Suffering much worse as we have strategic interest but it would be nice if we would stand up for our principles or at least call things as everyone else in the world would see them. The second thing i would like to end on a hopeful note some of me just observe this. We have had a situation where for 40 years the arab world was the only region in the world, the only significant however you drew the map in a world thed where there wasnt a single democracy, and now according to Freedom House i think correctly judged there is a democracy. Its transitionaits transitionas elements of fragility and things we should be concerned about. We shouldnt take it for granted. That is precisely my point. If i were an american policymaker i would be saying okay what is the economic agenda for embracing and lifting up this economy and for strengthening the state, for partnering with the Civil Society and Political Institutions . You have to start somewhere. This country is crucially important i think to the future of the democracy and freedom throughout the world. And the final thing is you know, i really do believe and i think my colleagues agree we are still in the very early stages here in terms of a process of struggle for using one of the big words dignity throughout the region coming into this isnt going away. There are many historical events that are going to unfold in the years and decades to come that i think are going to rock these regimes or reduce them to come to terms with the demands for the accountability and popular sovereignty. So we are going to have to do another edition of this bookmark. That is the one thing i think we can say for sure. My coeditor, thank you very much and all of the staff at the journaof thejournal of democrace National Endowment for democracy and the three panelists, thank you all. [applause] craig nelson talks about the history of the era stretching from the discovery of the race to the fall of the soviet union. He profiles such figures as marie currie, albert einstein, curtis lemay and comer robert mcnamara, Ronald Reagan and mikhail gorbachev. This onehou one hour and ten ms program is next on booktv. I remember going to the library when i was around 11yearsold and picking out a big beautifully illustrated book printed in 1956. It was entitled our friend, the atom by german science author. The preface featured a parable about a man that wrote to the corruptincorrupting lamp that bt forth a mighty genie that stood for Atomic Energy. He called the person he must be handled carefully for he could either be a tireless uncomplaining servant, or the most fearful and a terrible master the man had ever known. The man didnt want this responsibility. But the genie told him now that he had been free he couldnt put him back in the bottle he had to decide how to use and. Tonights presentation of the age of reagans details visit much richer digital form and tolls among its stories scientists whose interest in the atom sometimes called within and out of hitlers persecution drove from germany the very first discovery could have given him a street of the world and that in the past of the apocalyptiapocalyptic were takeo nuclear research. In this story as it is told by the speaker tonight defy him and data with disaster at chernobyl one as large. The power is like most human discoveries neither a good or evil of itself. But very much the product of how we use what we have discovered. Craig nelson has written books on many topics. Rocket man told the story of the apollo missions. Thomas paine profiled a philosopher. The first heroes was about the raid on japan in the early part of her work too. And lets get lost features the authors travels to unusual parts of the world and be on experiences that accompany them. Other things that he has written have appeared in vanity fair, the wall street journal and so on. He lives not far from here in greenwich village. Please welcome the author of the age of radiance, craig nelson. [applause] thank you so kindly. Its a thrill to be invited to the New York Public Library since ive been a patriot ever since. And of course as a historian coming it is a major part of my work. And my own personal library, my Branch Library on mulberry street and one of the first books i remember reading as a child was a dr. Seuss book called to think i saw it on mulberry street. And my labor reason the building where david bowie lives and theres nothing ithere is nothi, this dr. Seuss book as good as seeing david bowie on mulberry street. So we can see already how history holds in on itself and that is how things we are going to be talking about. Tonight, now five years ago when i first started working on this book if you asked me what radiation was i would say its dangerous and its infectious commits cancercausing and evil and this is probably what many of you think to. I think those still bu that they are tempered with other ideas. The first thing i learned about is radiation is made up caused by atom that are really sort of chubby and adorable and fat for their own good. They are so fat that they break the bond of nature that creates the Material World and spit out little pieces of themselves. That is what it is is little fat at him spitting out either little subatomic particles were gamma rays. We think of as the harley with the starlets of the periodic table. They are unstable and bulimic. So there they are. The thing about it create this charm where she used to go into her lab first thing in the morning for the sun would come out she would leave out her radiance of it would be glowing like these aquatic fireflies on the walls but then someone noticed after she put it away the walls were still glowing. One person noticed when you pick up a silver plutonium it was warm like a puppy and it was strange to pick up this metal that would be cool but instead it was warm like a piece of the solution at los alamos for holding is too long was called high amputation so its sort of a scary puppy that we are talking about here. But really the entire subatomic world has this disturbing quality. We are talking about radiation over time as a halflife and we think about this inert object sending out these