevailed, as it usually does, and the Japanese decided to fight to the last able body to keep us from doing whatever they thought we would do - and I can't blame them.  

So, rather than conventional assault, where that death would have a meaning in their culture, and we would lose more lives too, we decided to use a means that would deny their death's meaning, and dropped the bomb, also wrong.

The right thing to do would have been to stop fighting - preferrably before it started, but we humans aren't so bright.  We like to be right, and we like to show others that we are, and why,  even when we aren't which is pretty often.

So, be an individual, stop supporting groups of people, and find the solution in life that works for you without anyone else's power - your peace.  If everyone finds their peace, war will end - and nukes with it.

Answer 6

Yea agreed. I do not want it to happen again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MraBQBU6j...

Answer 7

You can't do much. There are countries like Iran that are building nuclear weapons at the moment and even the most powerful people in the world are failing to stop them. Their President says he wants to see Israel destroyed and he hates the West.  They will listen to no one, and nuclear war will eventually happen.

Answer 8

Keep Iran from getting the bomb. That will hold off nuclear war for a while, although sadly I feel that nuclear war will happen at some point. It is inevitable.

Answer 9

Get involved with other advocates against nuclear warfare. Try the LWV - www.lwv.org.

Answer 10

Vote.