"Frankenstein" -- Did Mary Shelley Predict Nuclear Weapons?

Mary Shelley

There are many voices contributing, in many ways, to the effort to extract us from nuclear peril.

Some voices come from the past.

For the past several weeks, I have been reading the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. It is marvelous and prescient. It was first published in 1818. I became interested in Frankenstein after it was singled out by Paul Johnson as a watershed cultural event in his book, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830.

For me, as for most people, Frankenstein means the "monster" portrayed by Boris Karloff in the movies. But of course "Frankenstein" is the scientist, the one who imparts life to an assemblage of inanimate parts; indeed, the novel's full title is Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and the story is really about this man.

Frankenstein is about a man who is so carried away with what he finds himself able to do that he is heedless of the consequences. It is, indeed, a fable for the modern era; as someone concerned particularly about nuclear weapons, I find over and over that the words of the novel bring to mind the dilemma that human civilization finds itself in because of the activities of some among us who are most brilliant and privileged.

This morning I read a portion in which Frankenstein sees in himself one

whose selfishness,
had not hesitated
to buy its own peace
at the price,
perhaps,
of the existence of the whole human race.
                 (Frankenstein, Chapter 20)

Can there be any more precise description of the nuclear weapons states?

Who is this Mary Shelley, who two hundred years ago could have so brilliantly summed up the predicament that we would face in 2018?

Just a few chapters of this wonderful book remain - I find myself rushing forward to the conclusion, while simultaneously jamming on the brakes so that I can relish every word.

How will I satisfy myself when I reach the end?

Two possibilities suggest themselves: The Last Man, another Shelley novel, about what happens when human society brings itself to the brink of extinction; and the great account of the Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer: American Prometheus.


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SCIENCE MARCHES: Are All These Countries In the Dark About Nuclear Weapons?

I'm excited about the Science Marches scheduled to take place around the world on April 22, 2017.

But one thing puzzles me.

Here's a map I saw today of all the Science Marches announced to date:

Science Marches (map by Doug Duffy)

I made a mental comparison with a different version of the world map that I've been studying intently in recent months:

Vote on resolution to negotiate a ban on nuclear weapons in 2017 (L-41)
Green - Yes (123, 76%)
Red - No (38, 24%)
Beige - Abstained
(see Who would possibly vote "NO" to banning nuclear weapons???)

What I notice when I compare these two maps is that the key countries who voted NO to negotiations at the UN to ban nuclear weapons in 2017 are the same countries exhibiting great enthusiasm about April 22 Science Marches -- the US, Canada, Australia, and the EU countries.

Now, there is no doubt in my mind that the people who have the most insight about the devastating consequences of nuclear weapons -- and can best grasp the nature of the risk involved -- are trained scientists.

How can it be that the countries that are so rich in scientific spirit are the same ones obstructing the effort to get rid of nuclear weapons?

So here's my question to all the scientists: will you cause your governments to hear and heed your voices in time for them to come out from under the nuclear shadow and into the light of a world free from the danger of nuclear catastrophe?


MORE:

. . . on the scientists at the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory (the "Met Lab") who spoke up too late.
. . . how International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) put influenced Gorbachev on nuclear disarmament.
How to get involved in the nuclear ban campaign.


ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

FACTS we should see at every #ScienceMarch: Impact of #nuclear #war
"Impact on Environment and Agriculture" from Reaching Critical Will
(Please share this message on Twitter)

UPDATE March 27: "Over 3,000 Scientists Support UN Nuclear Ban Negotiations" - "Delegates from most UN member states are gathering in New York to negotiate a nuclear weapons ban, where they will also receive a letter of support that has been signed by thousands of scientists from around over 80 countries – including 28 Nobel Laureates and a former US Secretary of Defense. “Scientists bear a special responsibility for nuclear weapons, since it was scientists who invented them and discovered that their effects are even more horrific than first thought”, the letter explains." (emphasis added)


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NEEDED: MESSENGERS - Americans Need to Hear the Awful Truth of Nuclear Devastation

Needed: MESSENGERS!

Over the next several days, people from the around the world will gather in Vienna to lay it out in the open: the truth about the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons.

That's important, because:

* The widely-known facts about the fire and blast of nuclear explosions are something just about everybody tries to avoid thinking about.

