ABSTRACT
Nuclear weapons are a delicately balanced "Sword of Damocles" hanging over our human future. Nuclear weapons unleash the power within the atom. The creation of these weapons demonstrated significant scientific achievement, but left humankind threatened as never before and faced with the challenge of what to do with them. In May 2007, the Founding Congress of the World Future Council issued "The Hamburg Call to Action". In this document they warned: "Nuclear weapons remain humanity's most immediate catastrophic threat. These weapons would destroy cities, countries, civilization and possibly humanity itself. The danger posed by nuclear weapons in any hands must be confronted directly and urgently through a new initiative for the elimination of these instruments of annihilation". Organizations working for nuclear weapons abolition—such as the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Abolition 2000, Middle Powers Initiative, Mayors for Peace, and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility—can help give shape to efforts to put pressure on governments.
