welcome viewers to channel seventeen center for media and democracy here in burlington vermont this is the ongoing series nuclear free future conversation i'm your host margaret harrington and welcome everybody to this discussion today w john brewer welcome back dr brewer to our program you've been here before and talking about the nuclear arms race and now we have the topic set before us today the new nuclear arms race national security or insecurity so taking from the top doctor what about the bulletin of atomic scientists who set the doomsday clock forward to two minutes to midnight what does this mean thank you for having me margaret this is a topic that's very dear to my heart because i think it impacts our future more immediately than almost any other issue that we face today so the bolton of the atomic scientists it was a publication and a group of people that started with the very scientists who created the tonic bomb through the manhattan project for use in world war two and it didn't take them long to realize they had let a genie out of the bottle that really terrified them and realize the implications for our future if we continued to make these weapons many of them had regrets not all but many had regrets that they had done in the first place so nine hundred forty seven they began to publish this bulletin and they developed this doomsday clock the idea was to give their professional scientific opinion as the real experts in these weapons how much danger they pose to our survival at any given point in time so that clock has been yearly changed how many minutes toward midnight and his whacks and waned according to their professional assessment of the danger that we face from nuclear weapons last year they moved it up to the most it had been over twenty years and this year again because of the threats they see they moved it up to two minutes to midnight it's only been that close one other time in history the very year in one nine hundred fifty three when the united states and the soviet union both upped the ante from the small atomic weapons of the hair shame and i guess second disasters to the thermonuclear weapons that are hundreds to thousands times stronger and why why is it this year one of the reasons why they're there they're pushing the clock forward well they're really worried about the attitude the cultural attitude both the united states and the other nuclear powers that seems to be moving away from eliminating these weapons that everybody has agreed to all along needs to happen and two starting a new arms race by building new weapons modernizing the ones we have and worst of all making them more  usable and therefore likely to be used in any of the conflicts that are going on meanwhile those conflicts are getting worse with india and pakistan two nuclear armed powers now threatening each other and having regular border skirmishes in north korea of course in one thousand nine hundred eighty or two thousand and seventeen testing nuclear missiles and its first thermo nuclear weapon the first hydrogen bomb that puts it in the lead with the big boys in the nuclear club and can threaten the united are mostly what what we hear are the the verbal threats between the between north korea and president trump and so to know what the background is that is what is this is background this is up front right that there is a there is a build up of nuclear weapons on all sides that's right north korea is the latest edition the ninth member of the nuclear club and has its weapons because after green with all the other non nuclear weapons not to build them in return for the promise that the nuclear weapon states with eliminate their nuclear weapons in due time at the time everybody signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty when realizing that the nuclear powers work very fast about disarming decided to withdraw from that treaty and build nuclear weapons which it has succeeded in doing which treaty is that it's that they and which countries withdrew from the treaty the nuclear nonproliferation treaty which was went into effect in one nine hundred seventy was the promise between the five nuclear powers at the time in the rest of the world that no one develop new nuclear weapons if if the nuclear states worked on getting rid of theirs since then for other nations have acquired nuclear weapons and several had them and eliminated them the latest is north korea which has decided withdraw from the treaty and build its own nuclear weapons thinking it needs them for its self defense so of course the united states is still going abiding by the treaty depends on how you interpret it article six of the treaty says that the states will work in very efficient fashion to eliminate nuclear weapons allotting the one point two five trillion dollars that we just a lot of to modernize them to me doesn't sound like much of an effort to get rid of them so on paper the united states is still ascribing to this treaty but in action it's another story and it's a frightening story it is a frightening story and there's a document that's produced every so many years by the united states government called in the nuclear review posture their nuclear posture review which is an assessment of how many weapons we have henry we need what their purpose is and that document has always contained an element of yes we're still working on getting rid of these and while the latest one published by the trump administration still has a sentence in there about yes we want to get rid of them there is nothing else in that document that suggests that we're headed in that direction at all fact it's quite the opposite in addition to modernizing all the weapons in the delivery systems that we've had up until now