The Age of Radiance (75 page)

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Authors: Craig Nelson

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BOOK: The Age of Radiance
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“delayed or hindered development of H-bomb”
;
“in view of the fact that”; “felt that if this case is lost”
: Oppenheimer FBI files,
http://vault.fbi.gov/rosenberg-case/robert-j.-oppenheimer
.

“Teller feels deeply that [Oppenheimer’s]”
;
“had been instrumental in bringing to”; “Lewis, let us be certain”; “The truth is that no matter”
: Rhodes,
Dark Sun
.

“a dangerous engineering undertaking”
: Herken,
Brotherhood.

“I have thought most earnestly”
: Strauss.

“The day the Oppenheimer case”
: Orear.

“had no obligation to subject”
;
“The trouble with Oppenheimer is”
: Pais.

“I felt sick”
: Stern and Green.

“There was an approach made”
: United States Atomic Energy Commission.

“Teller thought Oppenheimer was somehow”
: Brian Kaufman.

“Q. Is it your intention”
;
“I’m sorry”
: United States Atomic Energy Commission.

“The whole damn thing”
: Dyson, “Oppenheimer.”

“I’ve never seen [Teller]”
;
“I really do feel it”
: Seife,
Sun
.

“If a person leaves his country”
: Hargittai,
Judging.

“a great debt of gratitude”
: United States Atomic Energy Commission.

“I think it broke his spirit”
;
“I was indignant”
: Rhodes,
Dark Sun.

“The real tragedy of Oppenheimer’s”
: Dyson, “Oppenheimer.”

“One of the last times I saw him”
: Segrè,
Enrico Fermi
.

“I personally have discussed”
: Orear.

“We’ve considered every astronomical source”
: Mosher.

“ghost towns”
;
“thought scientists, like other people”
:
Foreign Relations of the United States: 1958–60
, 3:572.

“A lot of the talk of Livermore”
: Teller.

“If worse comes to worse”
;
“The hospital was even more”
: Hargittai,
Martians.

“I’m not strong in English”
;
“Let’s go for a little walk”
: Rhodes,
Dark Sun.

11. The Origins of Modern Swimwear

“keep from contaminating the general”
: Cockburn.

“We Marines were brought”
: Dor-Ner.

“The bomb will not start”
;
“The explosion was going to be”; “A mixture of radioactive materials”
: Michael Harris.

“I was on a ship that”
: Grimberg.

“small and devastating”
: Mahaffey.

“An Air Force photographer was”
: Cowan.

“Immediately, it felt as if”
: Grimberg.

12. The Delicate Balance of Terror

“If you go on with this”
: quoted in
Reader’s Digest
, December 1954.

“I remember President Kennedy once stated”
: Nikita Khrushchev.

“The cost of one modern”
: Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” Washington, DC, April 16, 1953,
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/ike_chance_for_peace.html
.

“I will give you a simple”
: Jerome Wiesner, “We Need More Piefs,” SSI Conference Proceedings, SLAC, Stanford University, 1984.

“The atomic bomb makes surprise”
;
“Thus far the chief purpose”; “If two thousand bombs in”; “We no longer need to argue”
: Kaplan,
Wizards of Armageddon.

“If there is another war”
;
“a realistic combat mission”; “There was a time in the 1950s”
: LeMay,
Mission.

“During the early to mid-1970s”
: Rosenbaum,
How the End.

“We have to keep the scientists”
: Kaplan,
Wizards of Armageddon.

“The reason for having RAND”
: Rhodes,
Dark Sun
.

“Under this concept, the United States”
: Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger on US Policy of Nuclear Deterrence in a Testimony before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, December 14, 1982.

“Our missiles were still imperfect”
: Nikita Khrushchev.

“the USSR had a total”
: Sergei Khrushchev.

“Of course we tried to derive”
: Nikita Khrushchev.

“It would take really very few”
;
“A fallout shelter for everybody”
: Cited in Rose.

“One thing that was rarely”
: Roy.

“They called them mannequin families”
: Grimberg.

“Well, yeah, we could do that”
: Kaplan,
Wizards of Armageddon
.

“And we call ourselves the human race”
: Hoffman, citing MaGeorge Bundy,
Danger and Survival
(New York: Random House, 1988).

“learned all the facts of nuclear”
: Nikita Khrushchev.

“The cornerstone of our strategic policy”
: Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, “Mutual Deterrence” speech, San Francisco, September 18, 1967.

“the principle of the threat”
: “Cold War Strategy,”
nuclearfiles.org
.

“I could go into the next room”
;
“the need of keeping a berserk president”
: Murray Marder, “Two Recall Nixon’s A-Remark,”
Los Angeles Times,
February 9, 1976.

“All of us, more or less”
: “Colonel X’s Warning: Our Mistakes plus Your Hysteria,”
Détente
, October 1984.

“Let’s put it this way”
: Steven Kull,
Minds at War
(New York: Basic Books, 1988).

“For thousands of years peoples”
: Sergei Khrushchev.

“like a prize-winning pear”
;
“a thermonuclear Zero Mostel”; “a moral tract on mass murder”; “It doesn’t work that way”
: Menand, “Fat Man.”

“A Navy captain was saying”
: Miller.

“The present nuclear situation is”
: Southern.

