Browsing a book store today I came across a book titled: “100 Suns“, it shows photographs of 100 above ground nuclear atomic bomb tests in all their glory.

I can’t help being fascinated and horrified by those pictures. In some of these photos you see how the radiation has distorted the film material, in others you see soldiers and other people directly exposed to the radiation, in one picture they are sitting in sun chairs staring straight at the explosion wearing dark goggles. It boggles my mind.

Up to this day the only film that ever gave me sleepless nights was “The Day After“, I must have been 11 at that point and what scared me weren’t so much the images but because even then I was aware that what was depicted there could happen (of course it begs the question why my parents let me see the movie, but then they may not have quite grasp that I followed the news already and got some of the context).

Lib Spec-Col Ww2 Postwarworld Images 2140

Seeing those images I have to wonder what a scientist makes work on those things, or weapons in general. I mean there can’t be a “huge benefit for mankind” in creating an atomic bomb or a gatling gun, how does one convince oneself that this is “good”? Or is it just the challenge?

If you get a chance, have a look at the book, it is only a tiny glimpse into the research that happened both in the US and the USSR over almost half a century. Part of the cold war that brought us the US Strategic Air Command, B52 et. al and of course their USSR counter parts. Not to forget this whacko Curtis LeMay.

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