Why Nukes?

Today is the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the most recent, and we certainly hope, the last atomic bombing of a city. It was only the second time a city had been subject to the effects of uncontrolled nuclear fission, and it was a factor in the end of World War II, the most destructive, but not the most costly, war in the history of mankind. I have had a number of people ask me about my fascination with nukes. So it is perhaps an appropriate date to set down the reasons why I have such interest is what many feel is an esoteric area.

Nukes are the most destructive tool in man's tool belt of weapons. We tend to think of the big bad three: NBC, nuclear, biological and chemical, but of the three, nuclear weapons remain by far the most deadly and destructive of them all. Biological weapons tend to be difficult to control and deliver. Chemical weapons are awful in their effects, but are point weapons. Nukes are big and bad. Even the smallest of nukes creates a big bang. The biggest? Well, physics has yet to create the biggest, because with thermonuclear devices, there is no limit. Russia's Tsar Bomba (Царь-бомба; "Tsar of bombs", or AN602) was 50MT (210PJ), and was only half of the weapon's potential yield, since allowing the device to achieve it's theoretical yield of 100MT would have destroyed the aircraft delivering the bomb and contaminated populated Russian (then Soviet) territory. For comparison purposes, that one detonation in 1961 was roughly equivalent to 1400 times the power of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, 10 times the power of all the weapons detonated during World War II, 1/4 the power of the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, or about 10% of all the nuclear detonations to date. Man is slipping up on Mother Nature in destructiveness.

My undergraduate degree was in chemistry and I was especially interested in physical organic chemistry. Quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, nuclear reactions, all are a continuum of the way the Universe works at the atomic level. A hydrogen bomb is the sun on earth in a microsecond. The fact that man plays God or Mother Nature to tap elemental forces is the fascination, I suppose.

The online dating service OkCupid has hundreds of questions they ask you to answer for comparison purposes. I am probably in the vast minority of the people that answer the question "Would a nuclear war be interesting?" in the affirmative. Of course, I qualify that by saying "Only in the theoretical sense, since in practice the results would probably be the end of civilization".

The science fiction writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote an end of the world novel "Lucifer's Hammer" in which an asteroid hits the earth. In it, as the asteroid approaches, a documentary filmmaker does man in the street interviews and discovers that people want the asteroid to hit, want civilization to be destroyed. They are bored with their lives, tired of their dead-end jobs, tired of having to sleep with the boss, whatever. Of course, once the end occurs, once the grocery stores are gone and the police are gone and electricity is gone they realize exactly what they lost.

Most people don't realize what they have in modern society. Most people don't appreciate the technology they have. Most people don't know and don't care how an iPhone is made or how it works. And because they don't know and don't care, they don't appreciate how fragile their world is. Nor do they appreciate how quickly things could slip out of control.

Since it has been 70 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki most of the victims are gone. Most of the participants are gone. Most of the people that want to end the use of these weapons are gone. The gang of four, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and George Schultz, who came out so courageously in favor of ending our reliance on nuclear weapons are no longer on a position of influence. The desire for change that won Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 when he called for the elimination of nuclear weapons is gone, and now both the U.S. and Russia are instead looking at new nuclear weapons to solve the new competition taking place in Eastern Europe. China is modernizing its forces as the U.S. completes its Pivot and faces up as China focuses on the South China Sea. North Korea successfully tested a three stage ballistic missile and launched a satellite into orbit, which is the successful test for an ICBM.

So it looks like the Nuke Race is back on, and in a newer, deadlier fashion. No longer a two party race, now it is a many headed hydra.