Eggheads & Me

So a few years back I read a book called THE MAKING OF THE ATOM BOMB by Richard Rhodes. It was a massively dense book, but simply marvelous: a history of the physics that led to the Manhattan Project during World War II and the creation of the first atomic bomb.

There were many scientific discoveries, theories and experiments that made it possible, but the bomb project was sheparded on the scientific side at Los Alamos, New Mexico, by J. Robert Oppenheimer.



He was a fascinating man (coincidentally, a very young Richard Feynman worked under him as well) and ended his life ignominiously after a dispute with Edward Teller over the ethics of proceeding with the creation of an even larger nuclear device, the hydrogen bomb. Teller prevailed, Oppenheimer had his National security clearance revoked, and he died of cancer.

And the hydrogen bomb was made.

Richard Rhodes' book, DARK SUN, chronicles that dubious scientific achievement.

A detail that I learned while reading ATOM BOMB that is chilling in is revelation that scientists, and our government, may not always choose the prudent path:

A number of the scientists, as they pondered this very first atomic chain reaction explosion, posited the theory that the chain reaction would run out of control and set the entire Earth's atmosphere aflame and the world would end.

But they went ahead anyway.




And that is why, as a child of the baby boomer generation, I was subject to the "duck and cover" drills - hence the name of my memoir blog. Because we were told that crouching in a fetal position under our desks would save us from a nuclear explosion.




Knowledge.

It can be very, very good.

Or it can be very, very bad.

Use it wisely.