20 Oct 2017  |   04:16am IST

Standoff may be costlier

Francis Fernandes

Today the global atmosphere is surcharged with a situation as similar as the mid 1940’s when two nuclear powers North Korea and the United States stand on the brink of World War 3. “EGOISM” amongst different nations was the root cause in both the earlier wars

The standoff between the two nuclear powers North Korea and the US has now reached to such a proportion that US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jon-un are prepared to wipe out each other’s countries from the face of earth with the use of nuclear weapons. 

The bombs air dropped earlier in 1945 on Japan were atom bombs which work on the principle of fission of highly radioactive substances. Every fission or split of an atom which consist of electrons, neutrons and protons together with highly radioactive substances like uranium and plutonium release a huge amount of energy. It is this energy that caused massive damage to the infrastructure and killed hundreds of thousands of people instantly and some later with lethal radioactive substances in Japan.

The hydrogen bomb on the other hand is an advanced version of a nuclear bomb which works on the principle of fission and fusion of atoms with four highly radioactive substances. According to nuclear experts it is 1000 times more powerful than the conventional atom bomb. 

According to Pyongyang if a missile with a hydrogen bomb is fired in the Pacific Ocean the seas will enter the land with high rapidity and engulf every possible thing on earth and may even spread to all the five continents killing all the humans, animals, destroying cities, buildings and obliterating all the wonders man had invented for humanity. It will be EGOISM once again between two heads of nations that will be the principal cause of World War. In August 1945 Japan was targeted after it failed to comply to surrender following which atom bombs were dropped. If hydrogen bomb is 1000 times deadlier than the conventional atom bomb it is for all world leaders to imagine the scale of intensity of destruction it will cause should it ever happen again.

While US now is pursuing diplomacy to calm tensions between the two nuclear powers, North Korea maintained very recently “those diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops.” With over 28,500 US troops stationed in Seoul and with US B1-B bombers repeatedly circling the skies over South Korea the possibility of a full scale war seems imminent.

Survivors of the last atom bomb in Nagasaki are appealing the world community to come together and find a way of eliminating nuclear weapons altogether saying “this is a kind of weapon that just does not kill, it kills indiscriminately, it kills slowly and painfully and it should not be allowed on the surface of the earth”.

It is now for the United Nations and the International Community to step in and use its diplomacy and goodwill to ease tensions between the two warring nuclear powers. Diplomacy should be the keyword and should never be abandoned at any cost to save our planet Earth from destruction with nuclear weapons.

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