Flash and Boom
The symbol most often used to represent nuclear weapons is the characteristic mushroom-shaped cloud the explosion creates. Probably nuclear weapons became associated with mushroom clouds not because the cloud has the most psychological impact on us, but because it fits in a newspaper. If a black and white photograph is your only means for giving a visceral sense of the Bomb, showing the towering cloud probably makes sense. But it is easy to be misled by this symbol.
The first observers of a nuclear explosion did not dwell on the cloud. "The whole country was lighted by a searing light with an intensity many times that of the midday sun. . . . Thirty seconds after the explosion came, first, the air blast pressing hard against the people and things, to be followed almost immediately by the strong, awesome roar . . ."
It is the flash and roar that impressed them. And thinking about nuclear weapons in terms of flash and boom is the key to understanding our reactions to them. Consider how we might react to a weapon that destroyed large areas and killed lots of people without the flash and boom of nuclear weapons. -By vibration, perhaps. A smallish device that could set up sympathetic vibrations in the ground causing buildings to shake apart and killing people at short distances. Would we be as horrified of this weapon as we are by nuclear weapons?
Let's turn the contrast up a little bit. Make the weapon a powerful fast-moving acid that eats through buildings and people out to a radius of about a mile and a half. When the device is activated the acid spreads as a wall of small pink bubbles. How would we feel about this?
"As the deadly bubbles spread outward across the desert and the test structures collapsed and the faint characteristic sound of popping was carried to me on the night air, I thought suddenly of the words of the Bagavad Gita 'Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.'" I don't really think so. Do you?
Actually, we don't have to create imaginary examples in order to have a point of comparison. Weapons already exist that are roughly the equivalent of nuclear weapons but don't have the flash and boom: chemical weapons.
Chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction. They can be used to kill tens of thousands of people at a time. They have been used far more often than nuclear weapons (on the order of thousands of times, rather than only twice). Yet our reaction to them is different. They are scary, no doubt. And the horror of them was at least, in part, why we banned their use in war. But we do not talk about them in the same hushed, apocalyptic tones that we almost always use when talking about nuclear weapons.
Why is this so? Why does one weapon of mass destruction make people think they have "become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds" while the other is so undramatic that there aren't even stories about who invented them (much less what portentous phrase came to mind when they were tested for the first time)?
Viewed from the standpoint of military utility, nuclear weapons and chemical weapons are roughly equivalent. But our feelings about chemical weapons seem much more proportionate to the threat. Nuclear weapons seem to touch some deep part of our soul. They seem to reach into some primeval memory of fear and awe. Why are our reactions to nuclear weapons so overdrawn?
One possible answer lies in our primeval experiences of overwhelming power. There are many events that impressively display the power of nature: hurricane, earthquake, tidal wave, volcanic eruption, tornado. But the most common one is thunder and lightning.
Inside our modern houses we are mostly protected from lightning and thunder. There is little practical reason to fear it. (There is no reason at all to fear thunder.) Yet even modern, sophisticated, rational homo sapiens is frightened by thunder and lightning.
I once lay in bed - flinching instinctively - through one of the most concentrated thunder and lightning storms I've ever witnessed. For nearly twenty minutes (by the clock, it seemed to go on longer) lightning stuck and thunder rolled every few seconds, often so close together that the crashes overlapped. Our small garage apartment trembled with every report. The blinding light flashed and then just as suddenly left us in total darkness. It was enormously impressive; not something I'm ever likely to forget. I was frightened despite myself.
I have since tried to imagine myself ignorant of the properties of lightning and thunder, huddled in a cave or - more frighteningly - caught in open ground, not knowing what it meant or what to do.
People throughout time have been awe struck by thunder and lightning. Zeus, king of all the Ancient Greeks' gods, was god of lightning. Thor, the Norse god with the hammer, was god of thunder. The Navajos call him earthshaker. Most cultures created a god of storms. Fear and awe of the sudden flash and gigantic boom are deeply rooted in our makeup.
The flash and boom of nuclear weapons stir our oldest fears, our most primeval feelings of awe. Our fear of loud noises and bright flashes may even by instinctive.
Nuclear weapons' over-inflated reputation comes, at least in part, from this connection to our ancient fears. It is not the practical usefulness or non-usefulness of the weapons that governs our reactions. We do not see their end result in our mind's eye. We see the flash and boom, and are overawed.
The flash and boom are impressive, but they are superfluous. A nuclear weapons that produced no flash and boom would not have its military usefulness reduced. But would we have become so infatuated with the power of nuclear weapons if they had not made that impressive sound and flashed the great burst of light?
Like Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, our eyes have been drawn by the impressive fire and the thunderous noise. But we need to disobey the Wizard's command to "Pay no attention to the small man behind the curtain."
[Since I wrote this piece in the middle nineties, I've been told (and believe) that chemical weapons are not really equivalent to nuclear weapons in terms of scale. They can kill lots of people, but you have to work an awful lot harder to do it with them. You could, however, substitute biological weapons for chemical weapons in the piece above and the point would be preserved.]