On July 16, 1945, 80 years ago today, the US detonated the first nuclear explosion in New Mexico. The moment and the events leading up to it were the subject of the 2023 Oppenheimer film. There had been concern my some in the team that the explosion might grow out of control and destroy the earth. As it was, the explosion was four times stronger than predicted. The Truman administration followed up in less than a month with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only times to date in which nuclear weapons have been used in war.
After the test, Oppenheimer was said to have quoted from the Bhagavad Gita, “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Today, nine nations are believed to hold nuclear weapons and could lay claim to that epithet.
The question we live with today’s threats, from nuclear weapons on one hand and climate disasters on the other, is whether we may all die, “not with a bang, but a whimper,” to borrow from TS Eliot in his poem, The Hollow Men. May we live long enough perhaps to prevent both.
