Our culture is fascinated by Nuclear technology. And why not? It’s that quintessential bit of science that could easily swing one way or the other, be used for good or for evil, another unwieldly power that we apes probably shouldn’t be tampering with. But we do, and have, and will. Pandora’s box has indeed been opened, the world’s (if not America’s) infatuation with the devices sealed with a “boom”.
Nuclear tech can mainly be used in one positive way: to fuel a vast electrical grid, the raw force of nuclear fission releasing unbelievable amounts of energy. It can also be weaponized, however, the obliterative destructiveness being felt for generations in both the population and environment (similar to how a testical kick may heal but is never really forgotten). Somewhere in the middle of black and white lies the “gray area”, the proliferation of nuclear warships and subs powered by their own personal reactors enforcing peace indirectly (assumedly with less silhouettes of Japanese civilians blasted onto the walls). Another example of this “gray” might be the nuclear meltdowns from an exploded power station, once benign landmarks wreaking havoc in the form of a Chernobyl or Fukushima Daiichi tragedy.
Complementing this stark reality, we use Nuclear Weapons in our fiction and fantasy, all manner of references running rampant in video games and Tom Clancy novels. I’m not so certain that the people of the Dune universe, 100,000 years in the future, would still be enraptured with the mindless “atomics” as we seem to be, but still they’re in there. Nukes pervade our fiction easily, and with [mostly] the finality of a traditional Doomsday. So many stories end with a nuke. In fact, proper utilization of the device is a game ender in both Starcraft and Supreme Commander matches, and no amount of resource trading will heal the wound between a player and Ghandi once he nukes your main production city in Civilization. One of the simplest, most enjoyable indie games “Defcon” has a player inducing mass-extinction in a “War Games”-inspired bid for human depopulation. No Matthew Brodericking, however, will stave off our own actual destruction if that is how it is all intended to go down.
With such an awesome power to wield, it would be impossible to extricate the “coolness” of Nukes from our culture, not with this degree of fanaticism at play. We love the very idea of it, which is appropriately huge, so a full disarmament of both concept and weapons is assuredly impossible. The “nuclear solution” has been heralded as mankind’s end even after it had been first introduced to this awestruck planet. Many people recognized the validity of that fear and lobbied for international respect, although START 1 barely reduced American/Russian stockpiles to above 1500 warheads…. per country.
It’s almost as if we’re writing the ending to our own story, an infuriatingly self-prophesized ending that is up there with Artificial Intelligence research, despite authors’ interpretations of a robot uprising. Hell, why don’t we go for the gold, to accomplish both dystopian futures in bringing our civilization to its knees? Anyone else up for the fantastically horrifying carnage wreaked as intelligent robots detonate nuclear weapons, ashen bodies flying apart like in Terminator 2? All of this gloom, ALL OF THIS DOOM, and yet the gibbering gibbon of an ex-president “Dubya” and [vice-president hopeful] Palin can’t even pronounce the name of this weapon correctly. (But Iraq most certainly had them, damn it. Nobody but US can play with our toys.)
It’s been awhile since the start of it all, long enough for some of us to forget about those frightening mushroom cloud videos since (like shuttle launches) we take much of the footage and capabilities for granted. Nukes are terrible, terrible things that have the potential to kill so many people in the blink of an eye, but the lasting effects in the way of deformities, cancers, and other sicknesses can render a whole area unlivable for decades, even lifetimes. We collectively weep for those lost in a school shooting, scream obscenities at an entire race who knocked down a couple buildings, but a nuclear bomb attack could be much much worse, and there’s thousands of them out there. No matter who is on the receiving end, we all lose.
Global Nuclear Stockpile graph:
http://www.ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report
Do you ever get upset when hearing about another country acquiring “The Bomb”? Do you ever get riled up when a politician mentions a FOREIGN nuclear attack on American soil? In this haunting presentation, a Japanese artist has rendered every real-life explosion to date, each accompanied by a blipping frequency for its country of origin. It’s an 8 Bit symphony of actual destruction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfwFN6OZ8HM
If only we could unlearn things without eradicating the knowers….