Ground Zero was a

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advocacy and education organization devoted to

nuclear weapons 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 bomb ...

. Founded by former White House

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official

Roger Molander Roger Carl Molander (November 20, 1940 – March 25, 2012) was an American government official and activist. Life Born in Perham, Minnesota, Molander grew up in Marinette, Wisconsin. He graduated with High Honors from University of Wisconsin&n ...

, it did not explicitly support the

nuclear freeze The Nuclear Freeze campaign was a mass movement in the United States during the 1980s to secure an agreement between the U.S. and Soviet governments to halt the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. Background The idea of simply ...

, but worked to raise awareness of the nuclear threat during the period of the freeze campaign in the early 1980s. On March 21, 1982, Molander published a prominent piece in ''

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'' discussing the nuclear threat, and from April 18 to April 25, 1982 the organization sponsored a Ground Zero Week of nationwide events to demonstrate that American cities had no defenses in the event of

nuclear war Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear w ...

. These events were sponsored by the

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, the

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, and an array of other organizations. Some have suggested that these events helped build the momentum for the large freeze demonstration in New York City that took place on June 12, 1982.Katsiaficas, G. N. (1987). The imagination of the New Left: A global analysis of 1968. Boston, Mass:

South End Press South End Press was a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, Juliet Schor, among others, in Boston's South End. It published books written by political activi ...

, p. 189. Ground Zero also published a mass market paperback entitled ''Nuclear War: what's in it for you?'' Printed by Pocket Books of New York, the book included four scenarios "for killing 500 million people," statistics on the likely death totals of United States and Soviet Union nuclear exchanges and a layman's understanding of how nuclear weapons are designed and built.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ground Zero (Campaign) Arms control Anti–nuclear weapons movement