As the year 2000 broke around the world, members of the Washington area nuclear safety and peace communities sponsored a “Y2K Nuclear Countdown”  to remind the world that we are all under a countdown to the nuclear power or weapons accident that will kill thousands, millions or even billions of people. Activists used a large map of the earth, dotted with nuclear symbols identifying facilities, to track the year 2000 as it enters each new time zone.
        Nuclear power accidents and near-accidental nuclear war incidents happened before Y2K. They are even more likely after Y2K due to accidental or sloppy use of noncompliant embedded chips and old or new noncompliant software.  Activists demanded that: the 34 nuclear nations immediately shut down for Y2K and then rapidly phase out nuclear power plants; the U.S. and Russia de-alert the 5,600 nuclear warheads in land-based ICBMs now on hair trigger alert; all nations rapidly phase out their 30,000 plus nuclear weapons; U.S.-Russia keep open the Y2K Center at the U.S. Space Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs and inform the press and public of all false missile alerts.

In the last several years the Australian government's Canberra Commission, the Tokyo Forum, two United Nations General Assemblies, the European Parliament, and at least five hundred peace and green organizations have all called for de-alerting nuclear weapons during the Y2K rollover or permanently.  Sponsors of the vigil include: the Gray Panthers, Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee, Mid-Atlantic Chapter of Veterans for Peace, Pastors for Peace DC,  Proposition One Committee, Washington DC Area War Tax Resistance, Washington Action Group, Global Peace Walk 2000, Nonviolence International, Veterans for Justice, Friends of the Earth Australia and Australian Peace Committee.

Relevant web sites:  www.dealert.orgwww.nirs.org www.prop1.org