For as long as humanity's existed, humans have searched for continuously better ways to kill other humans. After all, nothing says dominant like killing.
In the summer of 1945, with the Second World War still raging in the Pacific, some of the world's most brilliant physicists, working on the Manhattan Project, came up with the most spectacular way yet.
On July 16, 1945, in the desert sands of New Mexico, those scientists detonated the world's first nuclear explosion.
Three weeks later, the technology got a real try-out: At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the U.S. Air Force bomber nicknamed the Enola Gay dropped a single bomb nicknamed Little Boy. Forty-three seconds later, it detonated about 1,300 feet above the city with the force of about 13,000 tons of TNT.
That one bomb, by letting lose the fission power of the uranium atom, would eventually kill an estimated 140,000 people by the end of that year, about 40 per cent of Hiroshima's population of the time.
Fat Man, a plutonium based weapon used on the city of Nagasaki three days later, was equivalent to detonating 20,000 tons of TNT.
On Aug. 15, Japan surrendered, and the world soon transitioned from a hot war between the democracies and fascism to a cold one between capitalist nations and communism -- a state of affairs that would dominate the world for two generations, only ending with the collapse of communism and the break-up of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Life's never been the same since.
Nuclear arms became a prominent part of the cold war, especially once the Soviets developed their own nukes in 1949. We moved from nuclear weapons to thermonuclear ones in the 1950s.
Bomb yields moved into the megaton range; a one megaton weapon would be equivalent to 50 Fat Mans.
The U.S. government talked in the 1950s of winnable nuclear wars (see the classic 1982 film The Atomic Cafe for a POV documentary take on this subject).
I came into this world in 1959, so in 1962, I was a little young to appreciate the Cuban missile crisis, which is as close as the world has gotten to a full-scale nuclear slugfest.
And it would be a long time before I would see Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the 1964 masterpiece by Stanley Kubrick on cold war paranoia.
Still, I grew up with the thought that we could be plunged into nuclear hell at any time. An iconic image from childhood was the civil defence siren standing in the Delwood Public School's grounds in north Edmonton, Alta. If it ever started to wail, that could be it -- the end of the world could literally be coming. And it was always visible out the kitchen window of my parent's home.
However, by the time I turned 10, some things started to improve (not that I realized it at the time :) ).
In 1969, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) began, followed by a second round from 1972 to 1979. One positive conclusion in 1972 was the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.
As a Wikipedia article notes, one thing that brought an ABM treaty about was the fact that new technologies like MIRV (mulitiple independent re-entry vehicles) missiles meant it wasn't a question of shooting down one missile anymore. MIRVs could overwhelm an ABM system.
In addition, the Soviets and the Americans had reached parity in ICBMs (inter-continental ballistic missiles). And that lead to one of the great acronyms in history - MAD, for Mutually Assured Destruction.
Since both sides could wipe each other off the face of the earth, they were forced to play nice.
So, throughout the time I was evolving into a teenager, I really wasn't that worried about the nuclear threat. Even the invention of the neutron bomb in 1974 didn't faze me that much. U.S. President Jimmy Carter halted their production in 1978; his successor, Ronald Reagan, restarted the program in 1981, although they were never deployed.
Neutron bombs were thermonuclear designed to throw off huge amounts of radiation and penetrate armour and buildings, killing the people without destroying the property.
This remarkable piece of death-dealing technology inspired the great American punk band The Dead Kennedys wrote a song called Kill The Poor. Here's some of the lyrics:
Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the neutron bomb
It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done!
Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home!
The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay!
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light!
Jobless millions whisked away,
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight!!
By the late 1970s, things had started to change for the worse again.
The action had been on limiting strategic nuclear weapons, but in 1976, the Soviets started deploying medium-range nuclear missiles called SS-20s within striking distance of European and Asian targets. They were mobile, concealable and had three independent warheads.
By 1981, Ronald Reagan had become president of the United States -- and he was determined to win the cold war. For a host of reasons, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pushed its Doomsday Clock ahead by three minutes to four minutes to midnight, indicating the risk of a nuclear confrontation.
