An excellent historical commentary about the bomb.

[WeAintFoundShit]

So I'm writing this research paper about a Ray Bradbury story. I know most of y'all recall that much. As such, I've been steeped in cold war and 1940s/1950s atomic culture for the past several days. Not only that, but for some reason the subject keeps popping up around me on its own, which is eerie enough in general.

But whatever. In my research, I came across this article from Time Magazine from 1945. I thought it was very revealing of the time, and very well written, so I figured I'd post it here. If only our current culture possessed the same capacity for complex thought as is evidenced by this person's writing.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 39,00.html

The war ended this week in the echoes of an event so enormous that, relative to it, the war itself shrank to minor significance

Posted Monday, Aug. 20, 1945
The greatest and most terrible of wars ended, this week, in the echoes of an enormous event—an event so much more enormous that, relative to it, the war itself shrank to minor significance. The knowledge of victory was as charged with sorrow and doubt as with joy and gratitude. More fearful responsibilities, more crucial liabilities rested on the victors even than on the vanquished.

In what they said and did, men were still, as in the aftershock of a great wound, bemused and only semi-articulate, whether they were soldiers or scientists, or great statesmen, or the simplest of men. But in the dark depths of their minds and hearts, huge forms moved and silently arrayed themselves: Titans, arranging out of the chaos an age in which victory was already only the shout of a child in the street.

With the controlled splitting of the atom, humanity, already profoundly perplexed and disunified, was brought inescapably into a new age in which all thoughts and things were split—and far from controlled. As most men realized, the first atomic bomb was a merely pregnant threat, a merely infinitesimal promise (see ATOMIC AGE).

All thoughts and things were split. The sudden achievement of victory was a mercy, to the Japanese no less than to the United Nations; but mercy born of a ruthless force beyond anything in human chronicle. The race had been won, the weapon had been used by those on whom civilization could best hope to depend; but the demonstration of power against living creatures instead of dead matter created a bottomless wound in the living conscience of the race. The rational mind had won the most Promethean of its conquests over nature, and had put into the hands of common man the fire and force of the sun itself.

Was man equal to the challenge? In an instant, without warning, the present had become the unthinkable future. Was there hope in that future, and if so, where did hope lie?

Even as men saluted the greatest and most grimly Pyrrhic of victories in all the gratitude and good spirit they could muster, they recognized that the discovery which had done most to end the worst of wars might also, quite conceivably, end all wars—if only man could learn its control and use.

The promise of good and of evil bordered alike on the infinite— with this further, terrible split in the fact: that upon a people already so nearly drowned in materialism even in peacetime, the good uses of this power might easily bring disaster as prodigious as the evil. The bomb rendered all decisions made so far, at Yalta and at Potsdam, mere trivial dams across tributary rivulets. When the bomb split open the universe and revealed the prospect of the infinitely extraordinary, it also revealed the oldest, simplest, commonest, most neglected and most important of facts: that each man is eternally and above all else responsible for his own soul, and, in the terrible words of the Psalmist, that no man may deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him.

Man's fate has forever been shaped between the hands of reason and spirit, now in collaboration, again in conflict. Now reason and spirit meet on final ground. If either or anything is to survive, they must find a way to create an indissoluble partnership.

[DerGolgo]

"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

I have my own opinions on whether, in light of historical evidence, dropping that bomb was necessary, and what Truman's motives were.
Let's just say that I bow to the wisdom of the man who knew what was going on, see above.

Before the bomb, war and destruction were bloody hard work. It took something like over 6000 airplane sorties to destroy a single chemical plant at Leuna during WW2, to wipe it out so utterly it could not be rebuilt. A single atom bomb could have done that. One bomb, on one plane. War was no longer something that would last months or years. It became a matter of hours, even minutes. And it would be deadlier and more destructive than anything ever seen before, a war after which there could be no rebuilding, no life going on anyways. Considering one's mortality took on a whole new meaning.
Just look at the films or books from that era. Dealing with this new, existential threat took people totally off-guard. Disease, accidents, things that everyone had grown up with and to instinctively protect oneself against or ignore, even natural disaster paled in comparison to a man-made event that would make natural disaster just pale in comparison.
After a natural disaster, refugees trek to the nearest unaffected area, or any nearby shelter, eventually the return and rebuild. After nuclear war? There is nowhere to take refuge.
Unlike the the threat of a major meteor strike, not theorized about at the time, nuclear war was (and actually, still is, to some extend) an imminent, real threat.
The bomb, in a way, has finally made man master of his own destiny.
Before, the idea of wiping out all of mankind in one fell swoop was too fantastic to even comprehend. But then came the atom bomb, and the hydrogen bomb, and the nuclear missile, the ICBM, the MIRV, the pushbutton war, overkill, fallout, all of that.
For the first time in all of history, mankind could, if it so chose, commit suicide as a species. Problem is that the power to actually make that decision rests in just a few hands.
Consider it: A single man can decide whether mankind continues or ends this afternoon. That's the kind of batshit crazy situation only the human mind could come up with.

Would the world be better off without the bomb? Would we have seen decades of terrible "conventional" war without the balance of terror? I don't know. All I know is, I look at the news headlines and it sure looks like that, after 65 years of the existence of the entire species hanging by a slim thread, no one has learned a damn thing.

[Bigshankhank]

So DerG, all that being said, does that mean you are, or are not, wearing pants?

[DerGolgo]

So DerG, all that being said, does that mean you are, or are not, wearing pants?

You better believe I am.

[Pintgudge]

With belt AND suspenders!

[MoraleHazard]

Considering it's a video game, I know it's make-believe, but the visuals and universe in fallout 3 does a pretty good job of rendering a creepy 1950s Atomic Age/World of Tomorrow like feel.

Interesting also that Time quoted the Bible and referred to King David as the Psalmist. Bet that hasn't been done in Time mag for at least three decades.

[FastCat]

Wow. The "educated" people sure do talk funny...

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