• Originally published May 19, 2009 at 5:33 p.m., updated May 19, 2009 at 9:30 p.m.

"Since no limit exists to the destructiveness of this weapon, its existence and knowledge of its construction is a danger to humanity as a whole."

- Physicists Enrico Fermi and I.I. Rabi, circa 1950

Those two brilliant men were writing about the hydrogen bomb, the development of which had been approved by President Harry Truman in 1950, as the Cold War with the Soviet Union became ever more intense.

Other scientists, like J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the successful effort to develop the less powerful atomic bomb, also warned against bringing this dreadful weapon to reality.

Fermi's writings confirmed the fact that, unlike the atomic bomb, which was limited in power, the H-bomb could be increased in its destructive capacity as far as mankind wanted to take it.

But another great physicist, Edward Teller, thought we needed the H-bomb to stay ahead in the weapons race.

And so, with President Truman's OK, work began on it, and soon bore fruit - deadly as it was.

The first H-bombs were huge, unwieldy things housed in big, refrigerated blockhouses. With no good way to deliver such a heavy weapon, scientists had to set them off on the ground at islands deep in the Pacific Ocean, beginning in 1952. The inhabitants of those islands were simply moved elsewhere.

Even the designers of the H-bomb were incredulous at its power, with one blast reportedly sending out a 4-mile-wide fireball.

And the tests led to smaller and smaller devices that still carried the power of those early monstrosities.

On this date in 1956 - that's only 53 years ago - the first hydrogen bomb was dropped from the air, falling from the belly of a B-2 bomber onto one of those Pacific islands, called Namu.

Oddly, when I looked up Namu it was described as a form of a Buddhist spiritual term that means "I take refuge in the inconceivable light."

I don't think the ancient Buddhists had the hydrogen bomb in mind as a place of refuge.

At any rate, it had become a weapon that could be delivered by air to an enemy. And, in a matter of a couple of decades, the U.S. and Soviets each had hundreds, then thousands of hydrogen bombs and thermonuclear warheads, aimed at each other with shaky fingers on the triggers. Neither would start a war, it was reasoned, because it would be "mutually assured destruction (MAD)" if they did.

Today, the nuclear "club" is growing, and with it the danger of accidental or even intentional Armageddon.

I'm all for protecting America, but mostly I just wish the damned things had never been built.

In the late 1980s, I was invited on a tour of the North American Aerospace Defend command post inside Cheyenne Mountain south of Colorado Springs. At the end of the tour, a mockup cutaway of a nose cone from one of our MX intercontinental ballistic missiles was laid out on the floor.

Inside the nose cone, in a circle, were 10 small objects resembling traffic cones, and about that size. Our tour guide said the MX could travel most of the way around the world, and release these 10 H-bombs in precisely targeted locations, sometimes within yards of where they wanted them. And each could take out the better part of a city.

That's one missile in one silo. Once, on an auto tour of Northeastern Colorado, I counted more than 20 of these silos in one stretch alone. There are hundreds of others. And then there are the bombers. And then there are the submarines, each with its own multiple-bomb warheads.

I gotta quit, now. I'm scaring myself.

Jim Bishop is a senior editor for the Advocate. Leave him a message at 361-574-1210 or jbishop@vicad.com or comment on this column at www.victoriaadvocate.com

• Print
• •
• Share
  • Share this item

    Send this to a friend

    Share on FaceBook

  • Grab the link

    Copy and paste the link:

  • Blog about it

    Blog about this page.

  • Close
• •
• Post a Comment
• •
• Favorite
• •
• Report error
  • Thank you for your submission.
    Error report or correction

    Contact name (optional) Contact phone/e-mail (optional)  

    
  • Close
• •