Endorse This! Dec 31st
Y2K Nuclear Countdown Vigil at White House

We are encouraging more groups to get involved with this effort as endorsers or participants. Initial sponsors include: Gray Panthers, Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee, Proposition One Committee, Washington DC Area War Tax Resistance, Washington Action Group. We will be putting endorsers on our later emails and our press release and materials distributed 12/31. We hope to get a couple of expert speakers for our press conference, as well as local anti-nuclear and peace activists.

We expect a lot of press attention because the media is obviously interested in the sensational issue of whether Y2K will lead to nuclear accidents. We should use this to promote our demand that we abolish nuclear weapons and phase out nuclear power as soon as possible. And we must not forget that it is foreign interventions (like bombing of Yugoslavia and Iraq) and internal wars (like Chechnya and Kashmir) that are most likely to lead to nuclear war. If you or your group are interested, please contact Carol Moore 202-635-3739 or John Steinbach 1-703-369-7427. For peace in our time...Carol in D.C.


Y2K NUCLEAR COUNTDOWN
White House sidewalk, Lafayette Park
December 31, 1999 Noon til Five
(Or later if circumstances necessitate)
Press Conference at 1:00
PM

The leaders of the world's 34 nuclear nations have had several years to ensure that as the clock rolls over on January 1st there will not be any nuclear-related year 2000 software or embedded chip problems. Not only in the first weeks of the year 2000, but for decades afterwards Y2K-related errors could cause accidents at the world's 433 nuclear power plants and hundreds of military nuclear facilities and nuclear waste dumps. Such errors could lead to false missile alerts that would force leaders to launch the United States and Russia's 5,000 nuclear weapons which are now on hair-trigger alert. Leaders have less than fifteen minutes to decide if they must launch their missiles or possibly lose them to a first strike.

Many scientists, nuclear safety and peace activists, and other concerned citizens, are aware that the nuclear nations have not done, and cannot do, enough. We know that once January 1st breaks across the world we face decades of worry about whether there will be nuclear plant accidents, as well as nuclear weapons false alerts that could lead to full scale nuclear war. The growing tensions between the United States and Russia only increase the likelihood of such an accidental nuclear war.

Therefore, as we count down to the end of the century, activists will do a "Y2K Nuclear Countdown" at the White House. We will use a large map of the world, dotted with nuclear symbols identifying facilities, to track the year 2000 as it enters each new time zone. We want to remind the world that we are all under a countdown to the almost inevitable nuclear power or weapons accident that will kill thousands, millions or even billions of people. We will demand that the United States and the 33 other nuclear nations:

* Take all Nuclear Power Plants Offline and Rapidly Phase Out Nuclear Power
* Mandate Nuclear Plants and Waste Facilities Keep a Month's Supply of Diesel Fuel for Backup Generators
* De-alert Nuclear Weapons from the Current "Launch on Warning" Status and Rapidly Phase Out Nuclear Weapons
* Until De-alert Occurs, Inform the Press and Public Immediately of any False Nuclear Missile Alerts
* Until De-alert Occurs, Keep Open the U.S.-Russian Y2K Center at the U.S. Space Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs

Initial sponsors include: Gray Panthers, Hiroshima-Nagasaki Committee, Proposition One Committee, Washington DC Area War Tax Resistance, Washington Action Group.

JOIN US!! Bring your anti-nuclear and pro-peace signs, banners, props, etc.

For More Information Contact: 202-777-2642 xt. 1896 or 202-462-0757
Check out: http://www.Y2Kwash.org | http://www.dealert.org | http://www.basicint.org/y2k99part1.htm | http://www.noradiation.org/news/y2k.htm | http://prop1.org

Center for Defense Information's listing of numbers of nuclear weapons at: http://www.cdi.org/issues/nukef&f/database/