Mary Jane Williams

Atom and Eve Mary Jane Williams

In 1981 an attractive smart young woman went to hear Dr. Helen Caldicott speak about what would happen if a nuclear bomb went off. That speech changed Jeannie's life. It almost took away her marriage. It almost changed the world, too. Jeannie was active in the Nuclear Freeze campaign of the 1980's -- Which did not succeed. Except in educating Pres. Ronald Reagan enough to, together with the Soviet Union's Michael Gorbachev, almost agree to abolish nuclear weapons. But Reagan's advisors intervened. So Reagan and Gorbachev did not achieve their potentially world-altering goal. In 2018 some of those same advisors now say we should get rid of nuclear weapons. But now they're old and powerless. No one listens to them. Meantime, during the Obama administration the USA and Russia started the nuclear arms race up again. We're building new atomic warheads, submarines, planes and missile launchers. Although 200 nuclear weapons exploding would destroy civilization and probably life on earth, in 2018 the world still has 15,000. Nine countries have nuclear weapons. More and more are getting them via nuclear power plants or by enriching natural uranium ore to bomb-grade. Our heroine Jeannie is probably still working as an anti-nuclear activist.