Exercise Desert Rock I (Buster-Jangle Dog) 002

Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S.

nuclear weapons testing Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detonations are affected by ...

that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of an

anti-nuclear The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, nationa ...

organization which continues to create public events to question the morality and intelligence of the U.S.

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...

s program, with a main focus on the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

's (DOE)

Nevada National Security Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of th ...

(formerly called the Nevada Test Site or the Nevada Proving Ground).

History

In the spring of 1982 activists working for social justice, environmental preservation, and international peace organized a six-week peace vigil at the entrance to the Nevada Test Site, about 60 miles (100 km) from

Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vega ...

. In 1983 they repeated the vigil, calling it the 'Lenten Desert Experience'. This anarchist group of Christian organizers decided that the program had been successful enough to start an organization, which has been a conscientiously interfaith aspect of the nuclear weapons abolition movement. They named it 'Nevada Desert Experience' or NDE because of the work within the prayer-actions for peace that included learning to appreciate the Mojave and the Great Basin Deserts of North America. Organizers (primarily ethnically non-Indigenous) believed that appreciation of the beauty and power of the natural environment, coupled with a universal code of ethics (the Golden Rule) organically leads humans to make a stand for peace and

environmental justice Environmental justice is a social movement to address the unfair exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms from hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses.Schlosberg, David. (2007) ''Defining Environmental Justic ...

. In 1989 NDE organizers founded to amplify the movement for peacemaking beyond the aspect of a global existential threat of nuclear weapons. In the early 21st century, the annual events of NevadaDesertExperience.org leaned more on "desert spirituality" and were not as heavily Christocentric as in the 20th century.

Aims

The movement's immediate goal of ending nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site was met in 1992, when President George H. W. Bush signed a moratorium on underground nuclear weapons tests. The abolition movement, led by NDE and the

Western Shoshone Western Shoshone comprise several Shoshone tribes that are indigenous to the Great Basin and have lands identified in the Treaty of Ruby Valley 1863. They resided in Idaho, Nevada, California, and Utah. The tribes are very closely related cultur ...

-based Shundahai Network were sparked back into action with the renewal of non-nuclear (yet radioactive) explosions at the Nevada Test Site in 1997. These " subcritical" bombs use fissile materials which do not reach the self-sustaining

chain reaction A chain reaction is a sequence of reactions where a reactive product or by-product causes additional reactions to take place. In a chain reaction, positive feedback leads to a self-amplifying chain of events. Chain reactions are one way that sys ...

of a typical nuclear bomb. The bombs are designed by

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

and

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in respons ...

, whereby the data collected can be fed to computers to simulate full-scale nuclear explosions for the US

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collect ...

(NSA) and DOE. Their explosive yield is low, and small amounts of radiation may be released. Because each sub-critical experiment costs roughly and much time from the humans working within the nuclear weapons management industry, the tests indicate to nuclear abolition activists a strong continued interest (within the U.S. Government) in favor of nuclear weapons. Therefore, NDE continues to work for deep ecological sensitivities and social peacemaking, with one goal being to clean up and contain the contamination created by 70+ years of nuclear testing in Nevada and Western Shoshone country.

Protests in Nye County

From 1986 through 1994, two years after the United States put a hold on full-scale

, 536 demonstrations were held at the

Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the ...

involving 37,488 participants and 15,740 arrests, according to government records. In the fall of 1986, the Peace Caucus of the American Public Health Association (APHA) organized a protest at the site with over 500 APHA members participating. Over 100 APHA members, along with Carl Sagan, Victor R. Sidel and H. Jack Geiger, were arrested. In January, 1987, the actor

Martin Sheen Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez (born August 3, 1940), known professionally as Martin Sheen, is an American actor. He first became known for his roles in the films ''The Subject Was Roses'' (1968) and ''Badlands'' (1973), and later achieved wid ...

and 71 other anti-nuclear protesters were arrested at the Nevada Test Site in a demonstration marking the 36th anniversary of the first nuclear test there. On February 5, 1987, more than 400 people were arrested, when they tried to enter the nation's nuclear proving grounds after nearly 2,000 demonstrators held a rally to protest nuclear weapons testing. Those arrested included the astronomer Carl Sagan, privacy advocate

Phil Zimmermann Philip R. Zimmermann (born 1954) is an American computer scientist and cryptographer. He is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most widely used email encryption software in the world. He is also known for his work in VoIP encryption ...

, and the actors

Kris Kristofferson Kristoffer Kristofferson (born June 22, 1936) is a retired American singer, songwriter and actor. Among his songwriting credits are " Me and Bobby McGee", " For the Good Times", " Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and " Help Me Make It Through the ...

, Martin Sheen, and

Robert Blake Robert Blake may refer to: Sportspeople * Bob Blake (American football) (1885–1962), American football player * Robbie Blake (born 1976), English footballer * Bob Blake (ice hockey) (1914–2008), American ice hockey player * Rob Blake (born 196 ...

. Five Democratic members of Congress attended the rally: Thomas J. Downey,

Mike Lowry Michael Edward Lowry (March 8, 1939 – May 1, 2017) was an American politician who served as the 20th governor of Washington from 1993 to 1997. His political career ended abruptly following a sexual misconduct allegation made against him by h ...

, Jim Bates, Leon E. Panetta and Barbara Boxer. April 2007 Martin Sheen among others were arrested .

Protests in Clark County against weaponized drones at Creech Air Force Base

In protest over UAV attacks in Pakistan and the perceived extremely high danger of harming civilians, in an event sponsored by Nevada Desert Experience, Friar Louis Vitale,

Kathy Kelly Kathy Kelly (born 1952) is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of ''Voices in the Wilderness'', and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of ''Voices for Creative Nonviolence''. As part of p ...

, Stephen Kelly SJ,

John Dear John Dear (born August 13, 1959) is an American Catholic priest, peace activist, lecturer, and author of 35 books on peace and nonviolence. He has spoken on peace around the world, organized hundreds of demonstrations against war, injustice and nu ...

, and others were arrested outside

Creech Air Force Base Creech Air Force Base is a United States Air Force (USAF) command and control facility in Clark County, Nevada used "to engage in daily Overseas Contingency Operations …of remotely piloted aircraft systems which fly missions across the globe." ...

(adjacent to the Nevada National Security Site) on Wednesday April 9, 2009. Subsequent monthly protests have been ongoing and conducted by a number of organizations including

Code Pink Code Pink: Women for Peace (often stylized as CODEPINK) is a left-wing internationally active non-governmental organization that describes itself as a "grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end U.S.-funded wars and occupations, ...

.CODEPINK : Peace activists to rally Monday outside Creech Air Force Base: Will call for end to U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan
codepink4peace.org

References

''Pilgrimage Through a Burning World'', by Ken Butigan, Chronicles and discusses the political and religious aspects of the nonviolent protest against nuclear testing called the Nevada Desert Experience. 2003, 256 pp., paper.

External links