Whereas the problem of world hunger has only recently become a compelling personal concern for large numbers of Americans, the threat of thermonuclear extinction has been a real one for more than a generation. Over half our population was born with a nuclear cloud hanging over their heads. From time to time, psychological or sociological studies report interviews with young people who are not seriously planning adult careers, assuming the world will not last that long. For many adults, this is the most shameful legacy we have bestowed on our children.

Like the problem of world hunger, the nuclear threat seems so massive, so complex, that there is nothing an individual can do that would really make a difference. If governments and international bodies cannot solve the problem, what can an average man or woman or child do?

In some respects, the nuclear threat is more difficult to resolve than that of world hunger. Whereas just about everyone would be willing to see hunger end, the consensus is not that clear with regard to nuclear war. While only a few demented souls would wish to see all human life on the planet destroyed, a substantially larger number would be willing to see some human life nuked away. There are Americans who would be willing to see a few missiles knock at the door of the Kremlin. There are Arabs who wouldnít object to a nuclear cleansing of Israel.

Moreover, there is an adversarial quality to the nuclear arms race that does not exist in the case of hunger. Once you get beyond the myth that there is not enough food for everyone, it becomes obvious that your well-being and mine is hardly threatened when an Indian or Somalian child is fed rather than left to starve. The nuclear problem is another matter, however. Few believe, for example, that it would be feasible for the U.S. to pull out of the arms race unilaterally. Thus, the solution needs to involve both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. at the very least.

And while the hunger issue often wallows in a political bog, the nuclear issue has been far more politically cast from the beginning. In 1956, for example, presidential candidate and future U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson said, "I believe we should give prompt and earnest consideration to stopping further tests of the hydrogen bomb." Richard Nixon, then the vice president and future president, denounced Stevensonís suggestion as "catastrophic nonsense" and accused him of walking into a "Communist mousetrap." The issue has hardly gotten less politicized in the years since.

Finally, the economic contexts of world hunger and nuclear weapons are importantly different. Whereas a total, global commitment to the elimination of world hunger might mean more work for American farmers, an end to the nuclear arms race would mean closing down the shops of an industry currently doing tens of billions of dollars of business a year. While it can be argued that the nuclear defense industry is not an efficient vehicle for employment and contributes little to the overall quality of life for most Americans, no one denies that calling off the nuclear arms race would require an enormous restructuring of the American economy. A great many people would lose the jobs they now have. Individuals and corporations currently making a great deal of money from the arms race would need to find some other source of income. Inevitable, the vested interests that have established themselves within the nuclear threat represent a powerful obstacle to resolving it.

Given all these complexities, it can easily seem that the problem is unsolvable. It comes as no surprise that the vast majority of us have simply given up. It seems obvious beyond the need for comment that no individual, no matter how concerned or committed, could have an impact. And yet, a great many individuals have nonetheless looked for and found ways to take on the problem. Letís look at a few of them now. While it would be impossible to mention everyone who deserves honoring hereónor have I attempted to limit my examination to the "most important" contributionsóthere is value in seeing some of the variety of actions individuals have taken.

As an adolescent growing up in Australia, Helen Caldicott was particularly bothered by Nevil Shuteís book, On the Beach, which dramatized the lingering death of the human race following a nuclear holocaust. Later, during medical school, she was further troubled as she learned more and more about the carcinogenic and mutagenic effects of nuclear radiation. Caldicott and her husband lived in the United States from 1966 to 1969, and she spoke out against nuclear weapons and wrote letters to politicians.

Returning to Australia, Caldicott suffered a nearly fatal case of serum hepatitis, requiring several months in the hospital. In the end she recovered, but the episode had a profound impact on her view of her life. As she was to put it later, "Iíve been saved to do something. Iíve been given life. There must be a reason. I knew I had to do something for the planet."

Caldicottís opportunity to "do something for the planet" came in 1971, when she grew concerned about the dangers of atmospheric nuclear tests being conducted by the French in the Pacific. She testified before the Australian government that radiation from the tests was blowing across Australia, and the point was made effectively enough that the French ultimately gave up their testing program.

