by P. D. Smith
9. Atomic Energy Commission, ‘What Would Happen to Washington Under Atomic Attack?’, in The H Bomb (New York: Didier, 1950), 34–40, here 36 (emphasis in original).
10. Atomic Alert (Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, 1951).
11. Clement Atlee, ‘Memorandum by the Prime Minister’, 28 Aug. 1945;UK Public Record Office, CAB 130/3; quoted in Peter Hennessy, The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (London: Penguin, 2003), 46.
12. Ernest Bevin’s comment was made during discussions in the Cabinet Committee on Atomic Energy (GEN 75)on 25 Oct. 1946, as recalled by Sir Michael Perrin on Timewatch, BBC 2, 29 Sep. 1982; quoted in Hennessy, 48.
13. Hennessy, 125.
14. R. W. B. Clarke to Sir Alexander Johnston, 10 Sep. 1954; UK Public Record Office, T 227/1129.
15. Chan Davis, ‘The Nightmare’ (1946), in Gregory Benford and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds., Nuclear War (New York: Ace Books, 1988), 15.
16. ‘Ministry of Defence Imports Research Committee’, 29 Nov. 1950;UK Public Record Office, IR (50)7; in Hennessy, p. xix.
17. ‘Search of Batory Yields No Bomb; Ship is Detained Four Hours in Bay’, NYT (6 Aug. 1950), 1.
18. ‘Ministry of Defence Imports Research Committee’; in Hennessy, p. xix.
19. Robert Aldrich, dir., Kiss Me Deadly (1955, United Artists).
20. Philip Wylie, Tomorrow! (New York: Popular Library, 1963; 1st edn 1954), 6.
21. ibid., 40.
22. ibid., 209–10.
23. ibid., 211, 229, 264.
24. Dr Zorbaugh, ‘The Atom Bomb – The End or Rebirth of Civilization?’ WNEW (New York) (10 Aug. 1945); in Geddes, 174.
25. Hennessy, 151.
26. Stephen I. Schwartz, Foreword to Douglas L. Keeney, The Doomsday Scenario: The Official Doomsday Scenario Written by the United States Government During the Cold War (St Paul, Minn.: MBI Publishing, 2002), 9.
27. Keeney, 62.
28. ibid., 66.
29. ibid., 76.
30. ibid., 33.
31. Poul Anderson, Thermonuclear Warfare (Derby, Conn.: Monarch, 1963), 33.
32. Anderson, 11.
33. Victor Adamsky, interviewed in Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 514.
34. Adamsky, interviewed in Rhodes, 582.
35. Szilard, in Hans Bethe, Harrison Brown, FrederickSeitz, Leo Szilard, ‘The facts about the hydrogen bomb’ BAS, 6 (Apr. 1950), 109.
36. Report by Clark Clifford and George Elsey, Sep. 1946; in Arthur Krock, Memoirs (New York: Funk & Wagnall’s, 1968), 477–8; quoted in Rhodes, 281.
37. LeMay, quoted in David Alan Rosenberg, ‘Toward Armageddon: The Foundations of United States Nuclear Strategy, 1945-1961’, PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 95, n2; cited in Rhodes, 347.
38. Robert Wise, dir., The Day the Earth Stood Still (20 th Century Fox, 1951).
39. Fritz Leiber, ‘Coming Attraction’, Galaxy (1950); in James Gunn, ed., The Road to Science Fiction, vol. 3: From Heinlein to Here (New York: Mentor, 1979), 173.
40. Truman speaking at Blair House in July 1949; quoted in Rhodes, 363.
41. Conversation quoted in Francis Crick, Life Itself, Its Origin and Nature (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 13–14. There are many versions of this story: Otto Frisch (What Little I Remember (Cambridge University Press, 1979), 174) credits the theory of the Hungarians’ Martian origins to Fritz Houtermans, whereas Edward Teller says that a fellow Martian, Theodore von Kármán, first spread the story (Teller with Judith Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2001), 415).
42. Eugene P. Wigner and Andrew Szanton, The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner (New York: Plenum, 1992), 221.
43. Von Neumann, quoted in Rhodes, 356.
44. John Walsh, ‘A Conversation with Eugene Wigner’, Science, 181 (10 Aug. 1973), 530.
45. Wigner and Szanton, 226.
46. ibid., 262–3.
47.ibid., 263.
48. Teller, 1958; quoted in Peter Goodchild, Edward Teller: The Real Dr Strangelove (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), 275.
49. Fermi, quoted in Goodchild, 131.
50. Press reports; in ibid., 249.
51. George Cowan, Los Alamos radiochemist, interview in ibid., 322.
52. Raemer Schreiber, ‘Reminiscences’ (unpublished MS, 1991); quoted in Rhodes, 478.
53. Emilio Segrè, A Mind Always in Motion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 238; quoted in Rhodes, 416.
