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The 1950s were the duck-and-cover generation. We hid under our desks waiting for those Russkie nukes. Actually the position was pretty good for kissing your ass goodbye.

In 1963 in City Hall Square in Lower Manhattan, I was arrested for refusing to go into a fallout shelter when the sirens blew.

In 1965, I was arrested with Allen Ginsberg at the United Nations in support of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty being hammered out.

This was the sign Allen carried. It recalled the Buddha’s footprint at Bodh Gaya. The three fish with one head was first used in Egypt, migrated to Persia and then India. It represents Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, all humanity as one. Allen may be dead but the Beats go on.

In 1987, I drove my campervan across the snowpack of the Sierra Nevada with chains on. Some friends and I were headed to the Nevada Test Site 100 miles north of Las Vegas. After 100 atmospheric tests were conducted above-ground, there were a further 928 underground tests The mushroom clouds were visible from Sin City.

Above-ground testing was stopped in 1982 but underground ‘testing’ only ended in 1992. The US did not sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty  of 1996 but had stopped atmospheric testing in 1962.

Since 1992, the site has conducted more than 27 “subcritical” tests and stores more than a metric ton of plutonium, the most deadly element on earth.

Radioactive waste from around America is still being shipped to the site, now at 13,625 cubic meters.

You’d think the US would have gotten an ‘A’ mark for destroying the word, no more testing needed.

We each picked an affinity group we were most aligned with. I’m a birthright Quaker and there were about 20 of us.

The idea was to symbolically step across the test site border and be arrested. Not me. We all linked hands and I start to run among the cactus to get as far as I could, dragging those Quakers behind.

Eventually, we were stopped by armed security guards on dune buggies, herded back to the gate and formally arrested by Nevada State Police and fitted with zip-tie handcuffs. Martin Sheen and Carl Sagan were part of the group arrested.

The Staties had hired 80 buses from three states. Many of us, including me, refused to walk after being arrested and were carried onto the buses not-very-gently. The idea was to slow them down.

Once we were aboard, a trooper with a clipboard came down the aisle taking everybody’s name. He got to me and I told him my name: Martin Luther King.

He dutifully wrote down my name on his clipboard, then looked up at me and said, “You’re not black.” I told him, yes, but I’m still Martin Luther King. He shook his head and carried on.

When the bus convoy started up, they took us 20 miles north into the desert and made us get out at the side of the road, still zip-tied.

In 1967, I was a delegate sponsored by the New England Committee for Nonviolent Action. In cooperation with the Hiroshima Peace Center, I worked that summer in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospitals.

There are still a few hibakusha, survivors of the bomb. I had a hibakusha girlfriend; she was an infant in a baby carriage on August 6, 1945 and had keloid scars on her shoulder and neck.

Generations later, descendants are still dying of cancer. And, yes, they make colourful strings of paper cranes.

The UN has passed the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. None were signed by the nine nuclear nations.

There’s something wrong with countries that see nukes as a deterrent. 90% of the ~15,000 nuclear weapons are held by the United States and Russia. There have been 14 so-called “close calls” where nukes were considered and 21 unintentional “accidents” where nukes were dropped.

There are no safe “battlefield nukes”, either for the shooter or for the victim. Nuclear-tipped “bunker busters” for maximum ground penetration would sterilise a large area for hundreds of years.

The Nevada Desert Experience is still holding protests every year at the test site. Better than doing nothing, isn’t it? See you there?

Afterthought. Nuclear power? I’m not convinced. Startup cost  in billions ($28B), limited lifespan (40 years), decommissioning ($2B).

And radioactive waste never goes away. Deadly for 100,000 years.

The only real solution to nuclear waste is Finland’s Onkalo, a deep geological repository for spent fuel excavated from  solid crystalline granite Baltic Shield to a depth of 520 metres.

It will be full and decommissioned in 2100 (if we’re still here). At its end, Onkalo will have cost €5B. And them another site will have to be found unless we have discovered limitless free power by then. Or have no power at all.

The spent waste will be held in a boron canister enclosed in a copper capsule and individually packed into bentonite clay.

A watch of the 2010 documentary about Onkalo , Into Eternity is both frightening and informative.

Of course, the repository will be dangerous for 100,000 years and future humans need to be warned.

In what language? Will people still use language? Will curiosity get the better of them? Will they think something valuable has been hidden?

Bottom line: wind, solar, tides all have environmental issues. But none are as polluting as fossil fuels or nuclear.

With the money spent on militaries, a real solution could be found.

If you believe some folks , alien technology will come.

I think fusion energy will be more likely in the next 10 years.

As for new and more powerful weapons than nukes, they are

working on it.

But if tomorrow everybody had enough
The world wasn't quite so rough
Lord, don't you wish it was true