they want introduce new weapons for example small tactical nuclear weapons for the use of submarines see before summary in which one or one of the three delivery systems right you have some marines and intercontinental ballistic listing missiles from silos in the ground and the strategic air bombers the subs have always had strategic weapons that have weapons large enough to take out a whole cities that were never intended to be used but intended as deterrence you heard us in any way gone or and that theoretically keeps them from attacking or whatever but now they want to put weapons small enough that can be used in a battlefield situation and that makes them more usable the word they use in the posture review is flexibility which is very frightening to those of us who know intimate detail of what those weapons will do and so meanwhile we have the nuclear submarines in strategically placed all around the world well the navy won't tell you where they are at any one time there's a couple of big bases largest is i think in washington state in norfolk are the two largest but then the soviets the chinese the french the british all have nuclear submarines is it is it important to know that that the soviets in the chinese may have been developing more nuclear weapons before the united states got on board this policy is that true or is it important to know that that they they were the ones who did instigate this instigate the latest build up yes the latest oh i think you'll hear accusations on both sides the point is all those countries have a signed treaty that article six of the nonproliferation treaty says they'll get rid of them and no one is at this point with the possible exception of great britain may not be modernizing as fast at least they're having public discussions about whether they should or not in the public square something we're not having here there's no discussion about whether this trillion and a quarter dollars is worth it given all the other security needs how these weapons can protect us from twenty first century threats and and continue so you think there be more public discussion about this yeah well dr why do you think that there is such apathy about this most of us we see this and we say ok it's just proceeding as usual and there's nothing to worry about because there young front office staff of a u s congress person i asked them how many how many nuclear weapons they thought there were in the world they said five hundred thousand i've asked other people that age and they say five or ten so the ignorance about this  and that's simply a reflection that it hasn't been covered by the media is just a fact and i'm sure the people that are making these hundreds of billions of dollars building these weapons really probably don't want it discussed a whole lot but it's not been a news item for young people so the misinformation is enormous now for the older folks who know about these weapons in the you and i who got under our desks in grade school and i can remember measuring the walls of my house to see how long i can survive fall out radiation have that jolt so that when we see these pictures that brings back a memory it doesn't for for young people so it's our job to bring them up to snuff i think on the on talking about what it means if these weapons are used in a small or a big way now when you talk about people constantly go back to the argument and i see this is the top level the state department to people in the street oh of course they're safe they've proven themselves safe over seventy years look we used them intentionally against japan and they saved this an invasion maybe and look how safe they are since but and this is where education comes in if you look at the mistakes the near misses there have been thirty two broken arrows where the united states pentagon agrees they lost or accidentally fired a nuclear missile that wasn't intended thirty seven times that's the ones they admit to it says nothing about what the soviets did and there have been seven near armageddons where a launch on one side or the other by russia the united states would have started an all out nuclear exchange which would have ended civilization and cause misery like we've never seen before i hope that people begin to learn about these and we do have an opportunity to do that as we'll talk about later in the show with this upcoming series of films about nuclear weapons but here here's a way i look at people who say well look they're safe there is a doctor i counsel people many times about risky behaviors like whether you smoked or whether you didn't wear your seat belt things that i saw all the results of poor behavior in the emergency department you know the lung disease and the terrible smash faces and the deaths and so forth from the car accidents but the longer people do those behaviors but the thing i was guilty i was not riding a bicycle with a helmet and i was thirty five before one of my colleagues at john that's really done it so now i ride with one but because you don't get hurt during those things or you don't get the cancer you don't get the see if you did that long ago all of this must be benign right it's normal human that's where the brain thinks well it reminds me of us as if we were turkeys and egg hatches a turkey is born it's human caretakers give it food incubated and they nurtured in every week that goes by that turkey has to feel better about life it's growing it's healthy it's being fed and water and it's a weeks go by itself life is good who knows of turkeys having discussions about whether their human caretakers has their best interest in mind but even if they did it would they would probably win the argument that life is good and so their confidence level with time