I was recently sent a screening copy of a compelling new documentary, “Countdown To Zero” about nuclear proliferation. Featuring interviews with a who’s who of world leaders and nuclear experts, the movie traces the history of the atomic bomb through the current nuclear threat.
Nine nations now have nuclear weapons and the movie argues that number could continue to grow to over 40 countries as the construction knowledge spreads (and that’s not even including the non-state actors, including terror groups). The documentary, directed by Lucy Walker, effectively shows the great concern among those experts in the political, diplomatic and scientific fields, though it expresses concern that the public does not fully understand the gravity of the situation. The movie is meant as a ‘wake up call’ about the threat of an act of nuclear terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident.
Ultimately, the movie calls for nuclear disarmament and asks viewers to go to the website of an organization called Global Zero to sign a petition. I wish they had also included steps that citizens can do to protect themselves in case the efforts to stop a nuclear explosion does not completely work.
Nevertheless, it is definitely worth seeing “Countdown to Zero” if it comes to your town or when it comes out in DVD. To check its national opening schedule, check the Global Zero website here.
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1 Shane Connor // Aug 26, 2010 at 12:10 am
No surprise the new ‘Countdown to Zero’ disarmament documentary omits life-saving strategies from their agenda of banning nukes, like advocating public Civil Defense, to try and better survive nukes in the meantime.
The disarmament movement for decades has hyped that with nukes; all will die or it will be so bad you’ll wish you had. Most have bought into it, now thinking it futile, bordering on lunacy, to try to learn how to survive a nuclear blast and radioactive fallout.
In a tragic irony, the disarmament movement has rendered millions of American families even more vulnerable to perishing from nukes in the future.
For instance, most now ridicule ‘duck & cover’, but for the vast majority, not right at ‘ground zero’ and already gone, the blast wave will be delayed in arriving after the flash, like lightening & thunder, anywhere from a fraction of a second up to 20 seconds, or more.
Today, without ‘duck & cover’ training, everyone at work, home, and your children at school, will impulsively rush to the nearest windows to see what that ‘bright flash’ was, just-in-time to be shredded by the glass imploding inward from that delayed blast wave. They’d never been taught that even in the open, just laying flat, reduces by eight-fold the chances of being hit by debris from that brief, 3-second, tornado strength blast.
Then, later, before the radioactive fallout can hurt them, most downwind won’t know to move perpendicular away from the drift of the fallout to get out from under it before it even arrives. And, for those who can’t evacuate in time, few know how quick & easy it is to throw together an expedient fallout shelter, to safely wait out the radioactive fallout as it loses 99% of its lethal intensity in the first 48 hours.
The greatest tragedy of that horrific loss of life, when nukes come to America, will be that most families had needlessly perished, out of ignorance of how easily they might have avoided becoming additional casualties, all because they were duped that it was futile to ever try to learn how to beforehand.
The disarmament movement’s sincere supporters, just wanting a world safe from nukes, will discover those unintended consequences to be inconvenient truths of the worst kind.
The Good News About Nuclear Destruction! at http://www.ki4u.com/goodnews.htm dispels those deadly myths of nuclear un-survivability, empowering American families to then better survive nukes. For as long as nukes exist, these life-saving insights are essential to every families survival!
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