Where I Stand — Classic Hank: Las Vegans know power of nuke weapons’ blasts

Friday, Aug. 10, 2001 | 4:24 a.m.

Note to readers: Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun, who died in 1989, was a prophetic, hard-hitting columnist who butted heads with world giants and demagogues and zealously defended the rights of the little guy.

Every week the SUN will run one of Hank's Where I Stand columns, recalling his finer moments as a chronicler of the late 20th century. We call this feature "Classic Hank."

TODAY: With the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki passing last week, thoughts once again turned to how nuclear weapons could seriously affect the future of mankind. In this May 26, 1967, column Hank looks at the issue of nuclear weapons.

War is some kind of hell ...

It's about as close to organized murder as supposed civilized people can come. And all the flag-waving and drum beating and rationalization for its use doesn't change its character.

What is particularly ludicrous is the claim that war is the way to peace in the world. It isn't, because violence begets violence.

There may be justification for military exercises when a mad aggressor is loose in the world and there is no other way to bring him to account but it doesn't change the cruelty, barbarism and injustice which war brings in its wake.

If there has been a need for some defensive wars in the past, such needs should be outlawed for the future. And no world community has more knowledge of future military effects than right here in Nevada.

Las Vegans know from first hand experience the power of nuclear explosion.

We've had ringside seats for more than a decade of aerial bursts, ground level shots and we've felt the force of the many underground blasts fired since the international treaty banning atmospheric tests.

From our vantage point, we've learned what the result of a nuclear war would be, an experience not shared by those living elsewhere in our country.

When windows are broken, large buildings swayed and residents frightened by an underground blast a hundred miles away, it doesn't take much imagination to know what the effects of an all-out nuclear war would be.

And that knowledge is even more vivid for those who witnessed the aboveground shots of the 1950s. Bombs set off at the testing grounds in the remote desert northwest of Las Vegas remind us that our whole valley was lighted as bright as day when the bomb exploded.

The glow was visible, even in the smog, in Los Angeles, 300 miles distant. And spectators seven miles from the detonation felt their insides crushed.

Pictures were taken in the morning darkness as far away as Virginia City, using only the flash from the bomb for light. Film was exposed and images reproduced on film at a distance of 400 miles from ground zero.

This is why we must cry out if we believe our country is on a nuclear war collision course with Russia and Red China.

It doesn't mean that we are less courageous if we don't want to destroy humanity.

This is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of sensibleness and reasonableness.

The only way we can survive in a world of this kind is to fight the enemy with the same weapons they employ and right now the enemy is using diplomacy.

We are trying to match diplomacy with military strength and we fail to realize that the mind is mightier than the sword.

Some of the experiences we have had with our diplomats and some of the architects of foreign policy would seem to belie that statement, but a lot depends upon whose mind we are talking about.

We should send our diplomats through the same courses of training the British employ. If we coupled British diplomacy with the vitality of the United States in other fields, that would be an unbeatable combination and the course of history over the last 20 years would have changed.