dangerous rays. But really the entire subatomic world is like that. So im going to give you one example. Lets say you are flying in a plane and you look out the window and see a bunch of specs and because you are a worldclass physicist you take out your rule and start to create a portrait of the way the specs appear and disappear from through the speed of them and after a while youve created something of an idea of mathematics of the specs and then you take out your binoculars and realize you have been flying over water and sea whitecaps and you know they are powered by waves. These are worldclass physicists and do know that there is a music of the spheres of nature but there isnt a lot of rhythm and it is the polls. So you take a whole new set of calculations based on the waves. And this is however some atomic world we can use to things arise and are binoculars in this example to noticed particles, the whitecaps are the invisible forces powered and this is how something in the subatomic world can be both a particle and wave. So all of it is creepy and disturbing. But before we get too much of the science, i want to back up a little bit. When this great man was born and when he died, the day that the battle, but the one that started history has a different idea altogether. He said history is about one thing and one thing only. And that is have i got a story for you. Once upon a time there was a little girl who was the youngest of five children in the family that had once been prosperous but had fallen on hard times and when she was 17 vista sister said that they gave you. You go work me and separately for two years while i go to the university and then i will turn around and do the same thing for you. And this is an especially bizarre idea at the time because in that moment and in that time and place it was illegal for women over the age of 12 to get an education. And they were getting around that by attending something called the Floating University. Which floated so the authorities could track down who was running it and this Floating University to do fantastic job because she got into medical school at the university of paris and off she went and off she went to becoming a nanny to support her. The first couple of jobs she gets she is very unhappy and terrible and then she starts working for them and they are a fantastic family that run a sugarbeet plantation about 60 kilometers outside and they love her and the six kids are just adorable and then the oldest son comes home from school and hes kashmir and they folded over here and they folded over heels in love. Im going to tell my parents we are going to get married. And he goes and does that. In fact the parents say no way youre not marrying this little nobody. You are marrying up. They see each other secretly for six months and the parents find out and they fire her. So now she goes back and is living at her Fathers House and she is heartbroken. And the letter comes. I finished school and im engaged in now is your turn to come to paris. But she is so in love she cant do it. She cant give up the first half of her life and then finally, the letter arrives. Forget it. My parents are never going to let me marry you. Just forget it. Decades later he would become a famous mathematician. And he would be frequently seen in the main square of the city staring up at the enormous statute of the National Hero of poland which is who she grew up to be because she left. Succumb i love the story so much because it really shows you first of all dont always follow your heart especially if you are 19, but it really shows you what would have happened if she had stayed with him and never left poland have a future would have been changed. Because she would go on to discover the fundamental forces of radioactivity. She would discover that plutonium and she would realize that radiation was a force that didnt come from the outside it came from within and they would discover that because it has such an effect on the fastgrowing cells you can use it to treat cancer. But now i know all of you have heard the wonderful story and what a fantastic couple they were for each other. But lets forget about that and talk about somebody else. Here is the only woman with einstein. They were now being dressers. Hes so important in th into sig next to einstein in this picture they had a white house into the letters back and further so passionate by this beginning early that he was run over by a car for probably addicted by working with radioactive material. But anyway, so they are madly in love and its like she has a whole second life except it is a problem and that of course paul is married and even though his wife doesnt mind if she minded that his mistress is the most famous woman in france coming into the wife has a brother and he runs a newspaper and they talk about how she is english emigrant and shes jewish. He says what should i do . Ago gets the prize . But anyway that relationship falls apart as all of you in the audience guess he goes back to his wife and before that relationship ends and he breaks her heart all over again he says ive got this gogetter and you should hire him to work in your lab come and she does hire him. And after about a year you will never know what happens. And he has a heart attack and desist you are not going to marry. In fact, she makes him one of the first prenups in history. If anything happens they are going to keep all of the radium. But she was wrong. They have a fantastic marriage and in fact they are more important to us today because they discovered artificial radiation which is a fundamental element of Nuclear Medicine and its important medicine in todays microscope and the reason i told you this long giant story is because the end of the story marie was the first woman to win the prize in iran and her daughter was the second. After they discovered artificial asia and everybody around the world starts radiating everything into one group that especially becomes good at it as a villain chemist and his partner and none of you have ever heard of them even though she is of this history and modern times and i would like to let you her story. She was the first