The Nuclear Age
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Mary W. Shelley's classic novel Frankenstein is a cautionary tale about the excesses of science in which a being is created and then turns on his creator. In the 1950s and into the 1960s, America passed through what might be called a Frankenstein-moment as nuclear power burst on the scene first as a wonder that had been harnessed by American scientists in time to end World War II and to make America a leading world power and then was perceived more and more as a threat because our enemies also had this awesome power. Americans quickly learned about the dangers posed by nuclear energy, dangers in the form not only of unimaginable destructive power but of radiation sickness and death. Science had been the promise of the future, producing marvels and improving the economy for over a century, but now science was suspect because the future it had promised was threatened by one of its inventions. This attitude was embodied in popular culture and in the cold War tensions which caused many to build fallout shelters in their back yard.Weart notes the way with which America first viewed the nuclear fireball on television in 1954: "I remember staring in dread fascination at the television that afternoon. . ." (Weart 183). Weart also notes how the increase in fear of nuclear war affected Americans differently than it did Russians, because the Russians had memories of war on their own soil, while Americans did not (Weart 112). Americans may also have started to fear what could
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orist group might be able to acquire a nuclear device and use it for its own purposes. Americans were especially fearful of potential nuclear power additions such as Libya and Iran.
However, Americans turned sour on nuclear power long before that development. One important element rightly cited by Newhouse as having great import and influence throughout the nuclear age was the group of professionals who guided nuclear policy and who developed all strategy on the basis of the perceived nuclear threat. Newhouse sees them as encouraging an ideological and polarized debate instead of seeking to reduce tensions with a more reasoned debate on nuclear issues. For these experts in particular, every action on the part of the Soviets was tied to the nuclear threat. At the same time, as Newhouse shows, American analysts tended to place America at the center of every equation even when this was not warranted and to do so in terms of seeing America as the target of all nuclear threats. Every Soviet success was judged in terms of how it added to the threat to America. When the Soviets sent Sputnik aloft, it was made to seem as if the Soviets had now taken control of space, when in fact they had only made a tentative step into space an
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Approximate Word count = 1236
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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