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. . . ATOM BOMB/ATOMIC POWER see "WAR & PEACE" for related links see also: "PHYSICS" It is certain that Europe would have been communized and London would have been under bombardment some time ago, but for the deterrent of the atomic bomb in the hands of the United States. --Winston Churchill (18741965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [19401945, 19511955]. [25 March 1949] in Martin Gilbert _Never Despair_ [1988] p.464. - In the spring of 1943 a very small dribble of odd-looking tourists arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the first capital of New Spain in North America. They came one at a time, and they never met together as a group in public. They were under instruction not to call each other by their professional titles, either doctor or professor. They were a secret team of refugees and native American and British scientists who had gathered at Santa Fe before being driven off thirty miles northwest to Los Alamos. There, in the loneliness of the desert, they would brew the Apocalypse. Today their retreat looks like some old silver miner's cabin or the relic of a long-vanished road gang. It is all that is left of the base camp of this band of eminent men who built a primitive laboratory and lived and worked for two years in a secret society. They carried false driving licenses and went under assumed names. Fermi was Henry Farmer. Niels Bohr, a Dane, was Nicholas Baker. Their leader was a forty-year-old American, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, known as Oppy. They were allowed no personal contact here with their families, who could write only to a post-office box number. They lived in tar-paper shacks. The cleaning women and the other routine job workers were chosen for their illiteracy, in case they came on an engineering tool or a formula on a scrap of paper. A United States Senator whose investigating committee had achieved some fame for exposing fraud and extravagance in war costs was forbidden by President Roosevelt even to question the huge expenditures on this mysterious project or to find out what it was all about. It was about, of course, the atomic bomb. This team had worked for eighteen months or so on the theoretical construction of the bomb, and at Los Alamos they spent another two years making it. Until the end they didn't know whether it would go off or, if it did, whether they could absolutely control the nuclear chain reaction. They were 99.9 percent sure, but between the theory and the proof there was one tenth of one percent possibility of the end of all of us. The test site had to be as far as possible from settled country. It had to be a flat horizon to minimize the effects of the blast. It had to have reliably fine weather and only light winds. It had to be close enough to Los Alamos to be within an easy day's ride, but far enough away to discourage conjecture that the bomb and the secret work at Los Alamos were connected. The chosen place was over two hundred miles due south from Los Alamos on a part of the Alamogordo bombing range in a blinding stretch of desert. The team's waking misgivings were not pacified by the Spanish name for this country, which was where disabled Spanish wagon trains could expect no help and were left to die. Three hundred years earlier the Spaniards' route across this country had been dubbed the jornada del muerto, the "journey of death." The final assembly of the bomb began on July 12, 1945, in an old ranch house. Two days later, they had it mounted on a hundred-foot tower.They locked in the central core of the bomb, and by the night of the fifteenth they were ready. There then blew in a tremendous storm of thunder and crashing hailstones, a final explosion of defiance of the elements they could not control. But at last the thunder rumbled away and the rain stopped, and before dawn on the sixteenth they retreated to observation shelters of reinforced concrete built ten thousand yards south, west, and north of the firing point. Trucks stood by for an emergency retreat, to be conducted by drivers who knew the desert roads by night. As the countdown started they stretched face down on the ground, with their feet towards the blast, and they covered their eyes. In one of the shelters Oppenheimer was seen to hold to a post to steady his shaking body. At 5:29 and 45 seconds in the morning on July 16, 1945, there was an immense flash of light, brighter than any they had ever seen, shocking all the color out of the sage and the red soil and the mountains. There was a single thunderclap, and at the site itself an inferno of flames was sucked into a rising pillar of smoke, which then billowed into a vast mushroom and slowly dissipated in the high winds. The prostrate scientists were stunned out of all professional pride. Oppenheimer could think only of a line from a Hindu poem: "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." Three weeks later, the shattered city of Hiroshima began to count one hundred thousand dead, and three days after that Nagasaki received the second bomb. The decision to drop the bomb was made on the fearful calculation that an invasion of Japan might confront five million defenders and five thousand