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NUCI.EARWAR
andthe
BOOKOFRE
by
Paul Kroll
Can humanity survive the effects of nuclear war?
LIVE,
admittedly, in
he most dangerous
ime in the history of
mankind. We are, all of us,
just one push of the button
away from the ultimate holo–
caust.
The world has tasted only one
small morsel of nuclear war: Hi–
roshima and Nagasaki. But do
we really comprehend what
would happen to us and our
earth in the event of
all-out and
total
nuclear war?
View of Apocalypse
On October 31, 1983, more than
500 participants met in Washing–
ton, D.C. , for a monumental con–
ference to discuss the fate of our
world (if there was any left) after
nuclear war.
Participants included eminent
scientists and officials from more
tban 20 nations. The conference
was appropriately called: The
Long-term Worldwide Biological
Consequences of Nuclear War.
Out of this meeting carne the book
The Cold and the Dark
and a new
phrase for our survival dictionary:
Nuclear Winter.
The conference was a milestone
in the number of participants, the
depth of the studies undertaken
and the unique involvement of So–
viet scientists.
We will take a glimpse at the
dire forecast that the scientists
have prognosticated as the result of
a single, massive nuclear unleash–
ing. Before we do, however, let us
consider another view of future war
2
and its aftermath. This one comes
to us from the distant past.
In the Christian world most peo–
ple are at least dimly aware of ref–
erences to the Apocalypse or book
of Revelation. The so-caBed Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse have
often been used as symbols of terri–
ble plagues.
For more than l ,800 years after
the apostle John wrote down the
details of his visions on the Greek
island of Patmos, the book's con–
tents continue to read like a series
of bizarre hallucinations. But all
that has changed with the advent of
"Star Wars" weaponry and nuclear
power.
Today, in the late 1980s, sorne of
the horrors of the book of Revela–
tion bear striking and eerie resem–
blance to both the direct and the
long-term effects of modero war–
fare and a nuclear holocaust.
The book of Revelation describes
a frightening series of
events~
Sorne
are ascribed directly to the super–
natural power of God preceded and
superseded by man-made wars and
infernos. Few have ever pointed
out the striking convergence of the
effects of modero conventional and
nuclear war with the scenario por–
trayed in Revelation.
After Nuclear War
The scientists of the aforemen–
tioned Consequences of Nuclear
War conference were pessimistic
regarding tbe potential effects of a
nuclear war.
·
Paul Ehrlich of Stanford Univer–
sity stated: "We did not feel that
we could exclude the possibility
that humanity would gradually de-
cline to extinction following such
an event"
(The Cold and the
Dark,
Paul Ehrlich, et al , New
York: W.W. Norton Co., 1984,
page 137).
Soviet scientist Nikolai Bochkov
agreed: "We should not be afraid
to reach the conclusion that the
conditions that would prevail
would not allow the survival of hu–
man beings as a species" (ibid.,
page 142). Here in the briefest
form is what we may expect, ac–
cording to these scientists:
The nuclear nations had the ca–
pacity (in 1983) to unleash the
equivalent of
one mil/ion
Hi-