Extermination Devices
Nuclear weapons are evil because they cause massive and indis-criminate destruction of human lives. Nuclear weapons are not just a means of mass destruction; they are devices of extermination.
They are indiscriminate because no one could reliably forecast the complex atmospheric conditions and the wind direction at the moment of launch. The effects would be so unpredictable that accurate targeting would be irrelevant.
The peril of nuclear weapons being used constantly hangs over every one of us . Human beings are fallible and not safe to be trusted with such awesome responsibility. Whether by design, accident or flaws in the system, catastrophe is always possible.
Even a "small" nuclear war could trigger a global and climatic catastrophe. Apart from the horrific initial annihilation of life, it would cause nuclear winter and billions would starve. Cancer rates would soar and there could be no effective assistance. The use of nuclear weapons is unthinkable. They must be eliminated to avoid catastrophic genocide and environmental devastation.
At the five yearly Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at the United Nations in 2010, 189 countries unanimously stressed the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” and demanded that all states “at all times” comply with “applicable international law, including international humanitarian law.”
This suggests that use of nuclear weapons in any circumstance would be illegal. However, agreements at international forums like the NPT have to be reached by consensus. Any state can block a decision. As a result, their statements and calls to action tend to be watered down. Therefore we are asking citizens to affirm their personal belief that any use of nuclear weapons would be a War Crime.
In 1996 the International Court of Justice went nearly this far, but pointed out that it did not have enough information about actual nuclear weapons. But we do have that information. For example, The Trident system, used by both the US and the UK, is eight times as powerful as the Hiroshima Bomb. It could never be used without incinerating and irradiating huge numbers of civilians. No one could predict the effects and the results would be vastly out of proportion to any possible military benefit. Britain and the other nuclear-armed states are deploying weapons which it could never be legal to use.
Several states support the idea of declaring nuclear weapons use to be criminal and Mexico is proposing a way for this to be done”.
Nuclear weapons are a menace to everyone, wherever they live on the planet.
... The nuclear winter scenario predicts that the huge fires caused by nuclear explosions (particularly from burning urban areas) would lift massive amounts of dark smoke and aerosol particles from the fires into the upper troposphere/stratosphere. At 10-15 kilometers (6–9 miles) above the Earth's surface, the absorption of sunlight would further heat the smoke, lifting it into the stratosphere where the smoke would persist for years, with no rain to wash it out. This would block out much of the sun's light from reaching the surface, causing surface temperatures to drop drastically.
As much as five million tons of soot could be released, which could produce a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the grain-growing regions. The cooling would last for years and could be "catastrophic" according to researchers.
