You are here to sabotage our nuclear ambitions. Salt 2010 starring Angelina Jolie & Liev Schreiber & Chiwetel Ejiofor & Daniel Olbrychski & August Diehl & Hunt Block & Andre Braugher & Olek Kruppa et al, director Philip Noyce
This is an atomic testing ground. The bomb’s scheduled to go off in the morning. Split Second 1953 starring Stephen McNally & Alexis Smith & Jan Sterling & Keith Andes & Arthur Hunnicut & Paul Kelly & Robert Paige & Richard Egan & Frank de Kova et al, director Dick Powell, opening scene
Lost Hope City. ibid. site of atomic test
Attention, all personnel – the time of the explosion has been moved up from 06.00 hours to 05.00 hours. ibid. army announcer
I am Supreme Commander of SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. Yesterday morning the American Air Force launched two cruise missiles from Swadley Air Base in Great Britain. Through the ingenuity of SPECTRE the dummy warheads they carried were replaced with live nuclear warheads. Your weapons of destruction are now safely in our possession and will be moved to two secret targets. Please note the serial numbers of the missiles; they will confirm the truth. Your weapons of deterrence did not deter us from our objective! A terrible catastrophe now confronts you. However, it can be avoided by paying a tribute to our organization, amounting to 25% of your respective countries' annual oil purchases. We have accomplished two of the functions that the name SPECTRE embodies: terror and extortion. If our demands are not met within seven days, we shall ruthlessly apply the third – revenge! Never Say Never Again 1983 starring Sean Connery & Klaus Maria Bandauer & Max von Sydow & Barbara Carrera & Kim Basinger & Bernie Casey & Edward Fox & Pamela Salem & Rowan Atkinson et al, director Irvin Kershner
Dummy warheads will be replaced by WAD thermonuclear devices. Have a nice day. ibid. machine
We are faced with the ultimate nightmare – the abduction of nuclear warheads. ibid. Foreign secretary
Not unlike the nuclear winters of twenty-first century Earth. Star Trek: The Next Generation s5e9: A Matter of Time, Picard’s log
Nog: In the twentieth century humans used crude nuclear reactors as weapons; they called them atoms bombs; they used to blow them up all the time.
Quark: They irradiated their own planet? Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s4e8: Little Green Men
Looks like this planet is in the middle of a nuclear winter. Star Trek: Voyager s6e7: Dragon’s Teeth, Tom on bridge
They’ll be no learning period with nuclear weapons – you make one mistake and you’re going to destroy nations. Robert S McNamara, The Fog of War, 2003
It was luck that prevented nuclear war. ibid.
Even if you irrationally decide to go to war it doesn’t mean you have to fight it in a widely irrational fashion ... Objective studies indicate that the post-war environment while hostile to human life, more hostile than the pre-war environment, will not be so hostile as to preclude normal and happy lives. Herman Khan, former RAND & defense consultant
On August 5th the world’s first Uranium bomb was loaded into a B29 bomber named Enola Gay. The World at War 24/26: The Bomb, ITV 1974
The war had ended but not the dying. ibid.
Near the gates and within the two cities
There will be two scourges the like of which was never seen,
Famine within plague, people put out by steel,
Crying to the great immortal God for relief. Nostradamus II-6
The Manhattan Project: Robert Oppenheimer leads the team that develops the atomic bomb. The original weapon of mass destruction. America: The Story of the US: Superpower, History 2010
Under the Ike the US arsenal expanded from a little more than 1,000 to over 22,000 nuclear weapons. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States V: The 50s: Eisenhower, The Bomb & the Third World, Showtime 2012
Eisenhower repeatedly failed to seize the opportunities that emerged ... The beloved Dwight Eisenhower put the world on a glide-path towards annihilation and the most gargantuan expansion of military power in history. And left the world a far more dangerous place. ibid.
But Ronald Reagan at the least let the chance to rid the world of nuclear weapons slip through his fingers because he wouldn’t let go of a space fantasy. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States VIII: Reagan, Gorbachev & Third World: Rise of the Right
Now, in the thermonuclear age, any misjudgment on either side about the intentions of the other could rain more devastation in several hours than has been wrought in all the wars of human history. John F Kennedy, Berlin July 1961
Disarmament without checks is but a shadow – and a community without law is but a shell. ibid.
Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear Sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. John F Kennedy, speech to UN September 1961
Let us call a truce to terror. The logical place to begin is a treaty assuring the end of nuclear tests of all kinds. ibid.
A war today or tomorrow, if it led to nuclear war, would not be like any war in history. A full-scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than 60 minutes, with the weapons now in existence, could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans, and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors, as Chairman Khrushchev warned the Communist Chinese, ‘the survivors would envy the dead’. For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot even conceive of its horrors. So let us try to turn the world away from war. Let us make the most of this opportunity, and every opportunity, to reduce tension, to slow down the perilous nuclear arms race, and to check the world's slide toward final annihilation. John F Kennedy, July 1963
I ask you to stop and think for a moment what it would mean to have nuclear weapons in so many hands, in the hands of countries large and small, stable and unstable, responsible and irresponsible, scattered throughout the world. There would be no rest for anyone then, no stability, no real security, and no chance of effective disarmament. There would only be the increased chance of accidental war, and an increased necessity for the great powers to involve themselves in what otherwise would be local conflicts. ibid.
Nixon: I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: That would drown about 200,000 people.
Nixon: Well no no no I’d rather use the nuclear bomb.
Kissinger: That I think would just be too much.
Nixon: The nuclear bomb? Does that bother you? Nixon tapes 25th April 1972
Negotiations with Iran, especially, will not be easy under any circumstances, but I suspect that they might be somewhat less difficult if the nuclear-weapon states could show that their requests are part of a broader effort to lead the world, including themselves, toward nuclear disarmament. Preventing further proliferation is essential, but it is not a recipe for success to preach to the rest of the world to stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable to their own security. Hans Blix, Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters
We had news this morning of another successful atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki. These two heavy blows have fallen in quick succession upon the Japanese and there will be quite a little space before we intend to drop another. Henry L Stimson
For 50 years nuclear power stations have produced three products which only a lunatic could want: bomb-explosive plutonium, lethal radioactive waste and electricity so dear it has to be heavily subsidised. They leave to future generations the task, and most of the cost, of making safe sites that have been polluted half-way to eternity. James Buchan
The reason that I am worried about this treaty is because I believe that the treaty is a step away from safety, possibly a step towards a war. Dr Edward Teller, televised evidence
A pact hailed by a hopeful majority as signalling peace in our time actually turns out to be a first step on the path to disaster. Admiral Lewis Strauss retired, televised evidence
Add to this the memory of that shadowy companion who is always with us like an inverted guardian angel, silent, invisible, almost incredible and yet unquestionably there. And one must concede that the future of civilisation doesn’t look very bright. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 13/13: Heroic Materialism, BBC 1969