Talk to 6th Salisbury Air Scouts as part of their Environmental Conservation Activity badge.

Posted: 3rd November 2015

Salisbury CND was invited to talk to the 6th Salisbury Air Scouts on the subject of nuclear weapons and nuclear power on October 7th 2015, to be included in their Environmental Conservation Activity badge.

The scouts were treated to a wide coverage of the issues by Dr Becky Martin, Ken Smith, Caroline Lanyon and Linda Griffiths. To give a flavour of the evening here are some highlights:

        After a disclaimer that ours was not the only opinion, Ken Smith explained atoms, then used diagrams and photographs to graphically describe what would happen if a nuclear bomb fell on Salisbury. He brought a clementine and a squash to show the size and weight of a bomb that would totally devastate the city, such as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima with a far larger population and area.

        The group was told about the development of nuclear power and Becky Martin explained the difference between natural radiation in a lump of granite and a banana we had brought, and the damaging nuclear waste radiation from energy production. She asked the scouts to come up with ideas for safe disposal of waste, the craziest of which would win, then told the group that the Government wins for their plan to bury it in the ground!

         Caroline Lanyon gave all the scouts a copy of semaphore diagrams and asked them to guess how the CND logo was designed. She showed them the Raymond Briggs book ‘When the Wind Blows’, and played a video of ‘The Man Who Saved The World’ to to show how close the world has been to a nuclear holocaust by accident.

         Linda Griffiths told the story of 12 year old Sadako Sasaki who folded over 1000 paper cranes before dying of radiation sickness. Each scout received a set of instructions to try at home, but one boy knew how to fold a crane, so the Scout Leader chose him to lead the group in making one at a future meeting.

        At the end of the presentation we played a video of ‘Trident on Trial’ by the rapper Potent Whisper, in which he lists his objections to Trident replacement. The evening had lasted a good hour, and went down extremely well.  We were thanked by boy scout Jack Travers, who emailed subsequently their appreciation, and offers of help with fundraising!