When Caldicott returned to live in the United States in 1975, she became active in protests against nuclear power, but soon her chief concern had returned to the issue of nuclear weapons and the threat they pose for the planet.

Throughout her participation in the antinuclear movement, Caldicott has looked to see what she can do specifically as a mother and as a physician. In the former role, for example, she can be found marching in demonstrations, carrying a sign saying, "Babies Die First." Her most potent contributions, however, have been linked to her role as a physician.

In 1978, Caldicott became president of a tiny professional organization: Physicians for Social Responsibility. In that position, she began arguing that physicians will inherit a special burden in the event of nuclear way: the unenviable task of repairing the mutilated and irradiated bodies of the warís survivors. Caldicottís message struck a responsive chord among her fellow physicians throughout the United States. In three years, she saw the organizationís membership grow from ten to ten thousand.

Physicians for Social Responsibility, under Helen Caldicottís leadership, has become a mainstay of the movement against nuclear weapons in the 1980s. One of those powerfully moved by PSRís message was Ian Thierman, who felt he could make a contribution by filming a PSR meeting in San Francisco. The resulting film, The Last Epidemic, was to become a widely used resource for the antinuclear movement. Some of the filmís impact, however, could never have been anticipated.

Early in the 1980s, students from the University of California at Berkeley and others from the San Francisco Bay Area decided to take their antinuclear protest to the front door of the threat they perceived: the universityís Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, where the nationís new nuclear weapons were being developed. A series of demonstrations during 1981 and 1982 resulted in a great deal of mass media coverage and the arrests of many protesters.

During the turbulent 1981-82 period, the head of public relations for Lawrence was Bill Perry. His primary job, most simply put, was to counteract the message being communicated dramatically by the demonstrators. To assist him in that, he formed a speakers bureau to send lab spokespersons into the community to speakóoften on the same platform as antinuclear activists.

Over time, Perry heard over and over that his speakers were being upstaged by The Last Epidemic. Typically, his speakers would present half an hour of well-reasoned and carefully documented arguments in favor of continued nuclear weapons development. Then their opponents would simply show Thiermanís film, describing the holocaust that would follow a nuclear attack, an the labís cause would be a lost one in audience after audience. Intrigued, Perry arranged to get a copy of film so he could plan strategies to combat it. 

One afternoon in April 1982, Bill Perry sat alone in a darkened room to watch The Last Epidemic. He would later report that once the film was ended, he sat another two hours alone in the dark, in complete silence, virtually unable to move. He was simply devastated. "It was an awesome moment for me," he would later report. "I realized that nuclear weapons were not simply the next logical step after bombs."

It became clear to Bill Perry that he could no longer continue working at Lawrence Livermore Lab; he could no longer devote his professional expertise to the defense of nuclear weapons. On May 17, 1982, Bill Perry resigned his post at the lab.

A part of the filmís power for Perry lay in a conversation he had had years before. While on a trip to Washington, D.C., he discovered that Helen Caldicott was making a public presentation. Given his position with the Livermore lab, Perry felt he should hear what she had to say. He now recalls being so disturbed by the young physicianís presentation that he spoke to her afterward.

"Do you have children?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"What do they ask you about nuclear weapons?"

"They donít ask me anything."

"They will," she predicted.

Sitting in that dark room in 1982, Perry had watched Caldicott once more describing the horrors of the nuclear aftermath in The Last Epidemic. Now, their earlier conversation reverberated louder and louder in this memory as he asked and tried to answer his own questions about nuclear weapons.

In their earlier conversation, Caldicott had added, as an aside, "Itís too bad youíre on the wrong side."

"What do you mean?" Perry had asked. "Iím very good at what I do."

"Iíll bet you are," Caldicott rejoined. "Thatís why I say itís too bad youíre on the wrong side." Now, Perry had left the "wrong side" and was on no side at all. He is careful to point out that he did not quit Lawrence Livermore "to go to work for the antinuclear movement." He simply could not continue working on behalf of nuclear weapons.

One day, in the heat of Californiaís debated over Proposition 12, the nuclear freeze initiative, Perry was asked to address a group in Mountain View, in the heart of Silicon Valley and all its defense-industry corporations. Though he was a little reluctant to speakófeeling others were better qualified than he wasóPerry agreed.

