Two Futures Project

Over the past semester I have been consumed with different voices of nonviolence. This past month I came across an advocacy group known as Two Futures Project. Their mission is to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to get states to disarm the current ones. Their website is http://twofuturesproject.org/. Here is a synopsis from their website on why it is important for Christians to care about the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons:

There are an estimated 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. Russia and the United States of America share roughly 95% of them. The United Kingdom, France, and China have several hundred while Israel, India and Pakistan come in a close third. North Korea is next with a handful of nuclear weapons and about three dozen countries have adequate, manufacturing facilities. In short, planet Earth is full of pointed bombs that contain life-altering, world-ending power.

A nuclear bomb is relatively small by modern measurements. But its size has nothing on the amount of destruction that befalls wherever it is detonated.

As a matter of fact, when detonation occurs, an immediate fireball bursts into time and space. A surface area covering approximately one square-mile explodes on the scene and vaporizes every living organism in its path. A three mile blast shoots out a gale-force wind full of massive firestorms leveling buildings and destroying whatever life was not vaporized. Life in the four square miles from ground zero has a one hundred percent fatality rate. Tyler Wiggs-Stevenson, founder and director of Two Worlds Project, artistically imagines this scene as, “. . . the devil grounding his cigar into the face of the earth.”

And this is not the worst of it. For another 320 square miles radioactive dust rises and rains death on whatever gets in her way. Life becomes uninhabitable in this circle of death for at least a generation. Tens of thousands die within twenty-four hours, 150,000 survivors, are in immediate need of medical attention.

Unfortunately, the hospitals, medical infrastructures, and nurses closest to ground zero are destroyed. Unaffected hospitals are doomed to collapse under the weight of human foot traffic and lack of medical supplies for the agony, misery, and pain of the afflicted. Approximately six million people escape the rain storms to become domestic refugees. Major urban centers see a dramatic exodus for fear of a second attack. Chaos and terror become the social norms. Violence waits patiently as society’s fears determine the government’s next course of action.

Even if a family is not affected directly by the blast, it surely will experience suffering after the massive financial fallout. Researchers estimate these cataclysmic circumstances cost over one trillion dollars in direct damages. Stock markets worldwide nosedive. Wiggs-Stevenson rightfully interjects by asking, “How could investors rationally have confidence in a world where cities can vanquish in an instant?”

This financial side-effect carries the potential for world-wide collapse in free market stability which forces an economic depression of staunch magnitude. And yet this is still not the worst of it.

The biggest problem, according to Wiggs-Stevenson, is that nobody knows whether or where another bomb might be. Psychologically, this fear causes a ripple effect. Airports and seaports shut down for fear of attack. International trade slows down. Businesses become bankrupt due to an economic standstill. Store shelves and gas stations close shop after a panicked nation conducts a frantic food and supplies drive. Big businesses like Target and Wal-Mart, who depend exponentially on the global supply chain, go bankrupt. And all of this occurs because of the detonation of one average-sized bomb. There are still over 20,000 more to be deployed worldwide.

Another disastrous ripple lands in the social sector of the world. The percentages of people who depend on governmental assistance, who hover in the margins of society’s mind, lose their support. Wiggs-Stevenson declares, “The charitable sector, encompassing everything that Christians care about – poverty, relief, women’s and children’s rights, immigration reform, AIDS treatment, clean water, genocide prevention, creation care, you name it – simply vanishes.” Nothing matters to anyone except the detonation of another bomb. This xenophobia consumes governments worldwide and becomes the best advocate to social injustice in modern times. You can just imagine the cruelty of crimes and multiplicity of “uncaring eyes” from society to society as each does what it must to seek survival. And this is the world 2FP is trying to avoid.