Billboards inform Puget Sound citizens of Nuclear Weapons stockpiled in their Back Yard

Beginning on July 21, and continuing for four weeks, five billboards will display the following paid advertisement: Did You Know, You are only *** Miles from a Big Pile of Nuclear Bombs!  Let’s Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

Included in the five advertisements are maps showing the proximity of the cities and billboards in Lynnwood, Shoreline, Kirkland, Gorst, and Seattle—to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, homeport for 8 of the Navy’s 14 Trident nuclear-powered submarines.  

The billboards serve as a public service announcement—informing the reader of the exact number of miles they are at that exact location, to nuclear weapons based at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.  The naval base is the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the world.  Below is the Lynnwood, Washington billboard.

Pat Moriarity, the artist commissioned by Ground Zero to produce the billboards stated, "I have lived in Kitsap County for 25 years and have always been aware of the Bangor submarine base. That said, until recently I never really understood the true extent of just how many “ready to go” nuclear weapons were stockpiled so close to all our homes. I'd like to think if everyone knew, they’d also be concerned about getting rid of them. As a species we humans need to evolve past this ‘mutual assured destruction’ mentality, the scariest staring contest you can imagine.”

The cartoon style billboards by Pat Moriarity are the third of a series of cartoon billboards that show the proximity of communities across Washington State to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.

Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor is homeport to the largest concentration of deployed nuclear warheads in the world.  The nuclear warheads are deployed on Trident D-5 missiles on SSBN submarines and are stored in an underground nuclear weapons storage facility on the base.

There are eight Trident SSBN submarines deployed at Bangor.  Six Trident SSBN submarines are deployed on the East Coast at Kings Bay, Georgia.  

One Trident submarine carries the destructive force of over 1,000 Hiroshima bombs (the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons).

 

Each Trident submarine was originally equipped for 24 Trident missiles.  In 2015-2017 four missile tubes were deactivated on each submarine as a result of the New START Treaty.  Currently, each Trident submarine deploys with 20 D-5 missiles and about 90 nuclear warheads (an average of 4-5 warheads per missile).  The warheads are either the W76-1 90-kiloton warheads, W88 455-kiloton warheads, or W-76-2 8-kiloton warheads.

The Navy in early 2020 started deploying the new W76-2 low-yield warhead (approximately eight kilotons) on select ballistic submarine missiles at Bangor (following initial deployment in the Atlantic in December 2019).  The warhead was deployed to deter Russian first use of tactical nuclear weapons, dangerously creating a lower threshold for the use of U.S. strategic nuclear weapons.

Comic Book artist Pat Moriarity, who created the cartoon style billboard near his home in Port Orchard, is an award-winning internationally known artist.  

Hans M. Kristensen is the expert source for the statement, “Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor… with largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the world.”  (See cited source material here and here.)  Mr. Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists where he provides the public with analysis and background information about the status of nuclear forces and the role of nuclear weapons.

The billboards are an effort by Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, a grass roots organization in Poulsbo, Washington, to reawaken public awareness of the dangers of nuclear weapons in the Puget Sound region.

The billboard ads

The five billboard ads measure 10 ft. 6 in. tall by 22 ft. 9 in. in length and will be displayed for one month starting on July 21. The billboards—third of a series of billboards by Pat Moriarity--are located approximately at: 

* 14005 Highway 99 Lynnwood WA https://www.google.com/maps/search/47.87130374,+-122.27484673?sa=X&ved=1t:242&ictx=111 

* 13504 NE 124^th St., Kirkland, WA https://www.google.com/maps/search/47.711658,+-122.159571?sa=X&ved=1t:242&ictx=111 

* Roosevelt Way NE and NE 45^th St. (southeast corner), Seattle, WA https://www.google.com/maps/search/47.661145,+-122.317192?sa=X&ved=1t:242&ictx=111

* N 165^th St and Aurora Ave. N (northwest corner), Shoreline, WA https://www.google.com/maps/search/47.748895,+-122.345896?sa=X&ved=1t:242&ictx=111 

* Highway 16, east of Feigley Rd. W, Gorst, WA https://www.google.com/maps/search/47.52478,+-122.69835?sa=X&ved=1t:242&ictx=111 

Our proximity to the largest number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons puts us near a dangerous local and international threat.  When citizens become aware of their role in the prospect of nuclear war, or the risk of a nuclear accident, the issue is no longer an abstraction.  Our proximity to Bangor demands a deeper response.

Nuclear weapons and resistance

In the 1970s and 1980s, thousands demonstrated against nuclear weapons at the Bangor base and hundreds were arrested.  Seattle Archbishop Hunthausen had proclaimed the Bangor submarine base the “Auschwitz of Puget Sound” and in 1982 began to withhold half of his federal taxes in protest of “our nation's continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy.''

