Name: Tyler Huang
Social Justice Group: 2022-2023, Nuclear Weapons/Nuclear Proliferation
Date of Fieldwork: February 9, 2023
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?:
Although this interview was short we learned a lot. Her answers were directly helpful in our project and I feel as though it was one of the most informative interviews we had. Jamie seemed very intrested in our project and how we stumbled apon our topic of nuclear disarmenment. A few days prior we met with another member of the Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Policy Program, James Acton, and we were intrested in the different topics they covered in their orginization.
Jamie talked to us about the p5 process which is an agreement with 5 of the countries with nuclear weapons that only they are allowded to posess nuclear weapons and they shall not be used unless its despretly needed. The p5 process sits among the non proliferation agreements, which is one of the largest nuclear agreements. The p5 process was also signed by other countries without nuclear weapons and by signing this agreement they agree that they will never posess a nuclear arsenal. In exchange in these countries signing this treaty they recieve help in their nuclear power programs. Countries like Pakistan and Isreal didn’t sign this treaty so they wouldn’t have to promise that they wont grow their nuclear arsenals and grow their nuclear technology.
She also talked about how nuclear weapons can and do pose a threat to climate change. If a nuclear bomb is detonated on land the nuclear fallout will spread because of the wind. If the bomb is detonated in New York City it could reach as far as Boston! Obviously if a nuclear weapon is used then there will be debris and fires spread out miles away from the blast location and the radiation effects will pose a threat in that specific enviornment.
Jamie Introduced us to this website called NUKEMAP made by Alex Wellerstein. You can choose your nuclear weapon for example you can use the bombs dropped in Japan or up to the size of the Tsar Bomba. You can also pick where you would drop the bomb. The intresting thing about this website is that you can view the casualties and injuries from the nuclear blast wherever you place it. If you place a Tsar Bomba in Bangladesh you can get 17 million deaths.
Jamie Kwong left us with a wonderful quote revolving around young people like us. She said that we need young people involved in these important topics so there can be a change. This quote left us off thinking about what we can do to make a change. We thought about orginizing protests or even our teach in, where we are teaching kids about this important topic. This quote made us realize that our job for the Teach In is to bring awareness to these super important topics therefore making a change in our community.
