By the end of his strike Hyder achieved superstar status in the USSR and the allied socialist countries (parallel only to Angela Davis, Dean Reed, and Samantha Smith before him), his name became nearly symbolic behind the Iron Curtain, though he remained little known in the United States, and apart from his wartime tour of duty never traveled outside the U.S.[3] Hyder was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1930.
After graduating from Albuquerque High School, he served in the United States Air Force during the Korean War.
[citation needed] Age 56, he began a supposed 218-day hunger strike on September 23, 1986, near the White House in Washington, demanding that Ronald Reagan stop the arms race and eliminate the use of nuclear weapons.
[citation needed] Hyder's strike place was visited by a movie star Charlie Sheen, Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, as well as by his University students and colleagues.
A lot of collective letters, briefly summarized as "Save Doctor Hyder," were sent to Ronald Reagan by various Soviet worker assemblies.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev wrote a letter to Hyder, asking him to stop the strike and move to Moscow to continue his scientific work in the USSR.