A mushroom of boiling dust up to 20,000 feet. (Pilot of the B-29, Enola Gay, from which the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, August 5, 1945)
Nuclear Quotes
Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima… The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. (First announcement of the atomic bomb, August 6, 1945)
A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about atoms.
Certainly it seems now that nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands. Yet the broad facts must […]
We Americans, we’re a simple people… but piss us off, and we’ll bomb your cities.
It’s Christmas at Ground Zero The button has been pressed The radio Just let us know That this is not a test Everywhere the atom bombs are droppin’ It’s the end of all humanity No more time for last minute shoppin’ It’s time to face your final destiny. It’s Christmas at Ground Zero Now the […]
One member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff… argued that we could use nuclear weapons, on the basis that our adversaries would use theirs against us in an attack. I thought, as I listened, of the many times that I had heard the military take positions which, if wrong, had the advantage that no one […]
Considering how likely we all are to be blown to pieces by it within the next five years, the atomic bomb has not roused so much discussion as might have been expected. The newspapers have published numerous diagrams, not very helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff… But curiously little […]
In the late 1950s, we were deep in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. We were building bomb shelters in our back yards. I have personal memories of going with my father to the bomb-shelter dealer to view their ghoulish wares. I was too young to truly appreciate their implications, but […]
Some argue that the U.S. could have demonstrated the bomb on an uninhabited island, or could have encouraged surrender by promising that Japan could keep its emperor. Yes, perhaps, and we should have tried. We could also have waited longer before dropping the second bomb, on Nagasaki. But, sadly, the record suggests that restraint would […]
