Since 1930, physicists have penetrated the innermost parts of matter and have found forces and energies that normally are inactive here on Earth. These are "cosmic" forces in the real sense of the word: the energy of the sun is driven by these forces; the explosions of supernovas, and other cataclysmic phenomena, are caused by them.

There are, of course, natural radioactive substances, but these are not a true part of the Earth's contemporary environment. They are the leftovers of a much earlier time, the last embers of a cosmic fire in which our terrestrial matter was created 7 billion years ago. By delving into these inner nuclear energies, we are dealing with an order of magnitude much higher than in any other terrestrial form of energy. A chemical process—even the strongest chemical explosion—releases only a millionth, per atom, of the energy released in nuclear processes such as fission or fusion. So when these energies were first applied by human beings, the strength of technology immediately grew by a factor of a million.

It was only 40 years ago that we began to develop this process, and World War II exerted special pressure on this country to apply these great energies to weapons that would enable us to win the war. Many scientists, including myself, collaborated in this effort because of the danger—a clear and present danger at that time—that people like Hitler and political systems like Nazism would get hold of such weapons before we did.

I was present on July 16, 1945, when the first atomic bomb was exploded in the desert in southern New Mexico. And while wearing sunglasses, I watched it: the amount of light released was 20 times more intense than midday sunlight. Two days later, I drove a jeep to the place where the bomb was exploded. My passengers were Hans Bethe, Enrico Fermi, Robert Oppenheimer, and General Leslie Groves (the military leader of the project). We found the desert sand molten and glazed over a radius of about 200 yards. And General Groves's remark was, "Is that all?" He probably expected a hole to the center of the earth.

Three weeks later, one plane—the Enola Gay—flew over Hiroshima and dropped another such bomb on that city. Allied planes had been routinely making "fire raids" over the cities of Japan around that time, but the effect of this one bomb was worse than the damage inflicted by a thousand such planes: 100 thousand people were dead immediately, and many died soon afterward of diseases and other effects. That was only an "old-fashioned" bomb, the equivalent of 20 thousand tons of TNT. Nowadays, we have modernized A-bombs and H-bombs, fission and fusion bombs with yields up to many megatons, with effects correspondingly greater.

Thinking The Unthinkable

Let us suppose that one relatively big bomb—a 20-megaton bomb—fell on the center of Boston. The result would be no more city, but a crater about half a mile in diameter and 200 feet deep. Out to almost two miles, the fireball, which would have stopped growing at that radius, would bathe the surface in an atmosphere of incandescent air. Temperatures at ground level would be a few thousand degrees for the first 15 seconds or so until the fireball started to rise. And within a radius of four miles there would be total destruction: everything would be rubble. Farther out, to a radius of six miles, strong concrete buildings would probably remain standing, but all frame and brick buildings would be destroyed or badly damaged. Up to fifteen miles from the center, frame buildings—most private homes—would be beyond repair.

There would be other destructive effects. Within the first 4 miles, everybody would be dead—about 750,000 people. People within 20 miles of the center could suffer second-degree burns. Flammable materials would instantly catch fire. At distances up to 40 miles, those who looked at the detonation could be blinded forever from the flash. The blast wave would be followed by winds of hundreds of miles per hour, fanning the fires over large distances. Fire storms much worse than those in the Second World War could develop up to 20 miles from the center. Within the fire storm, one could estimate that another 1.5 million people would die, for a total of over 2.2 million people. And the survivors would be badly burned.

These are all short-range, short-term effects; consider also the radiation effects. If you are exposed to more than 600 roentgens (R), you die. And the 600-R limit, depending on whether the bomb exploded near the ground or higher up, can extend as far as five or six miles. When the bomb explodes on the ground, materials at ground level are hurled into the air, absorb large amounts of radioactivity, and then fall down after about half an hour, covering the ground with a radioactive blanket. So if you survive the blast—if you are in a "shelter" you must remain inside for several more days. You thus cannot help other people, and the shelter's provisions, if indeed there are any, may not be adequate to sustain you.

This whole scenario is "unthinkable": it is impossible to think rationally about what would happen under such conditions. And that is only one bomb.

Now let's ask an obvious question: If there are 10,000 strategic weapons, and 200 can destroy all cities with over 100,000 population, don't we have a tremendous oversupply? The number of nuclear weapons seems completely irrational, but these arsenals weren't created overnight—they have resulted from a step-by-step, upwardly spiralling arms race. The large numbers enable one side to destroy many of the other's missile-launching sites in a "first strike." However, I have never understood, and I don't think anybody else quite understands, what the sense of such an action would be.

The principle to be clearly impressed upon our leaders is that nuclear weapons—including tactical weapons—are no weapons of war.

A miracle may be needed to avoid the holocaust, but this miracle must happen.

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