* In particular, no one ever wants to confront the very real risk that their own city will be obliterated in a nuclear attack.

* It's part of a larger human predicament: most of us are terrible at imagining bad things in advance of them actually occurring, and even worse about taking action to eliminate the risk.

Oh . . . and did I mention the call for a massive mobilization for nuclear disarmament in spring 2015, to coincide with the UN meeting on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)?

Account (with illustration) by
survivor of Hiroshima bombing

The U.S. is one of two nations in the world with massive nuclear arsenals, and the U.S. arsenal needs to be eliminated if we are to escape nuclear devastation. It is the people of the U.S. who will make this happen -- the people, a massive number of them, must push this, because the politicians answer to the people.

So: It's up to those of us with networks in the U.S. to get the word out to people in this country about the what nukes do to people -- and the need for people to become active in the movement to eliminate nuclear weapons.

#NoNukesTuesday is a week-in, week-out social media campaign to build the movement. #HINW14Vienna laid the foundation deep -- #NoNukesTuesday is the place to take the message wide.

TAKE ACTION:

#NoNukesTuesday
Getting the word out every week

* Look at the #HINW14Vienna twitter stream to find

exciting materials from the Vienna conference.

* See more resources on the 

Courage to Ban Nuclear Weapons

conference website.

* Tweet, RT, Follow and build the 

network on #NoNukesTuesday

(Here's my contribution: #GOODBYENUKES: 10 Images I'll Be Sharing From #HINW14Vienna )


Related posts


There are three centers of power that will impact nuclear disarmament: the President, the Congress, and the people. One of them will have to make nuclear disarmament happen.

(See Countdown to U.S. Nuclear Disarmament (With or Without the Politicians) )

How do you formulate a statement that can somehow convince the United States to eliminate its threatening nuclear weapons?  How do you formulate the 10th request? Or the 100th? Knowing all the time that the United States is in the position -- will always be in the position -- to say, "No" ?  At what point does it dawn on you that the United States will never give up its nuclear weapons, because it has the power and the rest of the world doesn't?

(See 360 Degree Feedback in New York (2014 NPT Prepcom and How the World Views the United States))

Elaine Scarry demonstrates that the power of one leader to obliterate millions of people with a nuclear weapon - a possibility that remains very real even in the wake of the Cold War - deeply violates our constitutional rights, undermines the social contract, and is fundamentally at odds with the deliberative principles of democracy.

(See Reviews of "Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom" by Elaine Scarry )

Obscene Geometry: The Hard Facts about Death and Injury from Nuclear Weapons

Cuisenaire Rods

One of my sisters was an elementary school teacher.

And so I, as a much younger brother, was the beneficiary of many of the educational materials and aids, books and objects, that came to fill her house over time.

I wonder if you, too, have memories of little colored blocks in bright colors that were made of very nice wood and were cut to precise sizes so that they nestled together perfectly? Perhaps you, yourself, used "cuisenaire rods" at some time in school; or perhaps your children (or grandchildren) have . . . .

It has been decades since I thought about cuisenaire rods -- or rather, "those little blocks," as I always called them before I looked into them for this blog post. I was prodded into thinking about cuisenaire rods -- and about how they help to visualize mathematical and geometric relationships -- by research I was doing for #NoNukesTuesday.

Just two weeks from now, people will gather in Vienna for the 3rd Conference on Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, and so I wanted to prepare some materials to encourage people to follow it virtually. I went to the website of the 2nd conference, held just a short time ago in Nayarit, Mexico (February 13-14, 2014), and began to review the documents there.

I had already been somewhat familiar with one recent document on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons: the PAX document "What if a nuclear bomb exploded in Rotterdam?" Now I saw a document from Mexican government posing the same question with respect to Mexico City: "Nuclear Blast in Mexico City" (Coordinaciòn Nacional de Protecciòn Civil de Mèxico), based on the estimated consequences of the detonation of a 50 megaton nuclear bomb. I looked at page after page ... an inner radius with lethal 200 psi air blast and 5000 rem radiation  affecting ~1 million people ... with a wider 6 km radius fireball affecting ~1.7 million people ... surrounded by an even wider (11 km) 10 psi air blast radius which could be expected to be fatal to nearly all ~7 million people affected, because of the blizzard of disintegrating structures ... 51 km radius of third degree burns (nearly 20 million people) ... and on and on.