54. Los Alamos physicist Charles Critchfield; interview in Rhodes, 462.
55. Bethe’s recollection is recorded in William Lanouette with Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb (University of Chicago Press, 1994; 1st edn 1992), 152; ‘the inventor of all things’: Edwin M. McMillan to Wilfred Mann, 3 Jan. 1952; quoted in
J. L. Heilbron, Lawrence and his Laboratory: A History of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 199.
56. Conversation between Eisenhower and Herbert York; quoted in Good-child, 283. President Jimmy Carter was the first and only American head of state to have a qualification in nuclear physics, which he studied in the early 1950s while serving in the US Navy’s nuclear submarine programme.
57. Rhodes, 304.
58. Herbert York; interview in Goodchild, 202.
59. David E. Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal: vol. 2, The Atomic Energy Years, 1945–1950 (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 582.
60. Gregg Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 222.
61. Oppenheimer to Conant, 20 Oct. 1949; quoted in Rhodes, 391.
62. Herken, 223.
63. Rhodes, 423–4, 462.
64. Teller, quoted in Herken, 236.
65. Hans A. Bethe, ‘Comments on the History of the H-bomb’, Los Alamos Science (Fall 1982), 49.
66. S. M. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991; 1st edn 1976), 151.
67. Teller, Memoirs, 299; Ulam’s contribution: see ibid., 312–13.
68. Thomas E. Murray, Nuclear Policy for War and Peace (New York: World, 1960), 20–21.
69. Edward Teller, Energy from Heaven and Earth (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1979), 150.
70. Herbert York, interview; quoted in Rhodes, 511.
71. William Borden’s phrase; quoted in Herken, 257.
72. Senior members of the administration reached this conclusion on 30 Dec. 1952 while discussing the report ‘Armaments and American Policy’; Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. II, pt 2, 1049; quoted in Good-child, 210.
73. Herken, 262; on the Mike device, see Rhodes, 482–510.
74. Teller to Stephen White; quoted in Herken, 256. Teller subsequently denied making this comment.
75. Teller, interviewed in Mary Palevsky, Atomic Fragments: A Daughter’s Questions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 53.
76. Herken, 260.
77. Richard P. Feynman, ‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!’: Adventures of a Curious Character (New York: Norton, 1997), 132.
78. Oppenheimer in 1954; quoted in Rhodes, 389.
79. Wigner and Szanton, 174, 226, 220.
80. Frisch, 173.
81. Quoted in Lewis L. Strauss, Men and Decisions (London: Macmillan, 1963), 235.
82. William Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma (New York: Anchor, 1992), 22.
83. Fred M. Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 66.
84. Quoted in Clay Blair, Jr, ‘Passing of a Great Mind’, Life (25 Feb. 1957), 89ff.
85. John von Neumann, ‘Can We Survive Technology?’, Fortune (June 1955), 106ff; quoted in Poundstone, 182.
86. Von Neumann to Lewis Strauss, 21 Nov. 1951; quoted in Kaplan, 63.
87. Von Neumann, 10 Jan. 1955; quoted in Pou
ndstone, 184.
88. Von Neumann in 1954; quoted in Rhodes, 362.
89. William Liscum Borden, There Will Be No Time: The Revolution in Strategy (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 225.
90. NYT (4 Mar. 1956), 3.
91. See Poundstone, 189; and Norman Macrae, John von Neumann (New York: Pantheon, 1992), 331. On the Crossroads tests and incidence of disease, see Catherine Caufield, Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age (London: Penguin, 1990), 99.
92. Poundstone, 193.
93. Robert Serber, Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb, ed. Richard Rhodes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 4, n2.
94. Edward Teller, Los Alamos report from Feb. 1950, ‘On the Development of Thermonuclear Bombs’, LA-643, 16.ii.50; quoted in Rhodes, 419.
Chapter 18
1. Marshall Rosenbluth; interview in Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 541–2.
2. Lindesay Parrott, ‘Japan to Survey Radioactivity of Sea Around the Bikini Tests’, NYT (17 Apr. 1954).
3. Strauss, quoted in Catherine Caufield, Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age (London: Penguin, 1990), 115.
4. Hanson W. Baldwin, ‘H-bomb Fall-out Poses New Defense Problems’, NYT (20 Feb. 1955), IV, 10.
5. Parrott.
6. Columns Lang wrote for the New Yorker were collected in From Hiroshima to the Moon: Chronicles of Life in the Atomic Age (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959); this is from his column for June 1955 (p. 369).
