Due to generous donations the Atrium Society Youth Peace Literacy Online Resources are Free
What prevents peace? Has the world ever been at peace?
Humans have been entirely at peace for only about 268 of the past 3,400 years - just 8 percent of recorded history.
How many people have died in war?
At least 108 million people were killed in wars in the twentieth century. Estimates for the total number of killed in wars throughout all of history are up to 1 billion.
Anytime we see anyone as "the enemy", we prevent peace. Anytime we let robotic thinking rule our brain, we prevent peace. Whenever we allow ourselves to think ethnocentrically and don't challenge our and their thinking, we prevent peace.
Traditonal ways of bringing about peace only create more conflict. We need to change our thinking, and therefore how we act.
The big question, then, is: is it possible that an intelligent education — one that questions our conditioning, both psychologically and biologically — can be created that stimulates a genetic change in our deeply held pattern for violence and war? Can the brain heal itself through awareness of its deep-seated fears?
Prevented World War III
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: Станислав Евграфович Петров; 7 September 1939 – 19 May 2017) was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defense Forces who became known as "the man who single-handedly saved the world from nuclear war" for his role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident.
On 26 September 1983, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more multiple USAF Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles from bases in the United States. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm, and his decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol, is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war.
Investigation later confirmed that the Soviet satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.