goes up and up and up until thanksgiving day it's gone and this is what really gets me is if nuclear weapons are launched tomorrow and most of our cities are destroyed nobody looking at the history of what you'll see in these movies will look back and say well that was a shock it'll say of course how could they not see that coming and that's the point i want to get why be turkeys well john you mentioned the movies and tell us about the week long movies showing nuclear issues yes right here in burlington right so at the urging of me as a member of physicians for social responsibility who wants to educate people about this the peace and justice center here has arranged for the showing of five different movies and six different locales next week starting tuesday through saturday evenings and one sunday afternoon in different venues each with a different topic so they'll be the movie threads for example shown at the university of vermont on tuesday which is a tough to watch movie but it's the most realistic picture of what a nuclear exchange would mean for a given place it's a story of britain being attacked in the one nine hundred eighty s and it's very sobering tough to watch but everybody should see it just so you can make a decision do you want these weapons in the world existing they can do this and they can do it in an hour's time on any given day and then there are uplifting movies like on wednesday the women's internationally for peace and freedom is sponsoring a movie about how the peace movement has dealt with this in the past and particularly the wonderful things we did by changing ronald reagan's mind from coming into office he signed an order about explicitly how we would beat the soviet union  nuclear war and three years later in a state of union speech after much education he said we can't win one it will never be fought and became the greatest disarmament advocate of all time we need to do that again these movies are powerful for that then there are some documentaries about accidents and terrorism and then there's one very uplifting almost fantasy but not as unrealistic as you might think about how some sports players actually made a difference in reducing their weapons called amazing grace and chuck a really fun movie to watch and please if you watch threads make sure you watch that one too so you won't feel so bad and have hope so i hope how can we have hope in it with in the face of  this nuclear escalation of the of this this machine that is is just going forward into right is this threatened you know there's just so there's just so much money in this you know it's so many jobs for so many  people and people don't know the fact that money in military industries like this creates so many fewer jobs than doing anything else including not taxing people in the first place you'd have a lot more jobs without this military expenditures but the money is there people don't want to lose their jobs they don't understand the realities of these weapons so the hope comes from people changing their minds and we did it before like i said in the one nine hundred eighty s we were as close as ever to an all out nuclear exchange and we reverse the whole thing when people say oh you never get rid of them now that they're there how could you ever get rid of how could you trust that the other guys are getting rid of them almost nobody knows that we went from seventy thousand nuclear warheads in the world to less than fifteen thousand now does anybody listening feel less safe because we have fewer ones just continue that trend for heaven's sakes one hundred twenty two nations in the world last summer i was at the u n signed a treaty agreed on the treaty to just eliminate these to make them illegal as a major step toward getting rid of them we can join the rest of the world the non nuclear nations are tired of the nuclear bullies having the weapons all the time and they're demanding that they get rid of them we can support that we can call on  our congress people we have some of the most progressive minds in congress with our congressional delegation who signed on to some bills limiting nuclear expenditures a little bit limiting the power of the president to unilaterally start a nuclear war trying to make it illegal to to start even a conventional war against north korea a preemptive strike without congressional approval these are all on the books our leaders are are more progressive far away then than most in the country but we need them that this is really existential threat stuff this could happen like the scientists at the bulletin say any time there are two minutes to midnight and if it goes off nobody can be surprised that to me suggests that we ought to ask these guys to take more of a leadership role in opposing this nuclear this modernization of the nuclear arsenal and we have this great example because the military budget right now has two trillion dollars programs that we could debate more you know one is the nuclear weapons build up in the modernization and the other is the f thirty five so there's this fighter plane the most expensive single weapon system ever built and it's going to cost over a trillion dollars to in fact we've spent close to four hundred billion dollars to have a few hundred of these flying planes of questionable value and if the country says yes we absolutely need them great but if we don't and here after fighting that for eight years losing every battle to t eliminate those planes coming to the airport in burlington they've resurrected the movement again and now there's going to be on on march sixth a ballot where the city of burlington voters not the city council gets to vote whether they want that plane here with all its noise and medical consequences