On May 27, 2016, President Obama spoke in Hiroshima and called for an end to nuclear weapons.   He said that the nuclear powers “…must have the courage to escape the logic of fear, and pursue a world without them.”  Obama added, “We must change our mindset about war itself.” 

Contacts for more information:

Glen Milner (206) 365-7865

Rodney Brunelle (425) 485-7030

Pat Moriarity, artist, cartoondepot@earthlink.net

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The Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action was founded in 1977.  The center is on 3.8 acres adjoining the Trident submarine base at Bangor, Washington.  The Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action offers the opportunity to explore the roots of violence and injustice in our world and to experience the transforming power of love through nonviolent direct action. We resist all nuclear weapons, especially the Trident ballistic missile system.

Eighty Years After Trinity, the Horror of the Atomic Bomb Lives On

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: I have written countless essays over the years about the infamous Trinity Test that took place eighty years ago. Trinity was the start of a long journey that has taken Humanity down the perilous road of preparation for its own destruction. Eighty years later, and after decades of my own work to abolish nuclear weapons, I am beginning to wonder if we have a death wish. It is not a question of whether or not we will one day experience a civilization-ending nuclear war, but WHEN! So long as nuclear weapons exist, it is a matter of probability that they will be used, ether accidentally or intentionally. It is quite simply a suicidal game of Russian Roulette. 

Ray Acheson is a brilliant and tireless activist.  Ray is Director of Reaching Critical Will, Women's International League for Peace Freedom’s (WILPF) disarmament programme. They are author of Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages and Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. They organise for abolition, disarmament, and demilitarisation in their work with various coalitions and provide intersectional femi  nist analysis and advocacy at international disarmament forums.

Ray originally published the following essay at the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom.

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16 July 2025 marks 80 years since the detonation of the first nuclear weapon. Its legacy is that of death and destruction, with the burdens being felt disproportionately by Indigenous Peoples around the world. Eighty years on, nuclear abolition is imperative for justice and peace.

By Ray Acheson

16 July 2025

On 16 July 1945, the United States detonated the first nuclear weapon on the lands of the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico. The bomb, nicknamed “Gadget,” was made of plutonium. The so-called Trinity Test was conducted at White Sands, a beautiful desert about 120 miles south of Alburquerque, on colonised lands of First Nations Peoples.  

While the US government claimed the lands were “empty,” dire consequences were borne by local Indigenous communities, uranium mining workers, and others living near the test site. The lingering effects of the radioactive fallout extended beyond the immediate vicinity of the bombings, affecting generations to come and leaving a lasting scar on the environment and the lives of those residing in the surrounding regions. 

The Trinity Test spread radiation across all contiguous US states as well as Canada and Mexico. Recent scientific models show significant radioactive contamination in dozens of First Nations communities over the first few days following the explosion. 

The test was followed only weeks later by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting in hundreds of thousands of immediate deaths and the suffering of many more from radioactive poisoning. 

Legacy of harm 

None of this is historical. The impacts of the Trinity Test are still being felt today, and the nuclear arms race it generated is accelerating. 

Since 1945, more than 2000 nuclear “tests” have been conducted worldwide by nine nuclear-armed states, causing widespread cancers and other health tragedies, environmental contamination, and displacement. 

The nine nuclear-armed states are modernising their nuclear arsenals, spending more than 100 billion dollars a year. In the midst of rising threats to use nuclear weapons and military confrontation among nuclear-armed states, the use of nuclear weapons is a horrifyingly real prospect. 

  
The Manhattan Project today 

It all began with the top-secret Manhattan Project. As the Nuclear Truth Project notes, this was a project of “unprecedented scope, initiated and sustained with private and corporate partners.”  

The Manhattan Project got its name because New York City was a key node in the development of the atomic bomb. The US Army Manhattan Engineer District managed the project early on, drawing on a research programme located at Columbia University, and collaborated with private companies at 30 sites throughout the city. 

The bombs used in New Mexico, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were built at what today is called the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Other sites around the world are also implicated in the bomb’s development—including uranium mines in so-called Canada and Democratic Republic of the Congo, a uranium enrichment and processing site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and a plutonium production facility in Hanford, Washington. 

Oak Ridge is still operating today, even after three peace activists broke into the lab in 2013 in an act of civil disobedience to draw attention to the horrors produced at the site. Hanford is closed, but continues to leak radioactive poison into the land and water around it, lending to its distinction as “the most toxic place in America.” 

Today, Los Alamos continues to function as one of the key nuclear weapon labs in the US. Its operations are expanding to build new “plutonium pits”—the cores of nuclear bombs. This has resulted in new construction at the facility, which has already run into delays and ever increasing costs. 