7. Igor Kurchatov, Report on ‘The Danger of Atomic War’ (1954),
8. Quoted in David Hawkins et al., eds., Project Y: The Los Alamos Story (Los Angeles: Tomash, 1983; 1st edn 1947), 187.
9. Time (Nov. 1954); quoted in Caufield, 115.
10. Dwight Macdonald, ‘The Decline to Barbarism’, Policy (Sep. 1945); quoted in Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (Stony Creek, Conn.: Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), 266.
11. Kenney, quoted in Donald Porter Geddes, ed., The Atomic Age Opens (New York: Pocket Books, 1945), 33.
12. William L. Laurence, Dawn over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb (London: Museum, 1947), 9.
13. ibid., 136.
14. Carl Urbano, dir., A is for Atom (General Electric Co, 1952); downloadable from
15. Tomoyuki Tanaka, quoted in William Tsutsui, Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004),
18.
16. ibid., 29, 30.
17. ibid., 32.
18. Gordon Douglas, dir., Them! (Warner Bros, 1954).
19. ‘straws’: Jeremy Bernstein, Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma (London: Duckworth, 2004), 105; ‘as large as you wish’: ‘H-Bomb Tests End; Called a Success’, NYT (14 May 1954), 5.
20. Cabinet Committee on Defence Policy, 1 June 1954; UK Public Record Office, CAB 134/808.
21. Macmillan Diary, 26 Jan. 1955; quoted in Peter Hennessy, The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (London: Penguin, 2003), 52.
22. Winston Churchill, 8 July 1954; UK Public Record Office, CAB 128/27; quoted in Hennessy, 58.
23. Strath Report, Mar. 1955; UK Public Record Office, CAB 134/940; quoted in Hennessy, 140.
24. Strath Report, Mar. 1955; UK Public Record Office, CAB 134/940, 10.
25. ibid., 11.
26. Von Neumann, quoted in Lewis L. Strauss, Men and Decisions (London: Macmillan, 1963), 350.
27. Hans Bethe, Harrison Brown, FrederickSeitz, Leo Szilard, ‘The Facts About the Hydrogen Bomb’, BAS, 6 (Apr. 1950), 109 (Szilard speaking).
28. William L. Laurence, ‘Now Most Dreaded Weapon, Cobalt Bomb, Can Be Built’, NYT (7 Apr. 1954), 4.
29. ‘Potentialities of Cobalt Bomb’, and ‘Japanese Affected by Hydrogen Bomb’, Times (8 Apr. 1954), 9; ‘National Petition on Hydrogen Bomb’, Times (8 Apr. 1954), 6.
30. Mary M. Simpson, ‘News and Notes’, BAS, 10 (Mar. 1954), 107.
31. ‘“Cobalt Bomb” Fears’, Times (9 Sep. 1953), 7.
32. This explosion, on 14 Sep. 1957, was the first of three tests in the Antler series. On this and other UK tests, see ‘British Nuclear Testing’, http: //nuclearweaponarchive.org/Uk/UKTesting.html.
33. ‘Cobalt Bomb Use in War Scouted’, NYT (12 Apr. 1954), 20.
34. ‘Italy Seizes 9 Tons of Cobalt’, NYT (18 Apr. 1954), 10.
35. Reported in NYT (14 May 1954), 5; and ‘Experts Analyse Effects of Atomic Explosions’, Times (22 June 1954), 6.
36. Eugene J. Sleevi, ‘Civil Defense News’, BAS, 10 (May 1954), 172.
37. ‘The Hydrogen Bomb’, Times (12 Apr. 1954), 9.
38. ‘The Hydrogen Bomb’, Times (10 Apr. 1954), 7.
39. Quoted in John MacCormac, ‘Scientist Labels H-Bomb as “Crazy”’, NYT (14 May 1954), 5.
40. Strauss, quoted in ‘H-Bomb Tests End; Called a Success’, NYT (14 May 1954), 5.
41. Thomson, quoted in ‘Cobalt Bomb “Absurd as Weapon”’, Times (10 June 1954), 3.
42. Russell, quoted in ‘1954– Portrait of the Year’, Times (1 Jan. 1955), 11.
43. ibid.
44. Hahn, quoted in ‘German Scientist’s Broadcast’, Times (16 Feb. 1955),
8.
45. ‘End of World Seen with a Cobalt Bomb’, NYT (21 Feb. 1955), 12.
46. ‘The Moral Crisis’, editorial, Times (14 Mar. 1955), 9.
47. ‘Hydrogen Bomb Devastation’, Times (16 Feb. 1955), 8.