Perryís first public presentation was greeted by a massive public turnout, as well as a full presentation from the media. In the course of his presentation, Perry realized that he was one of a very small number of people who had actually worked within a nuclear weaponsónot to mention those in oppositionóhad never been inside such a lab, let alone worked there. He had a special perspective to contribute to the debate, and by election day in November, Perry had made fifty-six speeches.

Bill Perryís experiences offer a special insight into the nature of heroes and how we tend to regard them. At an antinuclear rally one day, Perry was astounded to hear a young folk singer proclaiming the grand achievements of antinuclear hero Bill Perry. When Perry introduced himself later, the singer explained his purpose in writing and performing the song. "At certain times in history, people simply need heroes. Most people donít look much like heroes, however, so people like me have to dress up a bit so they look like heroes."

Perry is currently at work describing his experiences in a book entitled No Way Out. To complete the cycle of causality, Helen Caldicott has agreed to write the preface to his book.

During the 1980s in America, resistance to the nuclear arms race has most often been known as the "freeze" movement, centering on the demand that the United States government gain the cooperation of the Soviet Union "to stop the testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons and missiles and new aircraft designed primarily to deliver nuclear weapons." In March 1984, the National Clearinghouse of the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign summed up the record of three years:

The nuclear freeze movement did not "just happen." Someone was responsible for bringing it into existence. That person was not a government official nor a powerful industrialist nor a well-known scholar but a young mother and political science graduate student at MIT.

Randall Forsberg was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the daughter of actor Douglas Watson. She graduated from Columbiaís Barnard College in 1965. Two years later she met and married Gunnar Forsberg, and the couple moved to Gunnarís native Sweden. Ms. Forsberg went to work as a typist at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Soon she had risen through the organizationís structure, becoming a genuine expert in the field of defense research.

With her divorce in 1974, Ms. Forsberg returned to the United States with her daughter and enrolled in graduate school at MIT, specializing in defense studies within political science. Her studies were to take a powerful turn in 1979, when she was asked to address a group in Louisville, Kentucky. The more she examined ways of stopping the arms race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., the more she realized there was nothing to do but simply stop it. Now. "Enough is enough," she declared to the Louisville audience. In Forsbergís view, the peace movement had been hampered by too many ideas about what should be done. "I figured that if we all got together for, say, two years and said the same thing, maybe something would happen. The freeze is such an obvious idea."

Leaving Louisville, Forsberg spent the next few months writing a position paper in support of a bilateral nuclear freeze between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.: "Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race." In 1980, she organized the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies in Brookline, Massachusetts, to support the idea of the freeze. Weíve already seen some of the indicators of her success.

It is worth noting that Randall Forsberg was not the first person to have the idea of a bilateral nuclear freeze. If nothing else, I know I had that idea at least hundred times and even said it to someone at least half that often. What was special about Forsberg was her willingness to take responsibility for making it a reality. As Senator Edward Kennedy described her achievement: Randall Forsberg "galvanized the nation on an issue where so many others had almost lost hope."

While Randall Forsberg deserves credit for stepping forward and sounding the call for a national movement to create a nuclear freeze, simply sounding the call was not sufficient. For the movement to have the impact it has had, hundreds of thousands of individuals have had to look for and act on the forms of participation particularly appropriate to them. When the California Bilateral Nuclear Weapons Freeze Initiative passed with the approval of some 4 million voters on November 2, 1982, no individual was more responsible than businessman Harold Willens.

Willens is an unlikely hero in the antiwar movement, as he himself concedes:

By 1960, Harold Willens had returned to civilian life and had proven his mastery of free enterprise with big successes in textiles and real estate. His newly achieved financial well-being gave Willens some breathing space in which to find a way "to give something back to the country that had given me the great gift of the good life." At a seminar presented by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California, Willens found himself thrust into a several-days-long discussion of the nuclear arms race. He recalled his experiences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and found he had discovered the contribution he must make to the country of his birth and his country of adoption.

