“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” So said J. Robert Oppenheimer, the haunted midwife of the nuclear bomb. He was recollecting what it was like to witness the explosion in the image above, the Trinity test.
Somehow we have been ignoring the Damoclean elephant in the room. Instead, the West has been losing its mind over burping ruminants alongside identity based aspirational victimhood. We did so while functionally disregarding the nuclear demon that had never gone away.
Alas, perhaps Putin’s nuclear sabre rattling in recent months has provided a little existential perspective in a way that the Wuhan plague had failed to instil. Has Putin, at Ukraine’s great expense, done wider humanity somewhat of a favour? Have a few more of us woken up to humanity’s absurd situation as bald primates with greater destructive capability than mythic gods? Thor’s lighting strikes and hammer swings, after all, are benign tickles in comparison to unleashing the power of the sun on Japanese cities in 1945.
More ridiculous yet, the thermonuclear devices created in the early 1950s are more powerful than every single bomb deployed throughout World War 2, by all sides combined, including the “Little Boy” and the “Fat Man” dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.
If you are someone who wishes to learn more about this situation—one that is as terrifyingly upsetting as it is fascinatingly engaging—there are some resources below that may be of use. I have been interested in this topic for some time and so have taken liberty to include a few of my own pieces of content. After that, I have included two complimentary resources that may be of interest to the reader.
Key nuclear war related content of my own:
The Continued Danger of Nuclear War for Areo Magazine (6-8 minute read)
This piece of mine was published in October of 2021, 5 month before Putin’s “de-Nazifying” excursion. It is a short <1500 word introduction to the topic of nuclear war that is full of relevant links.
UKRAINE AND THE OTHER SIDE OF CLIMATE CHANGE for Gript.ie (5-7 minute read)
This is another relatively short piece of mine that was first published here on Substack on Feb 22nd 2022, just 2 days before Putin Invaded Ukraine. It was then republished by Gript on Feb 26th, the day before Putin first explicitly rattled the nuclear sabre. It focusses on the ludicrously disproportionate allotment of time and resources toward gradual global warming compared to the almost no resources allotted toward nuclear weapon induced sudden global cooling.
The Last of Our Blue Skies (16-20 minute read)
This was written in the fortnight or so after the possibility of nuclear war, once again, became part of the news cycle. After spending so much time thinking about, writing on, and discussing this topic, it was quite a surreal experience to have this issue come to life. Never had I felt a greater desire to have been wrong about something.
The Last of Our Blue skies is written almost like a diary entry. It is a quasi-fictional attempt to make sense of how we got to where an all too likely nuclear catastrophe seems to have snuck up on us. Writing this was a deeply grounding and gratifying exercise that probably saved me a lot of money on psychotherapy.
LTD #31 Ukraine and the Red Line Gamble with Prof Gordon Marino (podcast)
In this episode of the podcast, myself and Ian are joined for the 2nd time by Prof Marino. Our discussion revolved around two articles; one by Prof Marino for the Institute of Art and Ideas, and one by me here on Substack.
Key nuclear weapon related content from others:
Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection by Xia and colleagues in Nature Magazine from mid Aug 2022
The authors include Robock and Toon who were two of the main scientists involved in discovering nuclear winter back in the 80s. Here is some of the abstract:
“Atmospheric soot loadings from nuclear weapon detonation would cause disruptions to the Earth’s climate, limiting terrestrial and aquatic food production…We estimate more than 2 billion people could die from nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia—underlining the importance of global cooperation in preventing nuclear war.
This podcast is from Sept 2019. It involves two men who are dedicated to figuring out how to feed people in the event of catastrophic scenarios such as nuclear weapon induced global cooling. Here is a taster quote from this fascinating chat:
“Even though there is more focus on preventing a catastrophe than there is on resilience to the catastrophe, overall the field is highly neglected. As someone pointed out, there are still more publications on dung beetles than there are on preventing or dealing with global catastrophic risks. But I would say that the particular sub-field of resilience to the catastrophes is even more neglected. That’s why I think it’s a high priority to investigate.”
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In parting, here is some beautiful Cold War wisdom from Dr King that I often like to quote:
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction…The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars begetting more wars – must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”
Love,
Ciaran.