In June 2025, the US government requested a 29 per cent increase in the budget for nuclear warhead development and production—which would be the largest increase since 1962. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the US nuclear arsenal will cost about a trillion dollars over the next decade. Meanwhile, the government has slashed social programmes related to health care, education, food security, and more. 

Actions for nuclear abolition 

Eighty years after the Trinity Test, the only effective way to address the test’s poisonous legacy and current harms is to abolish nuclear weapons. There are actions everyone can take, including: 

• Demand reparations by all nuclear-armed states to all people impacted by nuclear weapon tests, bomb development, uranium mining, and radioactive waste; 
• Demand governments ensure that aboveground nuclear weapon testing is never resumed, end other forms of nuclear weapon testing, abolish uranium mining and nuclear weapon production, and not impose nuclear waste dumps on Indigenous Peoples; 
• Call on nuclear-armed states to immediately cease their nuclear weapon modernisation programmes and redirect that money towards nuclear disarmament, decommissioning and clean-up of nuclear sites, and a just transition for workers to socially and ecologically safe industries; 
• Call on your government to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which prohibits all nuclear testing as well as the development, possession, and use of nuclear weapons, and all other related activities; 
• Urge your local city or town council to join the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)’s Cities Appeal in support of the TPNW; Ask your parliamentarians, senators, or congressional representatives to sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge and work for nuclear disarmament; 
• Get involved in ICAN’s Don’t Bank on the Bomb initiative to remove your money from nuclear weapons and compel your bank, pension fund, or financial institution to stop funding nuclear weapon production; and Find out if the universities in your area are helping to build nuclear weapons and campaign to end those contracts. 

Resources for more information 

Time Zero podcast 

Nuclear Truth Project 

Trinity Nuclear Test’s Fallout Reached 46 States, Canada, and Mexico, Study Shows 

Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America 

The Prophets of Oak Ridge 

ICAN’s Interactive Tool on Nuclear Weapon Test Impacts

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END NOTE: Original source URL for Ray's essay: https://www.wilpf.org/eighty-years-after-trinity-the-horror-of-the-atomic-bomb-lives-on/

IPPNW Calls for an Immediate Ceasefire and Return to Diplomacy with Iran

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) has just issued a most important statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and return to diplomacy with Iran. We must understand that if this conflict escalates beyond a certain (and unknown) threshold, it is almost certain to draw the U.S. and Russia (the two major nuclear powers) into the conflict, significantly raising the stakes and vastly increasing the risk of a global nuclear war. This is a risk that Humanity cannot afford to take. Everyone must speak out, demanding an end to Israel's current conduct and the charting of a diplomatic course to a peaceful resolution of this conflict.

Statement issued JUNE 13, 2025

The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) condemns Israel’s military strikes on Iran and calls for an immediate ceasefire to prevent further escalation and the loss of civilian life.

Iran is not currently assessed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or the US government to have an active nuclear weapons program. This attack by a nuclear-armed state undermines ongoing US-led diplomatic efforts to restore non-proliferation efforts in the region.

IPPNW urges Iran to fully comply with its obligations under the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and IAEA safeguards, and to re-engage in negotiations with the United States at the earliest possible date. Israel, the region’s only nuclear-armed state, must support these efforts and take concrete steps toward disarmament, notably by participating in the establishment of a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone. We urge Iran, Israel, and all UN Member States to join the nearly 100 states that have already signed on to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The declared nuclear weapons states – the US, Russia, China, France, and the UK – bear substantial responsibility for the progressive weakening of the global non-proliferation regime.  Not only have they failed to honor their disarmament obligations under the NPT, but they are also going further by making massive investments in new nuclear weapons and capabilities. The US decision under the first Trump administration to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) is another major contributing failure that has led to this latest regional and global crisis.  

The humanitarian and environmental consequences of any use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic. A single nuclear detonation over any major city would cause mass casualties and overwhelm health systems; a nuclear war of any size would trigger global climate disruption and a famine that could affect billions. Humanity is already closer to nuclear war than at any point since the Cold War. We cannot survive the addition of another nuclear-armed state.

There is no military solution to the growing risk of nuclear proliferation. Indeed, war and armed violence further incentivizes states to seek nuclear weapons. The only reliable path to security is through diplomacy and the irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons.

CLICK HERE to read the full statement at the IPPNW website.

END NOTE: IPPNW was founded in 1980 with the "goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation", and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for its efforts.

TAKE ACTION: You can take action by calling on your members of Congress to embrace the War Powers Act and stop any U.S. support for Israel's strikes on Iran.

“Do not let the nuclear armed states lead us down the path to death.”

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Dr. Ira Helfand delivered a compelling statement on behalf of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) at the Third Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, 30 April 2025. He concluded the statement with a call to action: "The world is at a crossroads.  We have before us the choice of life or death.  Do not let the nuclear armed states lead us down the path to death." 

