THE INTERNATIONAL SHADOWS PROJECT

On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. On the 9th, another was dropped on Nagasaki. We will never know how many died as a result of the bombing, because the army of occupation conveniently lost the records that would have allowed the casualties to be tallied. Even so, victims of the bomb are still dying of cancer and other bomb related diseases and disorders, some of them disorders of the mind and some among the sufferers are those who made and continue to make the bombs. The numbers may have changed, but in the early 80s, Hiroshima had the highest per capita rate of suicide of any city in the world - Los Alamos, where the bombs were made, was second on the list. Nor is there any way to measure the loss caused by the cold war that followed. There will be no way to measure the annihilation of the human race, which will no doubt follow as a result of the bombing unless the world finds some way of curing its psychotic addiction to nuclear weapons. The end of the cold war does not diminish the danger in the least - it may, in fact, increase it through complacency. A fascist coup in Russia could undo any gains made since the fall of the U.S.S.R. in a matter of hours. A nuclear war between India and China could bring about nuclear winter, making summer days in the northern hemisphere no brighter than a moonlit night and plunging mean temperatures to forty degrees below zero farenhiet. Even if we escaped annihilation, a war with casualties of - how many? - 400 million? a billion? (reasonable estimates of possible losses in a "limited" nuclear war) should be intolerable for every member of the human race.

Those who have participated in Shadows Projects of all sorts believe that the use of nuclear weapons was and remains unacceptable under any circumstances. At the same time, we are not so naive as to believe that things like Shadow Projects alone will free us of the nuclear curse. Our hopes vary: some of us are active in other nonviolent organizations ranging from religious to scientific, Anarchist to Leninist, Republican to digger. In this effort, we put aside our disagreements, because in a world depopulated or a society destroyed by nuclear war, none of them really matters, nor will there be anyone to argue any position whatsoever. A world without life must be a terrible thing: nothing but matter, rolling over itself meaninglessly, senselessly, a relentless and pointless exercise in chemistry and physics. Life lived by a few people in converted mineshafts generation after generations is not life fit for human beings. Life lived under military dictatorships in an environment where the rain is poisonous, a new pandemic sweeps the population every season, cancer usually sets in around age 23, and few people are born without birth defects makes the ugliest sci-fi movie look like fun.

We are optimistic enough to think that the human race can free itself from the sickness of nuclear weaponry. Perhaps our contributions to the conceptualization and visualization of both nuclear destruction and a world free of state terrorism will be of benefit in one way or another.

In any case, wherever people reasonably and responsibly think of themselves as free, silence implies consent. We are not silent. We do not consent.