American nuclear and thermonuclear bombs are equipped with plutonium detonators manufactured at the Rocky Flats
Nuclear Weapons Plant. The factory is located ten miles upwind from Denver, Colorado.
Armaments built at risk to Denver become part of a worldwide system so open to error and malfunction that it is reasonable to believe many
of us will, at a scarcely imaginable but exact time, die from them.
If we confront this conclusion we want almost at once to give up, to be free of what seems impossible hope. When we can find in ourselves
the will to keep asking questions of politicians, it is, I think, after we have noticed the individuals with whom we live. How mysteriously
absolute each is. How many achieve, in moments of reflection or joy or concern, a kind of heroism. Each refutes the idea of acceptable losses.
—R.A., 1983
