While people fool around with games and gadgets, there are lunatics with their hands on nuclear weapons planning to add atomic missiles hundreds of times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. The Trident missiles will be carried by submarines. These missiles will be able to destroy the world many times over.
All this will cost billions of American dollars and the American people will be buying these bombs to end life on earth.
This is not science fiction on Saturday night television. This is the nightmare being created right now by the U.S. Navy.
This is real. Wake up ! Speak up ! Or blow up and burn !
Weapons Officer Lt. A.J. Walker, left, aboard the USS Pennsylvania. Photo by Dan Sagalyn
Rarely have Americans seen the inner workings of the Navy submarines that sail the world under the sea, loaded with the most deadly weapons in existence: nuclear arms.
But PBS NewsHour, in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, was given a rare look at the Navy's plan to replace the current generation of nuclear-armed warships.
While reporting aboard the USS Pennsylvania, an Ohio-class submarine armed with up to 24 Trident D-5 nuclear missiles, we witnessed an abbreviated battle drill simulating the launch of one of those missiles.
It's a precise and efficient operation, and if exercised successfully, could initiate nuclear war.
A detail of the operation that caught our eye was a black joystick-looking device held by Weapons Officer Lt. A.J. Walker. This is the instrument that could ultimately launch the nuclear weapon.
The firing key that is used to actually fire a missile is red. Photo by Dan Sagalyn
In practice, it's a key part of the process. In reality, Pennsylvania's Commander John Cage says he hopes it's never used.
"Nobody on the boat wants [a launch] to happen, but it's important that we train for it, because if tasked, we are going to execute that mission."
Watch the full report from the USS Pennsylvania on tonight's PBS NewsHour. Read more from the series: How to resupply a nuclear submarine
This report was produced in partnership with The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
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