BoomerZoo Almanac for September 23-29, 2007: Nuclear Fall
While it wasn’t until 1983 that the term “nuclear winter” was coined by American physicist Richard P. Turco (a cohort of Carl Sagan, who literally wrote the book on the subject), no Boomer had been untouched by the whole idea of nuclear war and its concomitant MAD philosophy (not to be confused with the computer game of the same name). Who among us hasn’t hidden under a desk to avoid being annihilated by an atom bomb? I would guess the real driving force behind MAD and the eventual fear of a nuclear winter came about on a lovely fall day in 1949, when President Harry Truman announced to a shocked nation: "We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR." The race was on! I grew up in quite a small town planted pretty much right smack in the middle of nowhere (which turns out to be a good place to park ammunition dumps and nuclear power plants, by the way), so we didn’t have much of an airport. I can still remember trembling in my bed whenever I heard an airplane fly overhead for fear that it would be the one that brought a big bomb home to me. I realize now that this doesn’t make sense, but like most little girls, I had a big imagination and only a little strategic defense education. It took 47 years, but on Sept. 24, 1996, the U.S., along with a bunch of the world's other nuclear powers (though not all), signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons. (Go to article.) While I applaud this effort, like so much of what we do, this treaty looks like too little, too late. OK, maybe not too late. I’m really the eternal optimist—if an optimist can also be a cynic. I suspect a lot of people who get a little power can’t see the trees for the forest, but I also think most people are really pretty decent; they don’t look forward to wars or even rumors of wars. I suspect that, like me, most of them just want to eat, have a roof over their heads and have happy children—and grandchildren. I know I want my grandchildren to be happy. I sure as heck don’t want them lying awake at night wondering if the airplane droning overhead is going to drop a bomb on them! So I guess I’ll keep walking and talking the peace and love walk and talk, all the while maintaining a little low-key constituent pressure on those elected officials who claim to represent me among those powerful people who are lost in the woods. Hope they find their way home before winter.