woman Professor University professor in the diversity. She was the second to receive an advanced degree in the history of the university of vienna and was running the Physics Institute in the most Important Research institution in the world when she was kicked out for having jewish ancestry. She ends up in sweden in the nick of time and there she is at the age of 60 all washed up area she doesnt speak spanish, her boss is jealous of her and hates her, she has no equipment, no help, she isnt being paid anything and feels completely washed out and alone and cannot believe this has happened to her. Her nephew comes for a visit and they have something called lutefisk. For those of you that havent eaten at its like when you go to the gas station and buy beef jerky that its made out of fish and has the consistency of jello. Its the worst thing theyve put in my mouth and ive put tarantula legs in my mouth. So they have this lutefisk and all she can talk about is her test ex partner and his findings. Because what hes doing is hes putting a stream of neutrons that uranium and hes getting bizarre results that no one understands and they think that maybe they are instruments that are wrong by the chemistry is wrong, they dont whats going on. And finally, lisa sits down on a log in the middle of a snowfall on a Christmas Day and she takes up a pencil and a piece of paper and she takes the uranium and how much it weighs and she takes the stuff that they are getting out of it and how much it weighs atomically. And then she applied einstein in the middle and it fits. She discovered fission. When he goes back he asked his neighbor biologist with a college when bacteria split and that is where fishing is discovered. What this triggered is an incredible sensation among the everglades who are fleeing because in the United States especially all of the sort of thing below american scientists are working on the radar. They dont care about fis fissi. What if they ge get an atomic bb and we dont have a . Said, normally americans were told the story of the making of the atomic bomb as being that einstein and oppenheimer notes and observations on the board. But in fact it took three of the most terrifying experiments in history to make these into the first one happened in the middle of the city of chicago. He was supposed to create the first atomic reactor but the people building the facility had a strike so the university of chicago president said we dont have football here anymore so no one is using our stadium. You could use that. This is where he created the First Nuclear reactor and i call it the third most dangerous experiment in history since the something had gone wrong with the reactor . But nothing went wrong. It was the most perfect experiment anyone had ever seen and he has that happened to take a patent. One thing happened on the soviet spies there was a translation issue so where he was for almost three decades the soviet union thought the First Nuclear reactor was spread in a pumpkin patch. [laughter] i know that some of you came here because you heard there was going to be a reading and i know that some of you are angry that i havent read anything so i will read a little bit for you at this time. In 1921 a young woman catherine was told that soon she would die. Catherine decided to spend the rest of her days as a chicago millionaire and the southwest on the page family ranch that late played in the desert of mariposa between the pecos river into the mountains named for the sunset where it peaks during incandescent. The following year with such a serious cough as the suspected tuberculosis but not his chainsmoking showed up at the ranch and she taught him how to write a course through the canyons and across the mesa and every kind of way. Bob returned with his brother frank and this time catherine and page whose death wouldnt come for decades and took the 9500 feet to a cabin with a fireplace stood at 154 acres of alpine meadow, fields of clover and heart stopping views of the river near the mountains. Hot dog, he said no catherine z. The boys convinced of their data to print th rent the place at lt robert would continue as an adult until he could buy it for 10,000 in 1947 he and frank went there every chance they could living or great dreams of the american west. Riding horsebac horseback thousf miles away to colorado, living on the vienna sausages, chocolate covered raisins cheese and whiskey. Now ladies here we have a lesson history can teach us. If you have a man that is the object of your interest and youryournot paying attention ty teaches you should consider trying chocolate covered raisins cheese and whiskey. [laughter] during one of his states out west, oppenheimer wrote back to a friend by two great loves are physics and mexico. Its a pity they cannot become mind. One of the areas he took a writer, catherine was a naval cannot create her and through the canyon with a stream along which cottonwood forest the canyon was named for the trees los alamos. And you know i grew up in a jungle town filled with swamp people so i just thought this was beautiful. So i certainly get to this part of the story. Now two kinds of bombs were made at los alamos. The first one was made from uranium coming and it was so simple engineering that they never tested it before dropping it on hiroshima. The first time it is tested as when it was detonated. Basically this bomb is a gun inside. With a shot of uranium from an super bowl of uranium and in order one problem they ha has they didnhaveis they didnt knh uranium they needed at each end of the device. So, although robert, the one that helped discover fission went off to the canyons and he created the second most dangerous experiment in American History where he created a guillotine device with a set of washers where he could change the size of the plug and another set of washers where he could change the size of the bowl and then he would drop the washers with his guillotine and they would pass through the bowl for a couple of seconds to create a very split second if super criticality. One american physicist said we are trying to come as close as we could do an atomic explosion without