New Holiday: Aug. 29: First Lightning Day
Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949
I’m starting a new holiday: August 29: First Lightning Day. That was when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, ending America’s nuclear monopoly. The Kremlin called it Первая молния — Pervaya Molniya — First Lightning. When the Americans detected the radiation, they knew there now were two nuclear powers. They dubbed it Joe-1, after Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
First Lightning Day is needed because the world has forgotten what it learned during the Cold War: nuclear war is to be avoided at all costs. Don’t even get close to it. Stay away.
The closest we came to a nuclear holocaust was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Yet unlike today’s nuclear brinkmanship by Biden, or whoever is running the show in Washington, that was a blunder by Kennedy and Khrushchev nobody wanted, and which they soon backed away from. It scared everybody to their socks. Those men certainly had defects. We know all about JFK’s sins.
Khrushchev actively had assisted in Stalin’s mass murders. Yet when he toured his country in the late 1950s, everywhere he heard, “We don’t want another war.” That was after the Soviets lost 27 million killed from the Nazi war on them.
The lesson: Don’t mess around in the other side’s “near abroad,” as the Russians call neighboring countries. That means no nukes in Cuba and today no NATO membership for Ukraine, which would put nukes three minutes from hitting Moscow. Понимаете? — Understand?
In 1961, the Soviets exploded the largest bomb ever, later dubbed the Tsar Bomba, 50 megatons of destruction, enough to wipe out the Los Angeles or New York metropolitan areas. Read about it here.
Here’s the video. It scares me every time I see it more than any horror movie:
That led to the banning of underground tests by the USSR and USA. And there was no nuclear war. At least not yet.
The men of that era had gone through World War II and knew war wasn’t something to be trifled with. There always will be wars and rumors of wars. (Matthew 24:6). But wars were limited to proxy wars on the peripheries, such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. Terrible, but better than nuclear war.
And how bad would a nuclear war be today? The Los Angeles Times ran this headline yesterday, Assumption Day: “Even a limited nuclear war could kill a third of world’s population, study shows.” They wrote:
As escalating tensions among the United States, Russia and China revive old fears of nuclear war, some researchers are warning that even a limited-scale exchange between such nations as India and Pakistan could have catastrophic consequences for global food supplies and trigger mass death worldwide.
A nuclear conflict involving less than 3% of the world’s stockpiles could kill a third of the world’s population within two years, according to a new international study led by scientists at Rutgers University. A larger nuclear conflict between Russia and the United States could kill three-fourths of the world’s population in the same timeframe, according to the research published Monday in Nature Food.
“It’s really a cautionary tale that any use of nuclear weapons could be a catastrophe for the world,” said climate scientist and study author Alan Robock, a distinguished professor in Rutgers’ Department of Environmental Sciences.
The findings come at a time when — 30 years after the end of the Cold War — the threat of a nuclear holocaust may be greater now than it ever was.
It isn’t just the Biden regime that’s bonkers. Boris Johnson, thankfully exiting the prime minister’s office he could have graced but instead disgraced, played a key role. His Churchill schtick portraying Russia as Nazi Germany was foolish. Especially because, this time, the Nazis were Ukraine’s top soldiers; Russians hate Nazis more than anyone except Jews; and Hitler didn’t wield 6,000 nuclear weapons.
T.J. Coles in The Grayzone:
Britain has played a key role in NATO forward troop deployments and training exercises on Russia’s borders. With war underway, the UK sends billions in arms, special forces, and volunteers to ensure escalation.
In an effort to evade his domestic woes, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—who may soon be replaced—has spent much time toing and froing to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described the buffoonish British PM as one of Ukraine’s closest allies. If and when Johnson leaves office, he is tipped for a role as Ukraine Envoy.
Comparing Johnson to the great Conservative Party Leader Margaret Thatcher brings only laughter. America isn’t the only country whose leadership has declined sharply. Britain, although a smaller power, long has played a crucial role as a catalyst to the United States in foreign policy endeavors, usually for the good. When Thatcher met new Soviet boss Gorbachev, she announced, “We can do business with him.” That set the stage for Reagan’s summits with Gorby that wound down the Cold War without anyone getting nuked.
Johnson should have eased Biden — or whoever is in charge — out of the delusion a war in Ukraine would destroy Russia. He didn’t. Instead of becoming another Churchill, he became 2022’s Upper Class Twit of the Year.
We’re not out of this yet. Biden still could accidentally sit on the Nucler Button. Which is why August 29 needs to be made international First Lightning Day. To amplify a 1960s hippy phrase: 6,000 Nuclear Bombs Can Ruin Your Whole Day.
