Scandinavian Activity Contests 2022 CANCELLED

“The SAC Contest Committee has unanimously decided to cancel this year’s two sections of the Contest. Our decision has been made due to the ongoing war in the region and in consideration of the IARU declaration about friendship between people. We hope that the situation will change for the better, so that we can once again compete against each other as the SAC rules dictate”.

I attended elementary school in the 1960s and still recall the weekly practice of getting under our desks in school in case of nuclear attack. As a ten year-old I was convinced the world would be destroyed by the Soviets and their nuclear arsenal.

When I grew up and the worst hadn’t happened, I lost the fear of an inevitable nuclear conflagration. Leaders from both sides would have to be criminally insane to launch such action and the politics of mutually assured destruction seemed sufficient to live a life free from that concern.

Fifty years later the dystopian fears of my youth have moved back to the front burner. I think the world is closer to nuclear destruction today than when I was crouched beneath my 4th grade desk. The avoidance of such conflict has always been predicated on the notion that world leaders with access to weapons of mass destruction aren’t insane.

The unprovoked and continued war on Ukraine is an obvious signal that the safety of the world is now in the hands of a madman.

The disruption of something as trivial as a ham radio contest is an infinitesimal protest compared to the death and destruction being needlessly inflicted on a peaceful nation. But it serves notice that the entire world is watching this lunatic and no one is safe…