Tulsi Gabbard Warns of Nuclear Threat in Social Media Video

GABBARD: “I recently visited Hiroshima in Japan and stood at the epicenter of a city that remains scarred by the unimaginable horror caused by a single nuclear bomb dropped in 1945, 80 years ago. It’s hard for me to find the words to express what I saw, the stories that I heard, the haunting sadness that still remains. This is an experience that will stay with me forever. This attack obliterated the city, killed over 300,000 people, many dying instantly while others died from severe burns, injuries, radiation sickness, and cancer that set in in the following months and years.

Nagasaki suffered the same fate. Homes, schools, families, all gone in a flash. The survivors, the hibakusha, they carried the pain of extreme burns, radiation sickness, and loss for decades. Survivors of this attack were asked to put in paintings and drawings their own memories and how they felt and what they saw and those paintings and the suffering that they conveyed, the pain and the sense of loss were almost more powerful than the photos themselves.

Yet this one bomb that caused so much destruction in Hiroshima was tiny compared to today’s nuclear bombs. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of just 15 kilotons of TNT, whereas today’s nuclear warheads range in size from 100 kilotons to over 1 megaton. A single nuclear weapon today could kill millions in just minutes. Just one of these nuclear bombs would vaporize everything at its core, people, buildings, life itself. The shockwave would crush structures miles away, killing and maiming countless people.

And then comes the fallout. Radioactive poison spreading through the air, water, and soil, condemning survivors to agonizing deaths or lifelong suffering. A nuclear winter could follow with smoke and ash completely blocking the Sun, plunging the world into darkness and cold, killing crops and starving billions. Acid rain would scar the Earth, wiping out entire ecosystems. This isn’t some made-up science fiction story. This is the reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now.

Because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers. Perhaps it’s because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won’t have access to. So it’s up to us, the people, to speak up and demand an end to this Madness. We must reject this path to nuclear war and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear Holocaust.”