The Bikini Atoll Test

Albert Einstein, whose letters to FDR are credited with inspiring the race to build an atomic bomb, later said “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones“. Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer, upon seeing the results of the Trinity Test, said “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds“, quoting the Bhagavad Gita. Ken Bainbridge, the test director on the project, is quoted as saying “Now we’re all sons of bitches.” None of this stopped the actual dropping of the bomb on August 6, 1945. And scientist and Truman advisor Karl T. Compton’s 1946 Atlantic article If the Atomic Bomb Had Not Been Used – while a realistic assessment – probably did little to absolve any of these men of their guilt and remorse in the coming years. I’m just glad a generation has been able to grow up without the ever-present threat of Mutual Assured Destruction, a concept that definitely drained my enthusiasm for living until my mid-twenties. We live in a much hipper era now, one in which we can play games to pick our own apocalypse, and in which the Mayor of Hiroshima can call for support of an ‘Obamajority’ that believes in nuclear-free world. Until that day comes – if it ever does – I think we owe it to ourselves to keep fresh an awareness of the horrifying devastation of nuclear war. Boston.com has a compelling photo collection documenting the bombing of Hiroshima, and the widget below lets you pick a city and see what affect various nuclear weapons will have on it. My town is completely annihilated with a single contemporary nuclear bomb, how about yours? I’m going to fire up the only good thing that came out of nuclear war – OMD’s song Enola Gay – and ponder.