“senses a nuclear explosion in”
: Rosenbaum,
How the End.

“provocation . . . I wonder what our attitude”
;
“just as if we suddenly put”; “knows we don’t really live”; “an explicit threat to the peace”; “It doesn’t make any difference”; “How gravely
does
this
change”;
“I don’t think there is a military”
: Sheldon Stern.

“We had no desire to start”
: Nikita Khrushchev.

“There was a fear that if”
: Gunther Klein.

“During its entire history Russia”
: Sergei Khrushchev.

“Curtis LeMay called [the quarantine]”
: Ted Sorensen.

“The Russian bear has always”
;
“During that very critical time”
: LeMay,
Mission.

“LeMay talked openly about”
;
“It wasn’t until nearly thirty”
: Errol Morris.

“Later we learned that the submarine”
: Klein, Brauburger, and Knopp.

“Everything came to a halt”
;
“The president said we are prepared”; “Father sensed that he was losing”; “Castro thinks that war will begin”; “That is insane”; “The Soviet government has ordered”
: Sergei Khrushchev.

“To any man at the United Nations”
: Kaplan,
Wizards of Armageddon.

“In my seven years as [defense] secretary”
: Errol Morris.

“the greatest defeat in our history”
: LeMay,
Mission.

“The results were very painful”
: Nina Tannenwald, ed.,
Understanding the End of the Cold War, 1980–87: An Oral History Conference
(Providence, RI: Watson Institute for International Studies, 1999).

13. Too Cheap to Meter

“observe what kind of disturbance”
: Seife,
Sun.

“If your mountain is not”
: Hargittai,
Martians.

“potential for serious radiological consequences”
;
“everything is under control”; “more complex than the company”; “danger was over”; “crisis had passed”
: Peterson.

“We didn’t learn for years”
: Gilinsky, “Behind.”

“They can’t get rid of”
: “Three Mile Island Emergency.”

“The world has never known”
: Drain.

“You might say that I”
: Teller.

“all the alarms went off”
: Palfreman.

14. There Fell a Great Star from Heaven, Burning as It Were a Lamp

“The weather was so wonderful”
: Alexievich.

“fundamentally faulty, having a built-in”
: Rhodes, “Matter.”

“In the program there are instructions”
: Hoffman.

“At the moment when the turbine”
;
“like a volcanic eruption”
: Staff, “Word for Word.”

“since all Soviet nuclear facilities were designed”
;
“a white pillar several hundred”
: Rhodes,
Arsenals of Folly.

“Flames, sparks, and chunks of”
: Rhodes, “Matter.”

“I can still see the bright”
;
“Do you know how pleasantly”
: Alexievich.

“Suddenly we saw [a man]”
;
“There was a loud thud”
: Staff, “Word for Word.”

“We didn’t know it was”
: Sahota.

“One night I heard a noise”
: Alexievich.

“By May 4 the pilots”
: Staff, “Word for Word.”

“The water table will start”
: Justin Elliott.

“It was a real war”
;
“There was a Ukrainian woman”; “One collective farm chairman”; “The soldiers knocked”; “The police were yelling”; “They come around here”; “If we kill a wild boar”
: Alexievich.

“We are the great guinea pigs”
;
“My teeth are falling out”; “These people are sick”; “It’s not too much to say”; “If I knew it would be”
: Specter.

“the population remains largely unsure”
: Mettler.

“Radiation is good for you”
;
“Life itself is dangerous”; “it’s safe where we are”; “Northern Ukraine is the cleanest”
: Shukman.

“Chernobyl represents a huge mystery”
: Grady, “Countering Radiation Fears with Just the Facts.”

15. Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet

“[Cheating death] made me feel”
;
“horrified”
: Paul Lettow,
Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
(New York: Random House, 2005).

“Both our countries know from”
: Margaret Thatcher,
The Downing Street Years
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993).

“I have never forgotten the sorrow”
: Sykes.

“It’s powerfully done, all $7 mil.”
: Reagan diary, October 10, 1983.

“It finally settled my internal debate”
: Zaitchik.

“In several ways, the sequence”
: Reagan diary, November 18, 1983.

“a concrete program, calculated for”
:
Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report
3, no. 11 (January 16, 1986).

“a hell of a good idea”
: Rhodes,
Arsenals of Folly.

“We’d be hard put to”
: Reagan diary, January 15, 1986.

“So let me precisely, firmly”
;
“Excuse me, Mr. President, but”
: Archives, Gorbachev Foundation.

“Let me ask, do we mean”
;
“We can do that”; “Let’s do it”; “If we agree that by”
: Rhodes,
Arsenals of Folly.

“hitting a bullet with a bullet”
;
“What country is suicidal enough”
: Smith and Ratnam.

“Do not be so naive”
: “Nuclear Proliferation.”

“A dictator or oligarch bent”
: Mueller.

“smelt . . . you know, like hair”
: Miklós.

“all organs and tissues of”
: Glanz.

“Spengler may have been right”
: Gopnik.

“No country without an atom bomb”
: Mueller.

“technology has become a useful tool”
: Langewiesche.

“Does anyone really think that”
: Zakaria.

16. On the Shores of Fortunate Island

“With the stones that you boys”
: Fackler, “Fukushima’s Long Link to a Dark Nuclear Past.”

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