Detonation simulation of nuclear bomb 50MT at Mexico City
"At 10 psi over pressure, heavily built concrete buildings are
severely damaged or demolished; fatalities approach 100%."
(Coordinaciòn Nacional de Protecciòn Civil de Mèxico)

Thoughts rushed through my mind: it had never occurred to me that Mexico has to worry about detonation of a nuclear weapon ... isn't that limited to countries like -- ?  But then, of course, I realized that no one is "off limits." I noted in the document from Mexico that Mexico is party to a treaty that makes Latin America a nuclear weapons-free zone (see Treaty of Tlatelolco). So how much assurance does that provide to Mexicans that they will never suffer a nuclear attack? 80%? 90%? 97%? Clearly, that's not enough for the government of Mexico, which is responsibly asking: "What would we DO if this were ever to happen?"

When you read the conclusions of the report from Mexico (" ... FIRST 24 HOURS: Not much could be done to help people in the area of the 50 percent blast-casualty distance ... ") it is clear why Mexico and other states are working so hard for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

This isn't real, is it? This couldn't ever really happen, could it?

And then there was the report from Nagasaki.

It was heartbreaking to read the report of Dr. Masao Tomonaga, M.D. Ph.D. (Scientific Research Group on the effect of nuclear weapons in various aspects), "If Another 16 kiloton Atomic Bomb Detonates on a Modern City; A Study Based on Hiroshima/Nagasaki cases." That the people who have suffered one nuclear attack should have to be the ones to, themselves, painstakingly recapitulate and meticulously explain the details again and again . . . .

Not only do the Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb have to try to shake us into consciousness of the threat we are under . . . but they also have to find a way to convey to us that the threat today is so much greater than the one that hit Japan. How to get people to envision the consequences of the detonation of nuclear devices that are hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful than the ones used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

This was the image that really stunned me:

Nuclear detonations above a virtual modern city with 1 million population
16 kiloton atomic bomb at 600 m ... 4.5 km radius
1 megaton (1000 kiloton) hydrogen bomb at 2400 m ... 18 km radius
(Dr. Masao Tomonaga, M.D. Ph.D.)

"It's just sections of a cone," I said to myself. "Any child equipped with a cuisenaire-esque set of blocks can easily look at a map and figure out for him- or herself what the future holds."

That's right . . .  just take a map of your local metropolis, spread it out on the floor, and put the whole family to work learning the geometry of nuclear strike using high quality wood-crafted educational aids.

Cone Sorting Toy
from The Wooden Wagon / Toys and Folk Art

Ask yourself: which of your children (or grandchildren) do you want to share this obscene geometry lesson with?

TAKE ACTION:  Go to the websites about the two Vienna events, follow the proceedings, share on social media, and work with the organizations involved on recommended follow-up steps:

December 6-8, 2014: ICAN Civil Society Forum - The Courage to Ban Nuclear Weapons

December 6-8, 2014: 3rd Conference on Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons

Update - August, 2015 - Nuclear disarmament activists will bicycle around Washington, DC, to demonstrate the extent of death and injury if (when?) the nation's capital is the target of an attack.


Related posts

Perhaps most startling of all, the area affected by 3rd degree burns would extend far beyond the city limits to encompass towns as far north as Waukegan, as far west as St. Charles, and as far south as Crete, and as far east as Gary, IN.

(See What Would a Nuclear Weapon Do to Chicago? (Go ahead, guess . . . ) )

In light of the upcoming review of the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) and the fact that organizations throughout the country and worldwide are organizing to press the U.S. to substantially reduce its stores of nuclear weapons, it seems like a good time to use social media to get EVERYONE on board!

(See 5 Ways YOU Can Make a Difference on #NoNukesTuesday )

"It's not enough to remember this just once a year; it's not enough that we make a single book -- Hiroshima -- required reading, and never go beyond that. There should be a whole canon that people study progressively, year by year, to grasp and retain the horror of this."

(See FIRE AND BLAST: A Curriculum that Confronts Nuclear Danger?)












Do we have a way to immerse ourselves in the experience of what the use of those nuclear weapons would really mean -- prospectively -- so that we can truly cause ourselves to confront our own inaction?

(See Stop engaging in risky behavior )