actually blowing ourselves up coming and that is how they created that. Now i want you to carefully notice what this looks like. And here comes the plutonium bomb, which looks like that. Now you will see there is quite a difference here between the two coming and that is because when the men do physicists at los alamos is theoretically put together the idea for the plutonium bomb they had a concept that plutonium coming out of hand for washington would be extremely fewer come and it wasnt. What they needed to do is they need to figure out how to compress it from the size of an orange to the size of a marble and that would make it work. The only way to do that is to perfectly included on all sides. As all of these wire wires thatu see our little destination charges that are all firing in perfect synchronicity to compress the quaternion. And the guy that came up with this idea was my favorite hungarian and nuclear scientist. Now, he was created the fundamentals of modern computing at a time when the most popular computer in the world come he caught his computer maniac. He was such a good mathematician has wife said he can count everything except calories. And he sort of the to people because he liked to play german music really loud on his record but he was the one that did the calculations that made the plutonium bomb work and i also loved him because he was such a messy dresser that when everyone went riding in the grand canyon he were a three piece suit. And there is a corner of princeton who liked to drive his car and read a book at the same time and he crashed so often into the corner. Now right after the bombs were dropped america became very excited about this and the government explained to americans that the reasons we have atomic bombs and nobody else did is because we knew atomic secrets and everyone assumed this meant the geniuses at los alamos, but it didnt mean that. What they were doing at los alamos was really a kind of engineering. And the real genius was being done at oak ridge tennessee at the largest building in the world at that time. Because they were treating the fuel that goes inside of the bombs coming and they have to do it with all these different methods. One was a thermal diffusion method and another was a drip diffusion method. Then they had a merry go round of the cyclotron. That was going on there. And they also had thermonuclear they had fission devices for the plutonium. But the great thing that came out is they have to discover a special seal it and that entered American Homes as tough one. Teflon. The bombs were very beautiful. But 13 of them together. Okay . I used a good light to see one. Im sorry. So now we have the most dangerous experiment in the history of science in america. When he made the First Nuclear reactor and was having lunch in 1940 with his protege he said you know i dont know why we are working on making fission bombs because its going to create so much heat you could burn Hydrogen Atoms and create a wrong just like starlight. And edward became so obsessed with this that he spent the next 20 years of his life trying to create thermal Nuclear Weapons and he would sit at his desk at los alamos and come up wit withb ideas. And my favorite idea was something called the backyard bomb and this was so enormous and would kill so many people you didnt need to take it and drop it on anybody. You could just set it off in your backyard. Here is edward tellers first test visit in 1952. Its when the bikini was first introduced because like the fusion bomb is small and devastating. And this is called the barack bo bomb. People that viewed it had seen plenty of atomic bombs and they said theyd never seen anything like it. It was like watching a disease appearing overhead. And it started snowing and the snow was radioactive fallout because of the island it was on. Many of the japanese couldnt sit through the whole thing. They would get so upset, they would have to run out of the theater. Now, for those of you who are zen buddhists and are wondering when i will introduce a note of humility on the universe, here it is, a slide out of order. Many people have asked me isnt there the possibility that there will be dirty bombs, that terrorists will have nuclear bombs. And, you know, the worst attack, terrorist attack in American History was done with box cutters and flying lessons. So i dont think the next step is Nuclear Science. However, this is something that could make you nervous, which is that we have this huge number of atomic plants all over the continental United States. Some of these are where weapons are stored, where theyre produced, some are where power plants are, and all these lines are the transportation network. And then since we dont have any way of disposing of Nuclear Materials, 12 atomic plants have Nuclear Materials sitting out and open in swimming pools such as they had in fukushima. So if there is something to be frightened about with terrorism, this would be it. Now, one of the great things that you get to do after hearing this lecture and reading this book is the next time you see the movie dr. Strangelove, instead of watching it as a wacky comedy, you can watch it as a historic documentary. Because, in fact, a lot of it turns out to be true. One of the fundamental things in it is that almost anytime someone in the movie is ranting and raving about how, dont worry, if we have nuclear holocaust, only 20, 25 million americans will die, and we can put the best and the brightest in mine shafts. We can have two women for every man, and we can repopulate the earth. All of this was serious theory at the time by Nuclear Strategy itselfs. One of who, herman khan, tries tries tried to tell kubrick he deserved it, and cubic said it doesnt work that way. And everything time in the movie you see the president of the United States and the head of the soviet union using a hotline, the hotline wasnt invented yet. In fact, a major part of the cuban missile crisis is the fact that they had to translate these cables back and forth laboriously, cables that needed to be read immediately were 11 hours delayed. So the hotline came after all of this. But the major thing about