suicide aircraft and cost up to two million American lives.That decision was made by the man who had been permanently forbidden to look into the atomic project, by that one-time Senator who, when Roosevelt dropped dead in April 1945, was now President Truman. So the Second World War ended in a flash "brighter than a thousand suns." When the Japanese were led aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay to surrender, the American commander in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, said it in four resonant words: "These proceedings are closed." --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] - No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent. --Charles de Gaulle (18901970) French soldier and statesman, President [19591969]. Quoted in the _New York Times_ [1968]. I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth rocks! --Albert Einstein (18791955) German-American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. From an interview with Alfred Werner, in _Liberal Judaism_ 16 (April-May 1949), p. 12. Thirty seconds after the explosion came, first the air blast pressing hard against people and things, to be followed almost immediately by the strong, sustained awesome roar which warned of doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blaphemous to dare temper with the forces heretofore reserved to The Almighty. --Thomas Farrell (18921967) General Farrell worked on the Manhattan Project. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/atomictest.htm http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/trinity/tr_test.html ^ History mainly remembers Vannevar Bush, if at all, as the man who briefed Harry Truman about what Truman described as 'a scientist's version of the atomic bomb' after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death in April of 1945. Until that moment, Truman knew nothing of the ultrasecret atomic bomb project. 'Admiral Leahy was with me when Dr. Bush told me this astonishing fact,' Truman recalled in his memoirs. He was referring to Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, who had served as Roosevelt's personal chief of staff, presiding over wartime meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Truman vividly remembered the admiral's instantaneous reaction to Bush's Oval Office briefing, delivered in Leahy's 'sturdy, salty manner.' 'This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done,' the admiral told the president as Bush listened. 'The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.' --Haynes Johnson (1931 ) American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. _The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001] ^ We have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate. --Martin Luther King, Jr. (19291968) American civil rights leader. _Strength to Love_ [1963], ch. 13 The Atomic Age began at exactly 5:30 Mountain War Time on the morning of July 16, 1945 on a stretch of semi-desert land about 50 airline miles from Alamogordo, New Mexico. And just at that instance there rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one. --William L. Laurence (18881977) Lithuanian-born American journalist. _New York Times_ [26 September 1945] We will all go together when we go, All suffused with an incandescent glow ... When the air becomes uranious, We will all go simultaneous, Oh, we all will go together when we go. --Tom Lehrer (1928 ) American songwriter and satirist. "We Will All Go Together When We Go" [1953] - We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. --J. Robert Oppenheimer (19041967) American physicist and the director of the Manhattan Project. (Recalling the explosion of the first atomic bomb near Alamogordo, New Mexico on 16 July 1945.) I remember the line from the Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita. . . 'I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.' (On the explosion of the first atomic bomb near Alamogordo, New Mexico [16 July 1945].) --J. Robert Oppenheimer (19041967) American physicist and the director of the Manhattan Project. In Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed _The Decision to Drop the Bomb_ [1965]. - The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. --Lord Ernest Rutherford (18711937) British physicist and winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize. {September 1933, soon after the first experimental splitting of the atom - Q} - ..Of course, nuclear intelligence-gathering during the Cold War was not confined to Russia. Mr. Richelson tells of U.S. efforts to track nukes in a host of other countries, from communist China to Israel and France. He also devotes chapters to the nuclear ambitions of recent rogue states, including Iraq, North Korea, Libya and Iran. It would be nice to report that, given such efforts, we have routinely found out a great deal about the nuclear programs of foreign powers, especially those of our enemies. But our intelligence services -- although lavishly funded and staffed by smart scientists and engineers have often been in the dark about crucial facts. Among other milestones of the nuclear age that they failed to foresee were the first Soviet A-bomb test, the first Soviet H-bomb test, the