Panel discusses perils of nuclear holocaust

Calling today's nuclear threat the biggest problem students will ever face in thdr entire lives, Father Theodore llesburgh, university president. introduced a panel discussion on the nuclear peril la~t night to a crowd that t1lled Stepan Center. "There is no human act that can match an evil in its moral obscenity, than an act that would reverse and destroy God's creation," Hesburgh told over 500 students gathered. "Your generation is the tlrst generation out of thousands of generations that is facing not just the possibility, but the probability of that act." Hesburgh, long a champion of the abolition of nuclear weapons, stressed the urgency of the situation. "The means (of destroying the world) are loaded, triggered, targeted, and rctady to go," Hesburgh said. "The instrumentalities are already in place. All it requires is a human act to send them on their way," adding thar the U.S. is one of rhe targets. Jonathan Schell's recent bestselling book The Fate of the Earth was used as the basis of the discussion. The program, sponsored by the College of Arts and Letters Sopho. more Core Course, was held to make students aware of the nuclear peril. Three Notre Dame t professors joined Hesburgh on the panel. Each gave a different perspective from his various field which related to areas on which Schell focuses. Professor William McGlinn of the physics department gave a scientific view. "Scientists, more than anyone, are familiar with the ability to deal with phenomena," McGlinn said. Yet even they cannor tell the enormity of the effects a nuclear war would cause. McGlinn outlined the situation: Nuclear bombs of 40 years ago, such as that dropped on Hiroshima, consisted of ten to twenty kilotons of TNT ( 1 kiloton 1000 tons). According to McGlinn, today's weapons are megaton bombs 1 00 times the amount of TNT in the former atomic bomb. "How can we possibly tell what a megaton bomb would do?" he asked. Scientists, however, can postulate effects. McGlinn said that many