As Willens looked for ways to make this contribution, it seemed to him that he should focus his efforts within the business community. He was a businessman, after all, and a successful one to boot. Thus, during the Vietnam agony, Willens co-founded and chaired an organization called Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace. Later, he would recall with pleasure President Johnsonís frustration at not being able to dismiss the new antiwar group as "soft-headed" or "soft on communism," terms with which he was fond of dismissing college student protesters. Willens had mobilized opposition to the Vietnam war from within the bosom of American capitalism.

When the bilateral nuclear freeze movement became a national reality, it was natural for Willens to chair the campaign in California. He raised millions of dollars in support of the campaign, coordinated the collection of signatures needed to put the freeze initiative on the California ballot, and generally lobbied for support among Californiaís voters. On November 2, 1982, his efforts were rewarded with success.

Marianne Hamilton and Polly Mann were two friends living in Minnesota who found themselves talking increasingly about the dangers of nuclear war and the inability of the American people in general to deal with that threat in an effective way. Finally, they decided it was time for them to take action.

In January 1982, Hamilton and Mann organized a conference of local women to explore what they could do to avert the threat of nuclear extinction. By the time the conference was completed, the 115 women in attendance had created WAMM: Women Against Military Madness, "dedicated to changing our governmentís spending from war to a healthy society."

Rather than focusing on a single line of action, WAMM has encouraged women to find their own ways of acting against the nuclear threat: both individually and in concert. WAMM member Moira Moga explains this way:

In 1945, at just about the time the United Nations charter was being signed in San Francisco, a four-year-old Avon Mattison in Pasadena had a powerful vision in which she saw her planet facing a time of great decision: facing an ultimate choice between war and peace. She saw herself serving as a "pathfinder" in the quest for peace and would spend the rest of her life looking for ways of translating her vision into reality.

During 1961-62, for example, she was drawn to the various efforts at détente being pursued within the U.S. State Department, the Organization of American States, and other organizations, but she was also struck by the lack of a coherent context for those efforts. Everyone seemed to be going in different directions with nothing to bring them together.

Then, in 1980, Costa Rica spearheaded a proposal in the United Nations to proclaim 1985 the International Year of Peace. In a rare moment of accord, the General Assembly voted unanimously in favor of the proposal. For Mattison, this action could represent another empty gesture or something really powerful.

As she looked for ways she could make the International Year of Peace something more than just words, Mattison discovered that various individuals and organizations have honored the opening of the General Assemblyís sessions each year since 1945. At Assisi, for example, chapel bells are rung each year at the precise moment that the General Assembly convenes.

Mattison now saw the possibility of bringing the people of the world together to honor the possibility of peace. What a powerful experience it would be for all humankind, she imagined, if there were a worldwide "minute of silence" as the UN convened in 1985, followed by a joyous "moment of sound."

In 1983, she formally incorporated Pathways To Peace under the general principle that "individuals, acting in concert with one another, do make a difference in the quality of our lives, our institutions, our environments, our planetary future." One of Pathwaysí projects was to creat a test run of the "Minute of SilenceóMoment of Sound" idea in a single cityóSan Franciscoówhen the UN General Assembly convened on September 18, 1984. Whatever was learned in San Francisco in 1984 would be used in planning a worldwide celebration in 1985.

Now the dream became a matter of hard work. Clearly one person could not pull it off, so Mattison began enrolling friends in the project. Existing peace groups, churches, corporations, and other organizations were contacted and asked to support the project. Public officials were invited to make the event an official one. Local media people began planning how to use their facilities to bring the celebration to the whole community.

As I write this, the 1984 San Francisco event is still being created. By the time you read this, it will have happened. Whatever the outcome of the project, it stands as a powerful example of the difference an individual can make on behalf of us all.

Mary Earle is a writer living in Mill Valley, California, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge out of San Francisco. In 1982 she was asked to join in the writing of a book on the nuclear arms race. Taking the job required her to "delve into mounds of material I knew existed but had never wanted to read. Like most everyone I know, I simply did not want to think about nuclear war."

The more she read, the more Earleís worst fears were confirmed. Had she withdrawn from the book project, everyone involved would have no doubt been understanding. She wouldnít have been the first person to flee from something that painful to confront. Instead, she chose to redouble her efforts, to make the book as powerful as possible in communicating the dangers she saw to a broader audience.

