IMMERSED in his incessant battle to inform the world of the danger of a nuclear war and to succeed in persuading President Obama not to pull the trigger, Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz met on Monday, August 23 with Cuban scientists to talk about nuclear weapons and the danger of a nuclear conflagration. 

For two hours, the leader of the Revolution exchanged ideas with and asked countless questions of Dr. Tomás Gutiérrez Pérez, general director of the Institute of Meteorology; José Fidel Santana Núñez, president of the Nuclear Energy and Advanced Technology Agency attached to the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (CITMA); Colonel José Luis Navarro Marrero, head of the Science and Technology Secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces; and Dr. Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, scientific advisor for the Council of State. 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki; uranium, plutonium and hydrogen bombs; the military nuclear capacity of the major powers; areas of radioactivity that could be caused by the explosion of a nuclear bomb according to its power; the sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine in 2000; the so-called nuclear winter; and other issues of interest were discussed at the meeting.

Fidel evoked the days of the October Missile Crisis, the process that led to the agreement to site Soviet missiles in Cuba, the danger that lies ahead for our country and the world, the errors of Krushchev and Kennedy. "Kennedy himself was horrified at how close war was," he noted. 

"We were not interested in having missiles here, or having a base. We were more interested in the country’s image. A Soviet base devalued the image of the Revolution, its capacity to influence in the region. Why did we accept them? For us it was very hard. But it was a question of internationalism." And he recalled the meeting with the revolutionary leadership at which he proposed, "If we are hoping that the socialist camp would sacrifice itself and fight for us, we have to be prepared to sacrifice ourselves for them." 

That historic memory served for Fidel to analyze the current dangers, with almost 25,000 nuclear devices in the world: "Doesn’t it seem a thing of lunatics to you?" he asked the scientists. "On this planet, 100 nuclear bombs are enough to provoke a nuclear winter. That isn’t a thing of sane people." 

He later commented: "It would seem that this is going to be the first war of the world, and human history knows nothing else but wars. Since humans had clubs they have devoted themselves to making war. All those reasonings are erroneous, and for that reason I am making the effort to try and persuade of the danger of war. Who knew until very recently of the danger of war? Who spoke about that? Who is controlling all of the world media?

"Here, everything is going to depend on one man; not because he is powerful, but because he is the only one who has the faculty to pull the trigger. If he doesn’t pull it the whole world is going to be grateful to him, even the millionaires; even Israel will be grateful to him," concluded the Comandante en Jefe, with the conviction that scientists can also help a lot in this battle of creating awareness of the grave risks to humanity.