of which there are many and remember that it's a nuclear capable aircraft and while it's unlikely to have nuclear weapons at the airport in burlington because its range is so limited it can deliver them anywhere you can imagine it using these will be if used in action may be flown to guam where they'll pick up their nuclear weapons and drop them or north korea start the whole mess or whatever so it's all related but yes we have hope because this tough little group of people in burlington to bring this issue despite everybody including their own congressional reps fighting them it every step of the way they're still saying we can make a difference as as people and with the nukes we've done it before it's time to do it again so p still here yes and could could you speak to that like why after seventy years of this turmoil and this reality i mean it's seems that to me like a question of what it what is reality is this is this is a reality what you're talking about and and a lot of us are living in a place that is on real like in a in a well for an old fashioned term it's like a fool's paradise that we gets down to it we've all been educated to think that the powers that be are just too powerful us and we don't have a say but the fact is we do and history shows that we have we can make a difference in an issue this important it's worth putting the time  into and the biggest motivator really is the education you know when i gave these talks back in the one nine hundred eighty s there weren't too many people who would give me an hour or an hour and a half or watch these films and come away thinking exactly the way they had before not everybody some people say well that's a risk but it's worth taking and you can respect that but the overwhelming majority of people once they see the reality of this in great detail most of us say yeah let's not go there deterrence that these weapons keep us safe is really based on on well believing like turkeys that they're safe because they're well fed until that day when they're not i don't understand how folks can say they'll never be used when every weapon system that wasn't eliminated in history has been used and even if you say well we have all these safeguards in place again you should watch these movies to see how close tho wrote a book on his deathbed practically saying it was all a mistake and it's only by luck and divine intervention that we haven't eliminated ourselves that's a guy on the inside and knew everything about these weapons i looking at it from the outside came to the same conclusion and was very firm when they heard that this year at the united nations it's almost magical thinking that somehow we can build something threaten to use it and never actually use it in gaming theory anything its probability is not zero will happen if given enough time that's just a mathematical fact and there's nobody on earth i've ever heard say that zero chance these things will be used by accident so you're approaching the the issue with the logic right from every angle mathematical logic common sense or rally and hopefully with the treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons it will actually become illegal to have these things and that will give a boost to the cultural resistance to what we inherently know is a dumb idea and in that in closing for this short interview dr could you talk about the  the that treaty to abolish nuclear weapons in the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons and what impact that is having on on the powers that be today right so the international campaign to abbas through the nuclear weapons which works hand in hand with physicians for social responsibility and the international physicians for the prevention of nuclear war there some of their founding members i remain on those mailing lists and every day i see something exciting going on in some country around the world including iran and places you would never dream of with ordinary people pushing their governments pushing their parliament ariens in their congress people educating people about these there's a peace boat  large cruise ship that's part of the year goes around educating people about nuclear war mostly through the efforts of the who back into the survivors who are getting very old now from here shimon pan and they will be coming to burlington in september we'll have a big educational program where we get the benefit of these these wise old folks who lived through what we're trying to prevent so all of these things are pathways to hope yeah as you can  and could you could you have some closing remarks now for our program today well it's clear the governments under the influence of weapons manufacturers are not by themselves go eliminate these silly weapons the f thirty five or really anything else without pressure from the people and if we believe we have any semblance of democracy left we have to know that we do have the power taint our government's money we've done it before and we can do it again so we just asked not to feel hopeless but to do the minimum whatever your life allows you to do to push back against these things to do it educate people invite speakers from i can or speakers from p s r show these movies get and watch these movies any time you get a venue talking about it most human beings that i know make the right decision once they know enough ok and meanwhile this movie festival starts next tuesday ok could you next ok we have the we have a flyer that should all be up on the yes yes so tuesday wednesday thursday friday and saturday evenings and sunday afternoon well thank you very much for talking with me today and and lifting us into a greater reality about what's going on and please come back to talk to us again th