Soon Earle had taken on a personal responsibility for bringing an end to the threat of nuclear war. But what to do? She found one answer in an experience she had had years before, and soon began writing to all her friends. Her letter began:

In 1981, the Union of Concerned Scientists created the Arms Control Program to organize campus teach-ins around the country. John Marks, a former foreign service officer, was hired to tour the country and meet with activists in the peace movement, academics, public officials, experts in national security, and others. On November 11, 1981, as a result of UCSís organizing efforts, more than 150 teach-ins were held.

In the course of his work with the Arms Control Program, Marks became aware of the ways in which divisions of opinion within the peace movement got in the way of establishing a broad-based public commitment to ending the nuclear threat. Rather than creating a super-organization to include all points of view, Marks concluded it might be more useful to establish network of activities appropriate to the variety of interests that might be mobilized for a common purpose.

The Nuclear Network was thus created on the basis of two fundamental propositions: "Nuclear war is totally unacceptable," and "Ordinary people have the power to prevent it." To turn those propositions into reality, the Network initiated a variety of projects, including:

• an organization of business executives working against nuclear war;
• a Childrenís Nuclear Disarmament Network;
• a Public Interest Video Network;
• a conference on the psychological roots of the arms race.

Youíve got to show people there are things they can do to make a difference. Each of us can do something! Each of us can take responsibility.

For nearly a decade, The Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, California, has been serving children with catastrophic illnesses by bringing them together to share experiences and to support each other. From the start, the centerís founder, Gerald Jampolsky, was struck by the wisdom and clarity that children bring to their experience of the world. He was so impressed, in fact, that he began taking children around the country to talk to radio and TV audiences about love and peace.

During the Falkland Islands fighting between Britain and Argentina, Jampolsky asked some children in a Colorado school what they would do if they could talk to the leaders involved. As he reported to interviewer Peggy Taylor:

Dear Mr. President,

Samantha Smith was an eleven-year-old fifth grader living in the small town of Manchester, Maine. Her response to the nuclear threat was to write personal letters to President Reagan and to Yuri Andropov asking them to do whatever was necessary to avert war. The Soviet leader responded personally, assuring her that "we in the Soviet Union are trying and doing everything we can so that there will be no war between our two countries." Acknowledging her honesty and courage, moreover, he invited her to visit the Soviet Union with her parents. Both the exchange of letters and Samanthaís subsequent visit to Russia drew wide public attention to the problem, as did a subsequent trip to Hiroshima to deliver a copy of the television documentary "The Day After" to a peace conference.

On October 4, 1981, many San Franciscans celebrated the eight hundredth anniversary of the cityís namesake: St. Francis of Assisi. Prominent among the celebrants was San Franciscoís Roman Catholic archbishop, John Quinn. Addressing a congregation of parishioners, Quinn spoke out against the nuclear arms race as a "crime against God and humankind."

In the months to come, Quinn was to take a number of concrete steps to back up his publicly stated conviction. He appointed special diocesan workers to take on the task of educating San Franciscoís parishes and parochial schools on the facts of the nuclear arms race and on Californiaís nuclear freeze proposition. In addition, he began playing an active role in raising the nuclear issue among his fellow bishops.

Sister Frances Russell is a Sisters of Charity nun living in Cheyenne, Wyoming, home of Warren Air Force Base, which is slated to be an MX missile site. Much of her work has been as social worker, settling refugees in American cities. She has been responsible, for example, for finding homes for Cuban refugees in Cheyenne.

While her work with Cuban refugees and with other needy members of the community has been generally accepted, other activities have made Russell a generally despised figure in Cheyenne. Simply put, she regards the nuclear arms race as immoral and has felt she must act in accord with her religious views. Every Friday she leads a group of clergy and laypeople to the fence surrounding the base, and the group prays for peace. In return, she has received death threats, people have spat on her as she walked down the street, and on at least one occasion a police officer shook his fist in her face and warned, "Weíll get you."

In a very different response, Russell was named Social Worker of the Year by the National Association of Social Workers. Living on subsistence wages from her order and unable to get work in Cheyenne, Russell announced she would give half the five-hundred-dollar award to fight world hunger and the other half to oppose the MX missiles.

