NUCLEAR WAR QUOTES II
quotations about nuclear war
I remember President Kennedy once stated ... that the United States had the nuclear missile capacity to wipe out the Soviet Union two times over, while the Soviet Union had enough atomic weapons to wipe out the United States only once.... When journalists asked me to comment ... I said jokingly, "Yes, I know what Kennedy claims, and he's quite right. But I'm not complaining.... We're satisfied to be able to finish off the United States first time round. Once is quite enough. What good does it do to annihilate a country twice? We're not a bloodthirsty people."
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV
Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament
I am going to tell you something you must not tell to any human being. We have split the atom. The report of the great experiment has just come in. A bomb was let off in some wild spot in New Mexico. It was only a thirteen-pound bomb, but it made a crater half a mile across. People ten miles away lay with their feet towards the bomb; when it went off they rolled over and tried to look at the sky. But even with the darkest glasses it was impossible. It was the middle of the night, but it was as if seven suns had lit the earth; two hundred miles away the light could be seen. The bomb sent up smoke into the stratosphere... It is the Second Coming. The secret has been wrested from nature.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
letter to his doctor, Lord Moran, July 23, 1945, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival
The destruction of our technological society in a fit of nuclear peevishness would become disastrous even if there were many millions of immediate survivors. The environment toward which they were fitted would be gone, and Darwin's demon would wipe them out remorselessly and without a backward glance.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Asimov on Physics
The destructive capacity contained in the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers is immense. It exceeds the energy contained in any natural phenomenon with which we have a high probability of having to contend. The Mount St. Helens volcano, for example, expended approximately the energy contained in a one hundred kiloton bomb (100,000 tons of TNT), or five Hiroshima bombs. Astronomical events, however, could easily dwarf our poor efforts to destroy ourselves. The energy contained in even a 10% increase in the sun's radiant energy or the impact of a moon-sized asteroid upon the Earth, for example, makes our nuclear arsenal appear as a mere firecracker. These events do not appear likely, although they are not beyond imagining. They also would very likely extinguish life or, at least, higher life forms on this planet. But imagine, instead, a fraction of a percent increase in the sun's energy or a collision with a large comet. There are in such speculations comparisons, if we look long enough.
JAMES W. CHILD
Nuclear War: The Moral Dimension
If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things -- praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts -- not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.
C. S. LEWIS
On Living in an Atomic Age
Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.
IAIN M. BANKS
Consider Phlebas
What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening the use of nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.
MARTIN AMIS
"Introduction: Thinkability", Einstein's Monsters
You know, there was a time at the beginning of the 50's when this nuclear threat hung over the world, but the attitude of the West was like granite and the West did not yield. Today, this nuclear threat still hangs on both sides, but the West has chosen the wrong path of making concessions.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
Warning to the West
You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon and I find myself wondering ... if we're the generation to see that come about. I don't know if you've noted any of these prophecies lately, but believe me, they certainly describe the times we're going through.
RONALD REAGAN
statement in October 1983, To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon's Secret War Plans
All autumn, the chafe and jar
of nuclear war;
we have talked our extinction to death.
I swim like a minnow
behind my studio window
ROBERT LOWELL
For the Union Dead
Donald Trump seems to take nuclear war as seriously as a World Wrestling Entertainment match. When the president talks about North Korea, he sounds like a cartoon wrestler about to go in the ring with promises to demolish his opponent. News commentators have remarked on the president's lack of historical awareness. A letter writer to The New York Times recently recommended that Trump read Hiroshima, John Hershey's account about the atomic bombing of that city at the end of World War II. It's an excellent suggestion, even though Trump probably won't do it. I read the book more than 20 years ago, and I had forgotten a lot of the narrative. What I do remember are the accounts of Japanese citizens who were completely wiped off the face of the planet in an instant. Many survivors bore terrible injuries, which are too horrifying to recount here in a family newspaper. Even reading a Wikipedia entry on the bombing is unnerving. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people in the city were killed by the bomb and the fires it created. Is this where we are headed? Must tens of thousands, or possibly millions, of people die in an apocalyptic act of destruction before the leaders of North Korea and America come to their senses?
MIKE GOLD
letter to the editor, The Riverdale Press, August 18, 2017
The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. Speaking as a mathematician, I should say the odds are about three to one against survival.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
interview, Playboy, March 1963
What a curious picture it is to find man, homo sapiens, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of the sunlight. What a paradox if our own cleverness in science should force us to live underground with the moles.
J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT
address to the Foreign Policy Association in New York City, October 20, 1945
It did not take atomic weapons to make man want peace. But the atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.
J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER
attributed, The Men Who Made the Sun Rise
There's a kind of theology at work here. The bombs are a kind of god. As his power grows, our fear naturally increases. I get as apprehensive as anyone else, maybe more so. We have too many bombs. They have too many bombs. There's a kind of theology of fear that comes out of this. We begin to capitulate to the overwhelming presence. It's so powerful. It dwarfs us so much. We say let the god have his way. He's so much more powerful than we are. Let it happen, whatever he ordains. It used to be that the gods punished men by using the forces of nature against them or by arousing them to take up their weapons and destroy each other. Now god is the force of nature itself, the fusion of tritium and deuterium. Now he's the weapon. So maybe this time we went too far in creating a being of omnipotent power. All this hardware. Fantastic stockpiles of hardware. The big danger is that we'll surrender to the sense of inevitability and start flinging mud all over the planet.
DON DELILLO
End Zone
There is a further advantage [to hydrogen bombs]: the supply of uranium in the planet is very limited, and it might be feared that it would be used up before the human race was exterminated, but now that the practically unlimited supply of hydrogen can be utilized, there is considerable reason to hope that homo sapiens may put an end to himself, to the great advantage of such less ferocious animals as may survive. But it is time to return to less cheerful topics.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits
Making predictions about nuclear war is deeply difficult. While history is full of case studies about what causes nation states to launch conventional war, the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are (thankfully) the lone examples of atomic attacks -- and those were with weapons orders of magnitude less powerful than the current nuclear arsenal. That lack of historical precedent makes it hard for analysts to reason about nuclear conflicts and how to stop them.
ELIZABETH WINKLER
"What game theory tells us about nuclear war with North Korea", Washington Post, August 16, 2017
The simplest argument against any possession of nuclear weapons is that since the negative utility of a nuclear war is so much greater than anything else that we can put it at minus infinity, and since the probability that such a possession will lead to a nuclear war differs from exactly zero, the expected utility of the existence of nuclear weapons is also minus infinity, for which reason they should be abolished.
HAKAN WIBERG
"Accidental Nuclear War: The Problematique", Inadvertent Nuclear War: The Implications of the Changing Global Order
War is just another game
Tailor made for the insane
But make a threat of their annihilation
And nobody wants to play
If that's the only thing that keeps the peace
Then thank God for the bomb
OZZY OSBOURNE
"Thank God For The Bomb"
The most powerful factor going against the occurrence of another nuclear war is probably the lesson, learned in World War II and reinforced in Vietnam, that high cost conflicts have become unacceptable. This slow alteration of consciousness is profound and undergirds much of the movement toward minimum deterrence, that is that small numbers of terror weapons are more than sufficient to make purposeful war extremely unlikely.
FREDERICK L. SHIELS
"Preventing the Ultimate Disaster: Misperception at the Top", Inadvertent Nuclear War: The Implications of the Changing Global Order