We must abolish nuclear weapons.
The threat of nuclear annihilation is greater than it has ever been.

Mass murder is their only purpose.  
U.S. presidents have said, "Nuclear weapons must never be used. A nuclear war must never be fought, because everyone will lose."  Leaders of every major religion call for abolishing nuclear weapons, saying it’s immoral to possess them.

It's not only immoral. It's illegal to possess nukes under international law. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was signed and ratified by the majority of world nations in January 2021.

Yet the U.S. possesses thousands of nuclear bombs, violating international law.  About 1,770 of them are deployed on missiles (aimed and on hair trigger alert). Another 3,400 are held in reserve or in storage. Consider the horror of the bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima in 1945. Today’s nukes are, on average, 20 times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb. In other words, the US has enough nukes to incinerate 100,000 Hiroshimas and leave the remaining living beings to die slowly from radiation poisoning and nuclear winter.
   
But wait – we’re making more nukes? 
The DOE (Department of Energy) and its subsidiary, the NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) have directed Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) to accelerate production of nuclear bomb cores, called plutonium “pits,” to a minimum of 30 per year. The plutonium pit is the part of the bomb that causes mass destruction. The NNSA says we need new pits because the old ones are aging. This is a lie. An aging study done by independent scientists (called the JASONS) found that our plutonium pits won't begin to lose potency until they're at least 100 years old, and even then the degradation will be insignificant. After all, the half-life of plutonium is 22,000 years.

We have to stop the production of nuclear weapons, not increase it! Then we must dismantle our current arsenal, and eradicate them – before they eradicate us.

Nuke production risks a radiologic catastrophe.  Plutonium is one of the deadliest substances known: it’s said that 1 pound of plutonium can cause 8 billion cancers. Making nuclear bombs creates tons of radioactive plutonium waste. LANL is situated in an earthquake hazard zone, surrounded by forests prone to wildfires. If radioactive plutonium gets released by a fire or quake, it will contaminate our air, soils and water for hundreds of miles.

Nukes are a stunning waste of taxpayer money. To make just one plutonium pit costs about $100 million. That's more than 1,200 nurses' salaries. The full cost of pit production is expected to be over $4 Billion annually. And production of the pits is only one component of the multi-state nuclear weapons program. The whole program is costing us over $95 Billion annually. We could house all the homeless people in the U.S. for $11 billion. We could eliminate hunger across the U.S. for $32 billion.  How can we spend so much on an evil that everyone agrees must never be used?

Deterrence theory is bunk. Some say we need all these nukes for our national security, as a "deterrent" to other nations. But the opposite is true. Our nuclear weapons threaten our security. The more we have, the more other nations get. The more nuclear weapons there are in the world, the greater the risk they'll be exploded – intentionally by an insane leader, or accidentally by a computer error or human mistake. Eliminating them is the only way to be free of the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Our nation invented weapons of mass destruction and led to their proliferation around the world. Isn’t it our responsibility to lead the world in eliminating them?

Citizens must speak up now. We have to persuade Congress and the president to end nuke production and eradicate them.

1) Call your senators and representative. The US Capitol switchboard will connect you: 202-224-3121. Tell them to WORK TO ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

2) Contact the President:  whitehouse.gov/contact  Tell him to LEAD THE WORLD IN ABOLISHING NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

3) If you're in New Mexico, contact Governor Lujan Grisham: https://www.governor.state.nm.us/contact-the-governor/  Remind her of her responsibility to protect her state and her people from exploitation and poisoning by the nuclear weapons industry. She has to require the DOE to comply with state environmental laws and to perform thorough environmental impact studies, and when they fail to comply, she must sue them.

You'll notice this is not a typical petition: it's asking for more than a signature. By signing it you are confirming that you have contacted the White House and your members of Congress, or will do so. It's going to take a tsunami of citizen pressure to get the federal government to listen. Please speak up now! And repeatedly.

Then please forward this to everyone you know who's concerned. 

A view of Hiroshima after the bomb. This could be your city if there's a nuclear war or accident.