Given the undeniable threat of nuclear war, what could be more logical and incontestable than planning ways to mute its impact? Itís not surprising that the beginning of the arms race in the 1950s also saw a national mania for building bomb shelters. Government publications were issued, instructing children to cover their faces as soon as they saw the nuclear fireball.

Over the years, interest in civil defense waned. Few people built bomb shelters, government civil defense measures became increasingly low-key. About the only reminder most Americans had were the periodic "tests of the Emergency Broadcast System" on the radio. After all, "détente" had become a more popular word than "holocaust."

All this was to change with the arrival of the Reagan administration, with its enlarged military budgets and talk of combating "the evil empire." In language reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove, military and civilian strategists began discussing ways of winning a nuclear war. In one estimate, a good civil defense program could reduce American deaths from 80 percent of the population to "as low as 40 percent." The Federal Emergency Management Administration, accordingly, advised local municipalities to prepare plans for evacuating their civilian populations to safer areas in the event of a nuclear attack. Some public officials, such as California Senator Alan Cranston, call the whole thing "a cruel and dangerous hoax that encourages the false notion that nuclear war isÖtolerable and perhaps even winnable."

In Californiaís Marin County, just north of San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors instructed Dr. Richard Ridenour, Director of Health and Human Services, to study the consequences of a nuclear attack on San Francisco and advise on evacuation strategies. Ridenour undertook the job with a "hopeful attitude" and set about studying the federal governmentís relocation plans. The more he learned about the amount of damage that was likely to result from a nuclear attack on San Francisco, the more Ridenour became convinced that his task was a hopeless one.

For the purpose of his study, Ridenour had assumed a twenty-megaton bomb being detonated one thousand meters above the TransAmerica building near the center of San Francisco. In Sausalito, just cross the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco and facing it across the bay, it was estimated that virtually everyone would be killed instantly in the initial explosion. Moving north from Sausalito, it was estimated that half of Mill Valleyís residents would die in the initial explosion, and the rest would either die or injuries in the next two days or of radiation sickness within two weeks.

Moving farther north, Ridenour reported on the prospects for Novato and its community hospital.

At the December 1, 1981, meeting of the board, Supervisor (now Congresswoman) Barbara Boxer pointed out that civilian evacuation would only work if there were a "sufficient warning." In a nuclear attack, however, we would have no more than a thirty-minute warning at best. She also commented on medical estimates of the casualties likely to result from an attack on the San Francisco area. "The bottom Line," Boxer concluded, "is that thereís no way we can evacuate skeletons."

At its March 16, 1982, meeting, Boxer arranged for the Board of Supervisors to watch Ian Thiermanís film, "The Last Epidemic." Afterward, Boxer and fellow supervisor Gary Giacomini proposed that Marin County refuse to develop an evacuation plan. Instead, following the example of Cambridge, Massachusetts, they proposed that the county prepare and distribute a pamphlet warning residents of the dangers of nuclear war and urging them to take actions to avert it. The proposal passed, and the pamphlet, published in May, began:

In concluding these examinations of individuals working to end world hunger and the threat of nuclear war, I want to make clear that my purpose has not been to heap credit on a few individuals and ignore the contributions of the many people not mentioned above. In those cases where I interviewed the people Iíve discussed, they were usually quite insistent on making sure I didnít think they had "done it all." Most spoke at length of the importance of "individuals acting in concert," to use Avan Mattisonís term.

Without ignoring or denying the obvious necessity of many people involving themselves in the solution of big problems, it is nonetheless my specific purpose in this book to point to the importance of individual responsibility within that context. First, what becomes a big social movement almost always begins with one person being willing to step forward. While millions of people have made contributions to the nuclear freeze movement, for example, all those responsibilities were only possible because Randall Forsberg was willing to take personal responsibility for it at the outset.

The second point I want to make in this regard is a little more difficult to grasp. Social movements will be truly potent to the extent that the individuals participating in them are willing to act from a sense of personal responsibility for the whole, even if they werenít the first to speak out. This is what has made research for these two chapters so profoundly moving. In a world where people so often seem committed to taking credit, I found a very large number of individuals willing to be responsible purely on the basis of their commitment rather than out of a desire for personal publicity.