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Preventing Earth's Suicide By J. Robert Oppenheimer

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Preventing Earth’s Suicide J. Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of world’s first nuclear arms, has lamented, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Oppenheimer had dedicated his entire life in reaching the zenith of technology by human race, but once he achieved his goal, he fell into despair. He knew that he had created a vicious monster that would eventually swallow the world. Oppenheimer’s fear is gradually and inevitably becoming a reality as years pass by. More and more nuclear weapons are proliferated and many nations have obtained the weapons of mass destruction. The world needs to curb the spread of nuclear power because they are stupendously destructive, rogue nations can erratically use them, and the possessions of such …show more content…

Since the 20th century, the United Nations has been discouraging warfare and creating weapons; as for inadvertent wars, military objectives were to be achieved with minimal loss of civilians. The entire point of nuclear weapons, however, is massive, ruthless annihilation. The use of nuclear arms could kill tens of thousands of people, and their catastrophic after-effects would harm many more. These effects should never be morally accepted. When the Little Boy--the first nuclear bomb ever invented--wiped out Hiroshima in 1945, the bomb contained 15 kilotons of nuclear power. However, today’s nuclear bombs can hold 1,000 kilotons which is 67 times stronger than that of Hiroshima (Hoffman 1999). If nations start a large scale war, nuclear weapons will be used, and most major cities will be destroyed. Nuclear weapons put ‘humanity and most forms of life in jeopardy of annihilation’ (Krieger 2003). No nation should be entrusted with such a power that could come close to decimating the …show more content…

In order to stop a rival nation from developing nuclear arms, a country could attempt to destroy its rival. For example, the United States had considered bombing the Soviet Union’s nuclear development sites before the Soviet Union completed its nuclear project. Orvil Anderson, a Major General of the United States Air Force during the Cold War, publicly marked, “Give me the order to do it and I can break up Russia’s five A-bomb nests in a week…And when I went up to Christ—I think I could explain to Him that I had saved civilization.” (Stevens 1950). The development of nuclear weapons can put a region in a hostile situation, as it is in no country’s interest that its rivals become capable of using nuclear force against it. To prevent such instability and conflict, the best case scenario would be that states do not develop nuclear weapons in the first

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