The 1982 anti-nuke film If You Love This Planet -- essentially, a film about a lecture by Dr. Helen Caldicott of Physicians for Social Responsibility, won an Academy Award for best documentary short. As an example of the tenor of the times, the U.S. Dept. of Justice denounced it as propaganda.
1983 I remember as a very bad year. The U.S. deployed its own intermediate-range missiles in western Europe. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau allowed the U.S. to test cruise missiles over Canadian soil. The Soviets shot down Korean Airlines Flight 007.
A riveting television movie of the time was The Day After, which dramatized the effects of a nuclear war, focusing on one town in Kansas. Half the population of the U.S. watched it. The U.S. government fretted about its anti-nuclear "bias."
And in 1984, Reagan made this classic gaffe (always assume you're around a live mike!):
"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
Oddly enough, not long after things looked the bleakest in 20 years, they started getting better again.
The big change came in 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union.
He recognized the country was broken and going broke (some conservative strategists gambled the U.S. could win the cold war by ramping up the arms race and bankrupting the Russkies. Turned out they were right). The USSR needed political and economic change. For that, he introduced policies like "glastnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (restructuring).
Actually, Gorbachev and Reagan, the old cold warrior, got some nuclear business done. One example was the INF treaty, signed in 1987.
The Doomsday clock was moved in 1998 to six minutes to midnight -- a big step forward!
In 1990, after a redesign, the Doomsday clock was set back to 10 minutes to midnight to recognize the end of the cold war.
In 1991, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and USSR signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which remains in effect.
That manoeuvre, along with other cuts in tactical and strategic weapons, pushed the Doomsday Clock back to 17 minutes to midnight.
Unfortunately, that would be the historic peak of presumed nuclear security.
And oddly enough, 1991 was the year I had a severe nuclear dread moment.
The air phase of the first Gulf War began on Jan. 16, 1991. Three days later, Iraq fired Scud missiles at Israel, loaded with chemical weapons. Three of them landed in Tel Aviv, wounding 17.
Israel vowed to respond with "all possible force."
That nation is widely believed to have nuclear weapons. Having Israel nuke Iraq would have set off a wider war in the Middle East. In addition, the Soviets were palsy with Iraq, so they might get drawn in.
Had such an attack occurred, things could have spiralled horribly from there.
Actually, in his fiction book The Fist of God, suspense author Frederick Forsyth claimed the Israelis had launched aircraft carrying nukes for Iraq, but that the U.S. ordered them to stand down. Fiction, yes, but Forsyth is a one-time British intelligence officer.
North Dakota
I was living in Regina in 1992, working as a reporter for the Leader-Post newspaper.
I went to a conference in Indianapolis, Indiana that March. For a host of reasons, the cheapest way to travel was to drive four hours to Minot, North Dakota, and catch a flight from there.
This I did, driving the deserted highways of under-populated northwest North Dakota, passing through chronically shrinking towns set among the wheat fields and occasional cattle pasture.
There wasn't much to differentiate North Dakota from southern Saskatchewan except for one thing: Minuteman nuclear missile silos.
The land taken up wasn't much -- maybe 50 by about 40 metres (I'm guessing from memory). From the road, you could see a heavy metal door covering the silo, and a few ventilation shafts and whatnot.
The fence was chain link, with barbed wire around the top.
If you wanted to breach the fence, it probably wouldn't be that hard, but remember what the sign says: "NO TRESPASSING. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED."
As I drove past one, I came upon an armoured personnel carrier bristling with weaponry (standard commuting vehicle out there?).
Next, I would cross paths with a U.S. Air Force MP sitting by the roadside. He was wearing classic mirrored sunglasses and looked completely emotionless.
The X Files wouldn't be on TV for two more years, but when it was, I would recognized that portion of my drive as an X Files moment.
To my mind, the sight of the silos and the military personnel really drove home what a different country we are from the U.S.
in progress ...