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08-06-2015, 06:13 PM
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176032/tomgram%3A_susan_southard%2C_under_the_mushroom_cl oud_--_nagasaki_after_nuclear_war/#more)
The nuclear age. Doesn't that phrase seem like ancient history? With the twin anniversaries of the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki coming around again, this is its 70th birthday. Just a year younger than me, it was my age-mate, my companion (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1666/) all those years I was growing up. Those unshakeable fears, the "unthinkable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Kahn#.22The_unthinkable.22)," turned out to be eminently translatable into the world of dreams. I still vividly recall my own world-ending nightmares from my teen years and I know I'm not alone. Thoughts of nuclear destruction were then part and parcel of our lives. Once, during the Cuban Missile Crisis (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175605/tomgram%3A_noam_chomsky,_%22the_most_dangerous_mom ent,%22_50_years_later/), it felt as if we might not even make it out of this lifetime.
The byproducts of that moment -- raging (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047034/) dinosaurs (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045546/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1), world-ending death rays, giant ants (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047573/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2), and destroyed planets (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047577/) -- ran rampant in pop culture, the classic stuff of B-movies. In those years, when the U.S. and the USSR were each building their arsenals to unimaginable heights and planning (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1680/) for something like world's end, all of us were, in a sense, "on the beach." Who didn't read Neville Shute's classic novel (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307473996/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20) (or see the movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/?ref_=nv_sr_1)) and think about that vast cloud of fallout from the ultimate apocalyptic battle of the Cold War heading south or experience what curtains might mean, even in Australia? Who didn't read the burgeoning post-apocalyptic mutant pulp fiction of that era even as, with A Canticle for Leibowitz (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060892994/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20), it became "literature"?
And doesn't all of that, the fearful and the eerily fun-filled, seem the product of another time, long gone and half-forgotten? And yet here's the eeriest thing of all: on this very day, nine countries with nuclear arsenals of varying sizes still possess, according to the latest estimates, a total of more than 15,000 (http://www.ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report) such weapons, enough, that is, to obliterate countless Earths. And as it happens, 93% of those weapons are in the hands of either the United States or Russia, both of which are proudly and openly (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/terrorism-security/2015/0617/Russia-to-boost-nuclear-arsenal.-Modernization-or-arms-race) "modernizing (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175933/tomgram%3A_james_carroll,_the_pentagon_as_presiden t_obama%27s_great_white_whale/)" their nuclear stocks -- in the case of the U.S. at a planned cost of a trillion dollars (http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/should-the-us-spend-1-trillion-on-nuclear-weapons/) over the next three decades. Consider that a reminder that, in August 2045 on the 100th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the former Cold War rivals still have every intention of being nuclear powers.
Most unnerving of all, the planners in those countries simply refuse to acknowledge the most basic nuclear facts -- or at least they are utterly unmoved by them and by the thought of the eradication of humanity. It evidently matters little that if those "modest" nuclear powers, India (a mere 110 nuclear weapons) and Pakistan (a mere 120 of them), were to release just part of their arsenals in a South Asian nuclear exchange, the planet would enter "nuclear winter (http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSciAmJan2010.pdf)" and humanity would be decimated (http://www.psr.org/nuclear-weapons/nuclear-famine-report.pdf).