first Chinese nuclear test and the first Indian nuclear test. On the eve of the first Persian Gulf War, our political leaders assumed that Iraq had a long way to go before building a nuclear bomb, only to discover, after the war, that Iraqi scientists were remarkably close to turning the final screw on one. When Pakistan's top scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, established what was in effect an open-air bazaar to market nuclear-weapons technology to rogue states throughout the 1990s, the U.S. did not have a clue. --Gabriel Schoenfeld, reviewing Jeffrey T. Richelson _Spying On The Bomb_ in the "Wall Street Journal" [22 March 2006]. - Nature is neutral. Man has wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert or to make the desert bloom. There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls. --Adlai E. Stevenson (19001965) American Democratic politician. Speech in Hartford, Connecticut [18 September 1952]. Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter. --Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss (18961974) American businessman who was Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission [19531958]. Speech on atomic energy [16 September 1954]. As the man who commanded the last atomic mission, I pray that I retain that singular distinction. --Charles Sweeney (1919-2004) (The pilot of the B-29 bomber nicknamed "Bock's Car" that dropped a plutonium bomb dubbed "Fat Man" on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. In _War's End: An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission_ [1997].) This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. . . .It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful. --Harry S. Truman (18841972) American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [19451953]. In his diary [25 July 1945] -- "Hiroshima" Editorial in "The Wall Street Journal" August 5, 2005 Today or August 6 in Japan is the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which killed outright an estimated 80,000 Japanese and hastened World War II to its conclusion on August 15. Those of us who belong to the postwar generations tend to regard the occasion as a somber, even shameful, one. But that's not how the generation of Americans who actually fought the war saw it. And if we're going to reflect seriously about the bomb, we ought first to think about it as they did. In 1945, Paul Fussell was a 21-year-old second lieutenant who'd spent much of the previous year fighting his way through Europe. At the time of Hiroshima, he was scheduled to participate in the invasion of the Japanese mainland, for which the Truman Administration anticipated casualties of between 200,000 and one million Allied soldiers. No surprise, then, that when news of the bomb reached Lt. Fussell and his men, they had no misgivings about its use: "We learned to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, and for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live." Mr. Fussell was writing about American lives. What about Japanese lives? The Japanese army was expected to fight to the last man, as it had during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Since the ratio of Japanese to American combat fatalities ran about four to one, a mainland invasion could have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths -- and that's not counting civilians. The March 1945 Tokyo fire raid killed about 100,000; such raids would have intensified had the war dragged on. The collective toll from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings is estimated at between 110,000 and 200,000. * * * Nuclear weapons are often said to pose a unique threat to humanity, and in the wrong hands they do. But when President Truman gave the go-ahead to deploy Fat Man and Little Boy, what those big bombs chiefly represented was salvation: salvation for young Lt. Fussell and all the GIs; salvation for the tens of thousands of Allied POWs the Japanese intended to execute in the event of an invasion; salvation for the grotesquely used Korean "comfort women"; salvation for millions of Asians enslaved by the Japanese. Not least, and despite the terrible irony, the bombings were salvation for Japan, since they prompted Emperor Hirohito to intervene with his bitterly divided government to end the war, thus laying the groundwork for America's beneficent occupation and the country's subsequent prosperity. [ . . . ] The same can be said about nuclear weapons in other contexts. America's nuclear arsenal helped thwart Soviet expansionism and provided the umbrella under which Western Europe and the Asian rim countries became and remained free throughout the Cold War. For embattled Israel, nuclear weapons have not only helped guarantee its existence, they have paradoxically provided it with the margin of strength it needs to contemplate territorial concessions unimaginable for other states its size. Of course, for every Pershing missile that helped keep Western Europe free, a Soviet SS-20 helped keep Eastern Europe captive. In the hands of democracies, nuclear weapons safeguard liberty; in the hands of dictatorships, they safeguard despotism. It's doubtful the Soviet Union could have survived as long as it did had it