Comedian Frankie Boyle imagines a nuclear attack

Not known to be someone who minces his words, on September 18 2017, comedian Frankie Boyle posted a Facebook status imagining a nuclear attack and berating US President Trump. Here are some excerpts:

"It’s impossible to imagine what it’s like to be killed in a nuclear explosion, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. I think it will probably involve being blasted over quite a large distance, and at a surprising height, while simultaneously having all your skin burnt off. I know we think of it as being an instant death, but there’s every chance that there will be a few seconds where you’ll be sailing out of your local school catchment area, at a height of about a hundred feet or so, as some sort of screaming skeleton. Maybe you will get to see your family melt before the blast picks you up, and your final memory will be of their faces devolving into cubism. Or maybe it’s more like being smashed to pieces by a wave of rubble. After all those years of driving into town to go to work, or go shopping, your city centre will finally be coming to you, moving at several thousand miles an hour, and hotter than Venus in July."

"Donald Trump got himself into yet another war of words with North Korea after they test fired a missile that went over Japan. In a war of words you do not want to be on Trump’s side: a man who speaks like he’s on shuffle and has a smaller vocabulary than an upturned calculator. It’s incredible to see the US take the moral high ground about, of all things, nuking Japan. Bear in mind that Japan is a country that specialises in wooden buildings with paper walls. It’s odd to think that as millions of people hunkered down in their paper houses during a potential nuclear attack, they were still safer than the many thousands of people in the UK living in high rise social housing."

"If I might make one suggestion to the North Koreans, please don’t drop bombs indiscriminately upon the USA. There are specific targets you should hit that would upset the President the most and, luckily for your bombing crews, they’ve all got his name written on them in fifty foot high letters."

Read the full status here.

Tim Wallis, CND member, vlogging from UN

Following Trump's threat to 'totally destroy' North Korea, Timmon Wallis defines the US as a 'rogue state' going against the vast majority of countries of the world who are about to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons tomorrow...

Tim Wallis, CND member, has been busy at the UN reporting on the nuclear ban treaty.

See his website for up to date videos, reports and more.

Nuclear Ban Treaty Opens for Signature and 50 states sign!

In a week potentially overshadowed by Trump's threat of a nuclear war with North Korea, there are some reasons to be optimistic. The United Nations General Assembly has resumed and has held a signing ceremony for the new nuclear ban treaty.

On September 20, the treaty which was voted on in July, opened for signature. The treaty was a result of years of efforts from civil society and a conscious shift in focus from security and deterrence arguments to one's based on the humanitarian perspective. This humanitarian perspective argues that human beings will be the ones who suffer after a nuclear attack, and that no country would be able to adequately respond to a humanitarian catastrophe a nuclear attack would pose.

122 countries voted for the treaty to be passed back in July of this year, and so far 50 countries have signed the treaty. It will enter into force 90 days after 50 countries have ratified or acceded to it. See which countries have signed here.

Unsurprisingly, none of the 9 nuclear armed nations, including the UK have signed the treaty. In fact, the UK is amongst the states who staged a protest when the treaty was created and say they will never sign.