48. James Arnold, ‘Fall-out Hazard’, BAS, 11 (Feb. 1955), 52.
49. Ralph E. Lapp, ‘Global Fallout’, BAS, 11 (Nov. 1955), 339–43.
50. Harrison E. Salisbury, ‘Stevenson Asks Eisenhower Policy on Cobalt Bomb’, NYT (27 Oct. 1956), 14.
51. Allen Drury, ‘Butler and Hall Predict Victory’, NYT (29 Oct. 1956), 24.
52. ‘Atom Radiation Level “Low”’, Times (21 Apr. 1955), 6.
53. Dyson, in ‘Project Orion’ (BBC4 TV, 2002).
54. Ernest B. Schoedsack, dir., Dr Cyclops (Paramount, 1940).
55. John and Roy Boulting, dirs., Seven Days to Noon (London Films, 1950).
56. Christian Nyby, dir., The Thing from Another World (RKO, 1951). This film is often referred to as just The Thing.
57. Frederic Brown, ‘The Weapon’ (1951); in Gregory Benford and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds., Nuclear War (New York: Ace Books, 1988), 49–52.
58. Albert Camus, ‘After Hiroshima: Between Hell and Reason’, Combat (8 Aug. 1945); trans. by Ronald E. Santoni published in Philosophy Today (Spring 1988); quoted in Bird and Lifschultz, 260–61.
59. Lewis Mumford, ‘Gentlemen: You Are Mad!’, Saturday Review of Literature (2 Mar. 1946); quoted in Bird and Lifschultz, 284–7.
60. J. G. Ballard, ‘The Terminal Beach’ (New Worlds, Mar. 1964); in James Gunn, ed., The Road to Science Fiction, vol. 3: From Heinlein to Here (New York: Mentor, 1979), here 345, 357.
61. Editorial, NYT (12 Aug. 1945); in Geddes, 162.
62. Michael Avallone, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (New York: Bantam, 1970), 109, 76.
63. H. G. Wells, Mind at the End of Its Tether (London: Heinemann, 1945); quoted in Michael Coren, The Invisible Man: The Life and Liberties of H. G. Wells (London: Bloomsbury, 1993), 222.
64. Robert Barr, ‘The Doom of London’, The Idler, 2 (1893), 399, 400.
65. Densil Neve Barr, The Man with Only One Head (London: Digit Books, 1962; 1st edn 1955), 5, 30, 48.
66. ibid., 43.
67. Philip Wylie, Tomorrow! (New York: Popular Library, 1963; 1st edn 1954), 272.
68. ibid., 273–4.
69. ibid., 274, 286.
70. Agatha Christie, Destination Unknown (Glasgow: Fontana, 1975; 1st edn 1954), 9. Many thanks to Rebecca Hurst for bringing this novel to my attention.
71. ibid., 49, 55.
72. William Tenn, ‘The Sickness’, Infinity Science Fiction (Nov. 1955); in William Tenn, Time in Advance (London: Panther, 1966), 96.
73. Nevil Shute, On the Beach (London: Heinemann, 1957), 40, 89.
74. Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 218.
75. Stanley Kramer, dir., On the Beach (MGM, 1959).
76. Shute, 268–9.
77. Whitley Strieber, The Day After Tomorrow (London: Gollancz, 2004),
249.
78. Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (London: Heinemann, 1991), 952.
79. Edward Teller with Judith Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2001), 445.
80. Edward Teller with Albert L. Latter, Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers and Opportunities (New York: Criterion, 1958), 134–6.
81. Teller, Memoirs, 445.
82. Edward Teller with Allen Brown, The Legacy of Hiroshima (New York: Doubleday, 1962), 239–43.
83. J. B. Priestley, quoted in David Seed, ‘Introduction’, Mordecai Roshwald, Level 7 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), p. xviii.
84. Mordecai Roshwald, ‘Looking Back in Wonder’, ibid., p. xxx.
85. Roshwald, Level 7, 102.
86. Stanley Kramer, dir., On the Beach (MGM, 1959).
87. Roshwald, Level 7, 127.
88. ibid., 182.
89. Bertolt Brecht, Leben des Galilei (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1972), scene 14, 126; my trans. On Brecht and physics, see P. D. Smith, ‘German Literature and the Scientific World-View in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, Journal of European Studies, 27 (1997), 389–415; and P. D. Smith, Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the World-View of Science 1780–1955 (Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000), 265–318.
90. Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia (London: Vintage, 1998), 3. Thanks to Susan Ng for drawing this passage to my attention.
Chapter 19
1. ‘October, 1962 – The Cuba Crisis: Nuclear War Was Hours Away’, Newsweek (28 Oct. 1963), 18.
2. Anthony Lewis, ‘President Grave’, NYT (23 Oct. 1962),1, 18.
3. ibid.
4. ‘October, 1962 – The Cuba Crisis’, 18.
5. ibid., 19.