never developed nuclear weapons. That's true for North Korea today, and it explains why the mullahs of Tehran seek to bolster their faltering regime with an atomic bomb. Also true is that the threat nuclear weapons pose today is probably greater than ever before. That's not because they're more plentiful thanks to the 2002 Moscow Treaty (negotiated by John Bolton), U.S. and Russian arsenals are being cut to levels not seen in 40 years. It's because nuclear know-how and technology have fallen into the hands of men such as A.Q. Khan and Kim Jong Il, and they, in turn, are but one degree of separation away from the jihadists who may someday detonate a bomb in Times or Trafalgar Square. * * * Reflecting on this history, there's a tendency to wax melancholic about the dangers of letting the proverbial genie out of his bottle, and to suggest we stuff him back in. Thus the reflexive opposition by Democrats and some Republicans to developing new nuclear weapons such as the "bunker buster" and to the resumption of nuclear testing. The Senate has even zeroed out of the President's budget funding for a high-powered laser that would help gauge the reliability of the U.S. arsenal without testing. We also frequently hear calls for the U.S. to lead by example by further reducing its arsenal, and for the Bush Administration to "strengthen" the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by agreeing to the useless Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Yet the notion that the nuclear genie can be willed out of existence through the efforts of right-thinking people is as absurd as it is wrongheaded. Just as guns and knives will be with us forever, so too will the bomb. We need bunker busters because North Korea and Iran are using underground facilities to build weapons that threaten us, and we must be able credibly to threaten in return. We need to have nuclear tests because the reliability of our principal warhead, the W-76, has been seriously called into question, and China must not be enticed to compete with us as a nuclear power. In neither case does the U.S. set a "bad example." Rather, it demonstrates the same capacity for moral self-confidence that carried America through World War II and must now carry us through the war on terror. Looking back after 60 years, who cannot be grateful that it was Truman who had the bomb, and not Hitler or Tojo or Stalin? And looking forward, who can seriously doubt the need for might always to remain in the hands of right? That is the enduring lesson of Hiroshima, and it is one we ignore at our peril.  . . see: "CHARACTER ASSASINATION" see: "DEFENSE" see: "WAR & PEACE" ----- aggress [uh-GRES], intransitive verb: To commit the first act of hostility or offense; to make an attack. depredation [dep-ruh-DAY-shun], noun: 1. An act of plundering or despoiling; a raid. 2. [Plural] Destructive operations; ravages. Ex.: For the moment, Kioni remains a precious fragment of the old Mediterranean, the one that existed before the depredations of pollution and crass, exploitative development. --Andrew Powell, "Hellenic heaven," _Harper's Bazaar_, [1 August 1994] iconoclast (noun) [I-'kahn-๊-klๆs] Someone who attacks or violates cherished beliefs and institutions; someone who destroys sacred images. impugn [im-PYOON], transitive verb: To attack by words or arguments; to call in question; to make insinuations against; to oppose or challenge as false. waylay [WAY-lay], transitive verb: 1. To lie in wait for and attack from ambush. 2. To approach or stop (someone) unexpectedly. . . see: "AWARENESS" see: "LISTENING" see: "OBSERVATION" Cultivate the habit of attention and try to gain opportunities to hear wise men and women talk. Indifference and inattention are the two most dangerous monsters that you ever meet. Interest and attention will insure to you an education. --Robert A. Millikan (18681953) American physicist - winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize for physics. Nature has given us two ears, two eyes and but one tongue, to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak. --Socrates (470?399 B.C.) Greek philosopher. In Robert Christy _Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages_, p. 77 [1887]. ----- assiduous [uh-SIJ-oo-uhs], adjective: 1. Constant in application or attention; devoted; attentive. 2. Performed with constant diligence or attention; unremitting. distrait [dis-TRAY], adjective: Divided or withdrawn in attention, especially because of anxiety. ;void(0)) ATTIRE . . see: "THE BODY" (Dress & Fashion particularly) The inhabitants [of Melbourne] looked as if they had been clothed in some gigantic relief operation carried out in the dark. --Robert Morley (19081992) English actor. (In 1973.) ----- dapper (adj.) ['dๆ-p๊(r)] Neat, trim, jaunty, spiffy, snazzy, spruce in appearance, i.e. smartly groomed and dressed; Applied to males only. . . . see "BELIEF" for related links see "THE MIND" for related links see "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for other related links - I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as an habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. --Joseph Addison (16721719) English essayist, poet, and dramatist. _The Spectator_, #381 [17 May 1712] A cheerful temper, joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured. --Joseph Addison (16721719) English essayist, poet, and dramatist. _The Tatler_ #192 - A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. --Herm Albright (18761944) An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. --G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (18741936) English essayist, novelist, and poet. _All Things Considered_ [1908] "On Running After Ones Hat" A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. --Hugh Downs (1921 ) American televison host. In Roy B. Zuck _The Speaker's Quote Book: Over 4,500 Illustrations_, p. 185 [1997]. Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them. --Epictetus (55135) Greek philosopher. The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. --William James (18421910) American philosopher. In Paul W. Brand _The Gift of Pain: Why We Hurt & What We Can Do_, p. 234 [1997]. If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. --Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121180) Roman emperor [161180] and Stoic philosopher. _Meditations_, trans. Maxwell Staniforth [1964] A lament in one ear, maybe; but always a song in the other. And to me life is simply an invitation to live. --Sean O'Casey (18801964) Irish dramatist and memorist. In David A. Wilson _Ireland, a Bicycle, and a Tin Whistle_, p. 1 [1995]. Drove up a newcomer in a covered wagon: "What kind of folks live around here?" "Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?" "Well, they was mostly a lowdown, lying, thieving gossiping, backbiting kind lot of people." "Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of folks you'll find around here." And the dusty gray stranger had just about blended into the dusty gray cottonwoods in a clump on the horizon when another newcomer drove up: "What kind of folks live around here?" "Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?" "Well, they was mostly a decent, hardworking, lawabiding, friendly lot of people." "Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of folks you'll find around here." --Carl Sandburg (18781967) American poet. _The People, Yes_ [1936] The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, gift, or skill. It will make or break a company...a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you... We are in charge of our attitudes. --Charles R. Swindoll (1934 ) American evanegelical Christian pastor. If you can't change your fate, change your attitude. --Amy Tan (1952 ) American writer. In John Cook _The Book of Positive Quotations_, p. 252 [2007]. As long as you're going to think anyway, think big. --Donald Trump (1946 ) American business executive and entrepreneur. In Stephen Sutherland and Paul Sutherland _The Fast Track to Financial Independence_, p 387. 1890: Old man in tuxedo: "As long as they don't think I'm poor..." 1980: Old man in tennis togs: "As long as they don't think I'm old..." --Tom Wolfe (1931 ) American journalist and novelist. Two-panel cartoon. - A narrow mind and a fat head invariably come on the same person. --Zig [Hilary Hinton] Ziglar (1926 ) American author and motivational speaker. Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude. --Zig [Hilary Hinton] Ziglar (1926 ) American author and motivational speaker. You cannot tailor-make the situations in life, but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations. --Zig [Hilary Hinton] Ziglar (1926 ) American author and motivational speaker. - ----- ambivalent (adj.) [ๆm-'bi-v๊-l๊nt] Referring to the coexistence of contradictory attitudes (as love and hatred) towards a person or thing. animus (noun) ['ๆn-i-m๊s] (1) A disposition or attitude that motivates someone's behavior; (2) a concealed hostility or rancor toward someone or something. . . Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide my under the shadow of thy wings. --Bible "Psalms" 17:8 'Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street. --Rudyard Kipling (18651936) English writer and poet. _Traffics and Discoveries_ [1904], "Mrs. Bathurst" ----- cynosure [SY-nuh-shoor; SIN-uh-shoor], noun: 1. Anything to which attention is strongly turned; a center of attraction. 2. That which serves to guide or direct. Ex.: Lucy is very pretty and becomes the cynosure not only of the aforementioned characters, but also of several faceless and epicene young men who also loiter about. --John Simon, "Stealing Beauty," _National Review_, [15 July 1996] end page | ABILITY - ABUSE | ACADEMY AWARDS - ACCUSTOMED | ACHIEVEMENT - ACQUAINTANCE | ACTIONS | ACTORS / ACTING | ACTUARIES - ADVERSARIES | ADVERSITY - ADVERTISING | ADVICE | AFFAIRS - AFGHANISTAN | AGE | AGNOSTICS - AIRPLANES | ALCOHOL | ALIBI - AMBITION | AMERICA PAGE 1 (A-M) | AMERICA PAGE 2 (N-Z) | AMERICANS | AMERICAN INDIANS | AMERICAN REVOLUTION | AMUSEMENT - ANCESTORS | ANGER | ANIMAL RIGHTS & ANIMALS | ANIMOSITIES - APATHY | APOLOGY & APPEARANCE | APPEASEMENT | APPLAUSE - APRIL | ARCHAEOLOGISTS - ARCHITECTURE | ARGUMENT | ARISTOCRACY - ART | ASHAMED - ASTROLOGY | ATHEISM | ATOM BOMB - ATTRACTION | AUSTRALIA | AUTHORITY - AUTOMOBILES | AUTUMN - AWARENESS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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