The Bomb

Aaron Krug

11/8/04

UNST 121D

Newlands

Collections/Reflections

            The Atomic bomb was arguably the greatest invention of our time, and it was used to wreak arguably the greatest havoc in our time. If someone asks you how forbidden knowledge affect them in their daily lives, point to this invention. The splitting of the atom and subsequent development of bigger, better bombs based on this development has shaped my entire life in such a way that it is hard to imagine a history without it. Should we have built the atomic bomb? Oppenheimer thought so, but many others didn’t. When we built it, we did so under the reasoning that if we didn’t our enemies would first and then we would be in a world of trouble. I have heard it said that if the Germans had developed the bomb first we would all be speaking German right now. Some argue that it saved many more lives than it took, but that is only the posturing of historians to try to make the invention a blameless event. If I could point to one area in our history that got close enough to a situation where I would agree with Montaigne and Pascal’s notion of human portee, this would be it. By inventing the bomb, we stopped a world war, but we doomed ourselves to a cold war, an arms race, third world countries in possessions of weapons of mass destruction, and the ability for one person to bring down annihilation upon millions. Would we, as humans be better off if we had never tried to build the bomb? Did we reach beyond our grasp? Did our desire to know forbidden knowledge take us too far too fast? I would say yes. As we raced toward the cold war and the notion of mutually assured destruction, I’m sure many people might have agreed with me as well. But what do we do about it now? We have made treaties with people, tried to ban production, controlled the raw materials, but the threat still exists. What more can we do? We have already crossed the Oedipus line and allowed the Sphinx to ask us a question, and now, if we don’t find an answer, someday, the Sphinx, in the form of an atomic bomb or one of its incarnations, will destroy us all.