A sure sign of the cultural impact of a hit movie is that, after the first week, we are still seeing one article after another inspired by it, from the often silly (who is buying Oppie’s hat?) to the serious. Somewhere in between is this interesting piece in today’s New York Times on imagery of the mushroom cloud, from the ‘50s and ‘60s (e.g. Dr. Strangelove) through to The Day After and much more in the 1980s, to Asteroid City and Oppenheimer now.
Nolan returns the nuclear explosion from the realm of symbolism to a primal zone of fears and urges – a cataclysm created by other human beings like us.
But let’s not forget Arnold and Jamie Lee in True Lies (with the real Terminator behind them)
After toiling in a top-secret government program for two to three years, many scientists who were part of the Manhattan Project, and not at Los Alamos, finally learned in 1945 that all that work was aimed at creating a revolutionary new weapon, the atomic bomb, and with Germany defeated it might very well still be used – over Japanese cities in the months ahead. Indeed, this would occur, seventy-eight years ago next week. This eventuality deeply troubled some of them, fearing the toll on civilians, and the uncharted radiation effects that would result, as well as setting a precedent for future use.
Yet none of them took these concerns public. Wartime security controls were still very much in place and anyone who did leak or speak to the press faced severe penalties. A key Chicago scientist, Eugene Rabinowitz, later recounted that he deeply considered speaking out. It wasn’t so much that he opposed any possible use of the bomb but that – I find this profound – Americans deserved to know, in advance, what was likely about to be done by their leaders, in their names. There is no record of anyone else within the massive Manhattan Project – with sprawling sites in a several states – coming close to doing that.
One of the most famous scientists who played a key early role in developing the bomb, Leo Szilard, did mount an earnest private campaign, gaining the support of dozens of atomic scientists in the project. We see a little of this in Oppenheimer, once via Szilard and a couple of times raised by Teller. They petitioned President Truman to never use, or at least hold off using, the new weapon until Japan was given a much longer period to surrender, or possibly demonstrate the power of the bomb for the enemy before actually dropping it over a city. The petition was blocked (partly by Oppie) from reaching the desk of the president before it was too late.
Hellbound and Down 