Letter to the Editor: Legislators should initiate actions to prepare for nuclear attack

To the Editor:

The Bangor Nuclear Submarine base is located 20 miles due west of Shoreline. It is home to the largest nuclear weaponry in the US. Almost 40 % of all US nuclear weapons is located at this submarine base in a quiet, sheltered but easily navigable arm of the Hood Canal. Currently our state prohibits planning and preparing for a nuclear attack. Given the continuing expressions of hostility from our own President of the US in his challenges to the head of North Korea, Kim Jung Il, we here in Shoreline are in direct line of the fallout from such an attack, in which the probability of such a horrific event occurring is increasingly high.

Now is the time for all citizens and voters in cities, counties and communities to speak out and demand that our WA State Legislators in both the House and Senate remove and rescind the current prohibitive legislation against preparing and planning and to initiate legislation that would provide protective solutions to a nuclear attack. Given how extensively nuclear radiation spreads all of Washington State, as well as other states nearby, we are all are in danger of nuclear radiation as well as considerable destruction and death from this possibility. One only has to remember - and not to forget - the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as well as the domestic disaster at Chernobyl to understand the dangers of nuclear power.

Voters and citizens would be well to contact their WA State Senators and Representatives in Olympia to take immediate action to prepare for a nuclear attack and to fully fund this legislation, and to make this matter a legislative priority.

Gini Paulsen
Shoreline