Apocalypse Never

Notes

Notes 251 Chapter 1 Apocalypse Soon? 1. In Joseph Gerson, Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pluto, 2007), 57. 2. See http://www.commondreams.org, posted May 2, 2005. Jennet Conant’s 109 East Palace (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005) tells the story of Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project through the eyes of Dorothy McKibbin, the woman who processed scientists as they arrived to work on the project. 3. U.S. Postal Service, ceremony honoring the issuance of a stamp bearing John Hersey’s likeness, National Press Club, Washington, D.C, April 22, 2008. 4. Much of the literature about nuclear weapons uses the term Nuclear Weapon State to refer to the five states recognized as such in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, and France. Unless otherwise noted, I use the uncapitalized version nuclear weapon state in its more commonsense meaning: “to designate a country that wields a nuclear arsenal.” As of today, those states also include Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. So far. 5. George F. Kennan, At a Century’s Ending: Reflections, 1982–1995 (New York: Norton, 1996), 143. 6. Quoted at Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy (http://www.lcnp.org/ disarmament/Commentary/commentary4.htm). 7. Wells wrote about all three of these works in his Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866) (New York: Macmillan, 1934), 569–84. It is perhaps not surprising that Wells played such a seminal role in envisioning the military and political consequences of the unraveling of the mysteries of the atom. Futurist and science fiction giant Robert A. Heinlein spoke about the breadth and depth of Wells’s genius in 1941, when Wells was seventy-five years old and reaching the end of his writing life: “H. G. Wells, in his trilogy, The Outline of History, The Science of Life and The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind, is, so far as I know, the only writer who has ever lived who has tried to draw for the rest of us a full picture of the whole world, past and future, everything about us, so we can stand off and get a look at ourselves” (“Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention” [Denver, 1941], reprinted in Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo [New York: TOR, 1992], 218). 8. See the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (http://www.rerf.org.jp). 9. “Prescription for Action,” Physicians for Social Responsibility Newsletter (fall 2007). Notes.qxd 2/4/10 11:21 AM Page 251 10. Most of these details are from Sarah J. Diehl and James Clay Moltz, Nuclear Weapons and Nonproliferation: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2002), 181–82. 11. Martin Rees, Our Final Hour, A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century—On Earth and Beyond (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 25. 12. William J. Perry, keynote address, Committee on International Security and Arms Control, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., August 11, 2004 (available at http://www7.nationalacademies.org). 13. San Francisco Examiner, November 19, 2000, p. C1. 14. Jonathan Schell, “The Gift of Time,” Nation, February 2–9, 1998, p. 29. This special issue features Schell’s interviews with several nuclear policy professionals and scholars. 15. Reed Johnson, “The Bomb Is Back,” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2002, p. E1. 16. Daniel Ellsberg, personal communication, February 5, 2009. 17. Quoted at http://www. globaldialoguecenter.com/events/mandela. 18. Robert A. Heinlein, “The Last Days of the United States,” in Expanded Universe (New York: Ace Books, 1980), 145–47. 19. Quoted at History News Service (http://hnn.us/articles/1212.html). 20. Henry A. Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Willam J. Perry, and George P. Shultz, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007; George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “Toward a Nuclear Free World,” Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008. 21. The full text of the Prague speech appears at http://www.huffingtonpost .com/2009/04/05obama-prague-speech-on-nu_n_183219.html. 22. Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young, 1953). Chapter 2 The Essence of the Problem 1. Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, “If Necessary, Strike and Destroy: North Korea Cannot Be Allowed to Test This Missile,” Washington Post, June 22, 2006. 2. Los...