Claremont Montessori 9- to 12-year-old student blog spring 2012

The photo on our Helping Hands website shows the nuclear bombs, Fat Man, and Little Boy that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan 66 years ago. War always kills people, but these bombs opened up a new world with weapons of mass destruction, entire cities at a time.

Nuclear warhead stockpiles of the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia, 1945-2002.  

These numbers are total stockpiles, including warheads that are not actively deployed.

Now the U.S. and Russian governments have agreed to reduce the number of weapons further. But the U.S. Congress only agreed to reductions along with "modernizing," that is replacing the older weapons with new ones. This could cost $700 billion dollars in the next 10 years.  Think of what we could do with that money other than build weapons of mass destruction. Better schools and green jobs for the future.

Our national budget already is in the red by trillions. Even more important, why should we continue to live with thousands of nuclear bombs on the land, in the air and on or beneath the oceans. Imagine what one bomb did in Hiroshima or Nagasaki!