The hydrogen bomb is not the answer to the Western peoples' dream of full and final insurance of their security. . . While it has increased their striking power it has sharpened their anxiety and deepened their sense of insecurity.
I happened to read recently a remark by the American nuclear physicist W. Davidson, who noted that the explosion of one hydrogen bomb releases a greater amount of energy than all the explosions set off by all countries in all wars known in the entire history of mankind. And he, apparently, is right.
We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace.
I also was producing, working on other materials for the hydrogen bomb. They call it lithium-6 and tritium. I was working on these and the only use for lithium-6 is the hydrogen bomb.
Ideas and philosophies change just as machines do. Religions changed because of the birth control pill. Politics changes because of the hydrogen bomb. All because of science fictional inventions.
World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.
And I thought about the psychic numbing involved in strategic projections of using hydrogen bombs or nuclear weapons of any kind. And I also thought about ways in which all of us undergo what could be called the numbing of everyday life.
Our planet. . . consists largely of lumps of fall-out from a star-sized hydrogen bomb. . . Within our bodies, no less than three million atoms rendered unstable in that event still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored from that fierce fire of long ago.
