Regarding Grant Piper's Aug. 26 letter, " 'Greatest evil' is not apparent": Noncombatants should not be targeted in war, under any circumstance. No matter what countries at war have already done to civilians, it is still illegal to target women, children and people outside the military.
Within less than a second, nuclear weapons serve as an incendiary device for entire regions, vaporizing or burning every living human, animal and plant within an 80-km radius. And that is just the initial effect of a typical hydrogen bomb from today's arsenal, of which there are around 27,000.
Nuclear weapons are not at all like conventional bombs. It is not only the indiscriminate and instantaneous nature of radioactive violence that makes nuclear weapons the ultimate evil, but also the long-lived radiation after a nuclear explosion. A nuclear blast releases radioactive elements that hang around for millennia upon millennia, putting future generations at risk of developing cancer and genetic defects.
To take just one example, plutonium, the primary ingredient of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, is a known carcinogen and alpha-particle emitter that can cause cancer, leukemia and mutagenic effects for thousands of years after the initial explosion (plutonium's half life is 24,000 years). Because of the long-lived radioactive poisoning, nuclear weapons are in a sense like waging war on future generations.
Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still suffer today, and they are concerned about the intergenerational effects of radiation. To suggest that any person or nation "deserved" the hell of nuclear annihilation is beyond comprehension.
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