Threat of nuclear holocaust increasing

FINLAND and Sweden have expressed their eagerness to join Nato, an alliance that has outlived it’s World War II mandate.

As the trajectory of events in Europe unfold, the grim spectre of a full-scale nuclear holocaust becomes a potent reality as Russia deploys massive nuclear power on its borders, placing this destructive first-strike capability on hair-trigger alert, using components of artificial intelligence (AI) in it’s targeting software.

Russia has 6 225 nuclear warheads, the US has 5 500.

In a fist strike by either side, using only 100 warheads could result in the end of civilisation.

Peer reviewed studies graphically reveal that the consequences would include catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer.

A global famine would result from such a war, and would cause up to 2 billion people to starve to death, apart from the roughly 500 million people who would be killed in Russia and the US when intercontinental strikes are launched. Nuclear deterrence is a myth, and a lethal one at that.

It continues to dominate international relations.

Yet, there is no proof that it ever worked, or that it ever will.

Nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhuman and indiscriminate weapons ever created.

Both in the scale of the devastation they cause, and in their uniquely persistent, spreading, genetically damaging radioactive fallout, they are unlike any other weapons.

During all its history, humanity it seems, has not learned a thing about the stupidity of war and its horrors. A nuclear exchange, in view of events unfolding in Europe, would make all the wars in history combined pale into insignificance should some madman activate the nuclear button.

Any civilisation that reaches fullscale nuclear capability is bound to destroy itself sooner or later.

Let this be a sombre warning to humanity and it’s collective future. FAROUK ARAIE |