So, on a 70th anniversary in which the madness shows no sign of ending, it's good to turn to Susan Southard's monumental new book, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670025623/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20), which offers a riveting, if chilling plunge into nuclear realities. Among other things, it reminds us that, unbelievably enough, humanity's nuclear fate was never just prospective, never just a matter of thoughts, or plans, or dreams, or fantasies. Nuclear destruction of an almost unimaginable sort was the initial reality of the atomic age, with such weaponry actually used on two utterly defenseless cities. In "Entering the Nuclear Age, Body by Body (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176032/tomgram%3A_susan_southard%2C_under_the_mushroom_cl oud_--_nagasaki_after_nuclear_war/#more)," TomDispatch today takes you directly beneath the mushroom cloud in an excerpt from Southard's book that follows five teenage nuclear survivors of the Nagasaki bomb through the very first moments of what has become an unending nuclear age. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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The nuclear age. Doesn't that phrase seem like ancient history? With the twin anniversaries of the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki coming around again, this is its 70th birthday. Just a year younger than me, it was my age-mate, my companion (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1666/) all those years I was growing up. Those unshakeable fears, the "unthinkable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Kahn#.22The_unthinkable.22)," turned out to be eminently translatable into the world of dreams. I still vividly recall my own world-ending nightmares from my teen years and I know I'm not alone. Thoughts of nuclear destruction were then part and parcel of our lives. Once, during the Cuban Missile Crisis (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175605/tomgram%3A_noam_chomsky,_%22the_most_dangerous_mom ent,%22_50_years_later/), it felt as if we might not even make it out of this lifetime.
The byproducts of that moment -- raging (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047034/) dinosaurs (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045546/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1), world-ending death rays, giant ants (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047573/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2), and destroyed planets (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047577/) -- ran rampant in pop culture, the classic stuff of B-movies. In those years, when the U.S. and the USSR were each building their arsenals to unimaginable heights and planning (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1680/) for something like world's end, all of us were, in a sense, "on the beach." Who didn't read Neville Shute's classic novel (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307473996/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20) (or see the movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/?ref_=nv_sr_1)) and think about that vast cloud of fallout from the ultimate apocalyptic battle of the Cold War heading south or experience what curtains might mean, even in Australia? Who didn't read the burgeoning post-apocalyptic mutant pulp fiction of that era even as, with A Canticle for Leibowitz (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060892994/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20), it became "literature"?
And doesn't all of that, the fearful and the eerily fun-filled, seem the product of another time, long gone and half-forgotten? And yet here's the eeriest thing of all: on this very day, nine countries with nuclear arsenals of varying sizes still possess, according to the latest estimates, a total of more than 15,000 (http://www.ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report) such weapons, enough, that is, to obliterate countless Earths. And as it happens, 93% of those weapons are in the hands of either the United States or Russia, both of which are proudly and openly (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/terrorism-security/2015/0617/Russia-to-boost-nuclear-arsenal.-Modernization-or-arms-race) "modernizing (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175933/tomgram%3A_james_carroll,_the_pentagon_as_presiden t_obama%27s_great_white_whale/)" their nuclear stocks -- in the case of the U.S. at a planned cost of a trillion dollars (http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/should-the-us-spend-1-trillion-on-nuclear-weapons/) over the next three decades. Consider that a reminder that, in August 2045 on the 100th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the former Cold War rivals still have every intention of being nuclear powers.
Most unnerving of all, the planners in those countries simply refuse to acknowledge the most basic nuclear facts -- or at least they are utterly unmoved by them and by the thought of the eradication of humanity. It evidently matters little that if those "modest" nuclear powers, India (a mere 110 nuclear weapons) and Pakistan (a mere 120 of them), were to release just part of their arsenals in a South Asian nuclear exchange, the planet would enter "nuclear winter (http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSciAmJan2010.pdf)" and humanity would be decimated (http://www.psr.org/nuclear-weapons/nuclear-famine-report.pdf).
So, on a 70th anniversary in which the madness shows no sign of ending, it's good to turn to Susan Southard's monumental new book, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670025623/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20), which offers a riveting, if chilling plunge into nuclear realities. Among other things, it reminds us that, unbelievably enough, humanity's nuclear fate was never just prospective, never just a matter of thoughts, or plans, or dreams, or fantasies. Nuclear destruction of an almost unimaginable sort was the initial reality of the atomic age, with such weaponry actually used on two utterly defenseless cities. In "Entering the Nuclear Age, Body by Body (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176032/tomgram%3A_susan_southard%2C_under_the_mushroom_cl oud_--_nagasaki_after_nuclear_war/#more)," TomDispatch today takes you directly beneath the mushroom cloud in an excerpt from Southard's book that follows five teenage nuclear survivors of the Nagasaki bomb through the very first moments of what has become an unending nuclear age. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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