Eighty-one years ago on August 6, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, thus launching the nuclear age that increasingly threatens human and planetary survival. This was followed on August 9 with the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. The atomic bomb was developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico under the leadership of Robert Oppenheimer, with the scientific knowledge of Albert Einstein and other top scientists. Only three weeks before being used to attack Japan, the atomic bomb was first tested at the Trinity site at the White Sands missile range in New Mexico.
We shall never know how many died, but the best estimates are that about 150,000 were immediately reduced to ashes or completely vaporized at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands suffered and died soon thereafter, as did millions over the decades through nuclear radiation, genetic defects, cancers, and life-threatening environmental pollution. Most significantly, this launched the nuclear age with the understanding and technology to develop powerful and profitable nuclear weapons and delivery systems that would be used to threaten, control, and dominate the planet with the increasing possibility of destroying all human civilization.
When he witnessed the detonation of the atomic bomb at the Trinity site, Oppenheimer famously paraphrased the revelation in Chapter 11 of the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” Krishna, who had appeared to the warrior Arjuna, incarnated in the human form as charioteer, is now revealed as Lord Krishna in the all-powerful, terrifying, cosmic form capable of complete death and destruction, which Oppenheimer symbolically experienced as our new terrifying nuclear capacity.
To provide a well-known sentence, the quoted and paraphrased dramatic assertion by Einstein, he responded, “I do not know with what weapons WWIII will be fought, but WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Like Oppenheimer, Einstein was deeply concerned about the destructive potential of nuclear weapons, and that we now had the technological capacity, while lacking the moral and life-affirming values, to wipe out all civilization.
Einstein, Oppenheimer, and other leading scientists created the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 1945 and their famous Doomsday Clock in 1947 indicating how close to Midnight we are. Midnight, for these leading atomic scientists, is a metaphorical expression of the terrifying probability of Nuclear Apocalypse, Nuclear Holocaust, the complete and final destruction of the world. On January 27, 2026, the Doomsday Clock was reset to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest we’ve ever been to total global catastrophe, with the complete destruction of human civilization and our world.
The scientists noted many dangerous nuclear developments in 2025 that have gotten even worse in 2026. There are 9 nuclear-armed counties (the US, Russia, China, France, UK, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea) with the US and Russia holding almost 90% of those nuclear weapons. We need no reminder of the extreme threats from Russia in Ukraine, the ongoing threats from nations in the Middle East and elsewhere, the disastrous US war of choice with Iran and Donald Trump’s endless, blustery, bullying, tamper-tantrum, violent threats to destroy countries, civilizations, and the future of the planet. Countries now plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to modernize nuclear weapons and delivery systems, including the largest increased nuclear commitment in US history.
I’ll simply mention a list of the extreme threats emphasized in 2026 by the atomic scientists: expiring arm control treatises, as between Russia and the US and other past arrangements to limit nuclear weapons or to safeguard against other countries to join the nuclear arms race; escalating military conflicts between nuclear-armed states; climate change with extreme weather events; disruptive technologies, such as AI driven disinformation and misinformation and biological threats.
For several decades, after the Hiroshima bombing and especially in late 1970s and 1980s, there was a strong US anti-nuclear movement for reduction of the world’s nuclear arsenal and for life affirming alternatives. We are now alarmingly moving in the opposite direction. For many decades, throughout Maine and in the Bangor, we were active parts of a global anti-nuclear movement on Hiroshima Day and throughout the year and that gave deep meaning to our lives.
I’ll end with a hopeful message that allows me to resist, remain resilient, and embrace positive alternatives of a better future. During the past year, I’ve been inspired by the increasing push-back by millions of individuals and groups in actively opposing the dominant priorities and narratives by the billionaires, oligarchs, and corporate elite. Today, in 2026, millions of human beings in Bangor, in the US, Japan, and throughout the world view Hiroshima as an urgently needed wake-up and a call to action. Billions of us must push back against the power dominant narrative that might makes right and that the purpose of living is to weaponize, profit, threaten, terrify, dominate, and exploit. We must promote the life-affirming alternative views to NOT spend billions on nuclear weapons, war, and mass violence, but instead to focus on abolishing nuclear weapons and increasing healthcare, education, environmental sustainability, compassion, loving kindness, justice, and human and planetary flourishing. Let us affirm today and in the coming days that remembering Hiroshima is our wake-up call, our call to action.
By Doug Allen