Having worked in emergency medicine, Dr. Helfand knows that there will not be enough - if any at all - emergency rooms, let alone burn unit beds, should even a "limited" nuclear war break out. The (initial) survivors will be on their own, and they will envy the dead! It is not a matter of if, but when, humanity suffers what will be the final war, so long as countries continue to brandish nuclear weapons. The U.S. is building up its nuclear arsenal once again, setting the (wrong) example for other countries, rather than leading the way to a world without the threat of nuclear war. 

Will we choose life... or death???

This statement was originally published on April 30, 2025 at the IPPNW Peace & Health Blog. Dr. Helfand is an IPPNW Board Member.

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Distinguished delegates, esteemed colleagues, and honored guests,

Dr. Ira Helfand delivering IPPNW’s statement to the 2025 NPT Preparatory Committee

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I am not a diplomat. I am an Emergency Room doctor who has spent the last 50 years speaking with patients and their families. So let me talk to you now as I would to the family of a critically ill patient.

Because that is the situation we face. The world, for which we are collectively responsible, is in terrible danger. Nine countries, five of them parties to this Treaty, have chosen to build arsenals of nuclear weapons that effectively hold all of humanity, including their own citizens, hostage. They want these weapons because they make them strong and allow them to bully the rest of the world. They justify these weapons with the illusion that they offer security. That is a dangerous lie. These weapons are the greatest threat to our survival and pose an existential threat to civilization.

Like the chronic smoker who lives in denial about the risk of developing lung cancer, we have largely convinced ourselves that nuclear war will never happen. The truth is, we are closer to a nuclear war today than we have ever been and, yet, we go about our daily life as though this sword of Damocles were not hanging over us.

Studies show that a large-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia, who together possess nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, would end life as we know it. Most of this city, including this very building we are sitting in, would be vaporized and 12 to 15 million people would simply disappear. Across both countries, an estimated 200-300 million people would be killed in the first half hour. Survivors would be left in a radioactive waste field with no electric grid, no internet, no cell phones, no health care, no food distribution system, no banking system, and no system for maintaining law and order. In the following months, most of those who initially survived would die—from radiation poisoning, epidemic disease, exposure, and starvation.  

But this is only part of the story. The impacts of this war would ripple far beyond the borders of the US and Russia. The enormous fires that consumed the cities of Russia and America would loft millions of tons of soot into the upper atmosphere, blocking out the sun and causing global temperatures to plummet by an average of 10 degrees C. In the interior regions of North America and Eurasia temperatures would drop 25 to 30 degrees C. We have not seen temperatures that cold since the last Ice Age. 

Under these conditions, ecosystems that have evolved since the end of that Ice Age will collapse; food production will stop and, according to a landmark study published in 2022, 6 billion people, three quarters of humanity, will starve in the first two years. The study stopped at 2 years. The famine would not, and we do not know what the ultimate death toll will be. That same study showed that a much smaller-scale war, such as one between India and Pakistan, will cause enough climate disruption to trigger a famine that will kill a quarter of humanity—2 billion people globally in the first 2 years.

The nuclear powers assure us that this will never happen — that deterrence will prevent nuclear weapons from ever being used. They push this myth even as they threaten to use these very weapons.

But the truth is that nuclear weapons do not possess some magical power that guarantees they will never be used. In fact, there have been numerous incidents throughout the nuclear weapons era when we have come within minutes of the holocaust I have just described. We have not survived because deterrence works, because our leaders have been all wise, our military policies and doctrines sound and our technology perfect. We have survived, to use the words of former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, because, “We lucked out…It was luck that prevented nuclear war.”

Five of the nine nuclear powers have a binding obligation under Article VI of this Treaty to engage in good faith negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Yet they have ignored this obligation for nearly 6 decades. The US and Russia have actually gone further by abandoning every nuclear arms control agreement except for New START, and that will expire next February. These failures, taken together with the destabilizing and deadly wars in Ukraine and Gaza, are causing some non-nuclear parties to the NPT to seek access to nuclear weapons. 

When 121 non nuclear nations came together to uphold Article VI and negotiated the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the nuclear armed states chose not to join that historic effort but to boycott the negotiations and do everything they could to undermine the new Treaty using the bizarre claim, straight out of 1984’s Ministry of Truth, that the TPNW “undermined” the NPT. This review conference needs to call out their horrific failure to honor their Article VI obligations. The N-9 should address any concerns with the TPNW by meaningfully engaging with States Parties and joining the Treaty’s official proceedings. 

They must come together, agree to a detailed timetable to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, adhere to the TPNW’s provisions, and join the Treaty at the earliest possible date. 

The world is at a crossroads.  We have before us the choice of life or death.  Do not let the nuclear armed states lead us down the path to death.