dr. Strangelove that is incredible to me is the fact that the doomsday machine thats the joke that ends the movie and ends the world, god invented. What happened is that during the Carter Administration from truman to carter the Nuclear Strategy of the United States was that we were going to drop our entire atomic arsenal on china and russia and kill everybody and destroy everything. And during the Carter Administration, they came up with a new strategy was that we would only drop our atomic weapons on the heads of to lit borrow and the kremlin. And the people behind this strategy wrote this wonderful article in Foreign Affairs magazine on how well that was going to work, and they called it decapitation. They were going to cut off the head of the soviet government. And the soviet Government Read this article in Foreign Affairs magazine and got upset. So they came up with a thing where if missiles attack the soviet union and no word came from moscow, missiles would automatically fly back out and attack the United States. So the doomsday machine here in dr. Strangelove would actually come to pass 30 years later. And if dr. Strangelove is a significant movie in atomic history, the most significant movie in history this atomic history is china syndrome. And i like to say that Americans First learned about Nuclear Science from seeing movies and pictures of the victims of hiroshima and nagasaki, and then they learned about atomic power plants when three mile island melted down at the same time as the china syndrome was in theaters. So you have Walter Cronkite announcing that what could be the end of the world is happening in pennsylvania while jane fonda is giving a Powerpoint Presentation about how Nuclear Power plants work and saying, and if something bad happens, it could destroy an area the size of pennsylvania. And because of this, this coincidence of three mile island and china syndrome launched the biggest series of protests in the United States which culminated with one Million People in central park. And this really stopped Nuclear Power dead. We got 20 of our electricity from nuclear then, and thats still all we get now. The, a long time ago, for many, many years we were told that dropping the bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki ended world war ii, it kept us from are having to send in one and a half million troops to invade the home island and cause a terrible tragedy and carnage that way, and that was the only thing that got the japanese to surrender. And now we dont think that thats true anymore. We think that what got the japanese to surrender was that the soviets said that they were going to come in on our side this that war instead of help the japanese negotiate a settlement and that the japanese had already lost 60 cities so losing 61 and 62 didnt matter that much and that the idea to drop the bomb was actually to terrify stalin. So you can see that we can sort of today think that hiroshima and nagasaki were not the ends of world war ii, they were the beginnings of the cold war, and we now believe that the end of the cold war was actually caused by chernobyl. And this is because when chernobyl exploded and sent a cloud the size of 400 hiroshimas across europe, it broke the soviet citizens belief in its government as being competent and trustworthy. And both gorbachev and [inaudible] both believe that this is what ended the soviet union, chernobyl. So you can say the cold war started and ended with nuclear holocausts. The extraordinary thing about chernobyl is the fact that, first of all, the reason why it created such a horrible cloud is that they changed the roof of it so that they could make both electricity and warheaded with the same power warheads with the same power plant. And it all began as a test of a safety idea. They were going to see if they could run down plant low enough if they could restart it without any problem, and when that failed, it all blew to hell. Now, the u. N. Has spent almost three decades studying chernobyl, and theyve not figured out that 75 people died. 57 were either plant workers or first responders, and the others were the teenage children of families who didnt evacuate the zone and who drank the milk of contaminated cows and got cancer in the thyroid. Speaking a little closer to home, fukushima is an amazing story since the plant actually survived the incredible earthquake, and it would have survived the tsunami except that they kept their backup batteries in the basement. That was the only flaw in this. And what happened was they had to battle three different problems at the same time. They had hydrogen gas exploding in the atmosphere, they had reactors exploding, and then they also had these cooling tanks with the old, used fuel. That was also exploding. So it came from three different directions. At one point one of the most frightening things in the book is learning how the head of the utility called the Prime Minister and said theres nothing we can do, were evacuating the plant, were giving up. But the onsite manager insisted on going forward, and he came up with the system of the fukushima 50 where 400 men were cycled in and out of the plant, many of whom were the equivalent of day laborers that you hire in the parking lot of costco or work who went in, and they would even reset their do similarrer thes, because if they got too high a reading, they would be pulled out of the work force. So they would hide how much they were getting, and they were the ones who actually saved this from being a global holocaust. I love this. If anyone doesnt need something to get their children, you can get them a nice Atomic Energy lab. It comes with my favorite device which is a Cloud Chamber which is a supersaturated fog, and you can actually see subatomic particles moving around in that fog. Now, i say that were seeing the end of the atomic age, and i like this picture as a symbol of that. This first came out as a comic book that Elementary Schools would buy to give their children to learn about the history of atomic age. Its about this little boy named andy, and hes playing with his dog, and the dog runs off into the nevada test site, and they find the dog after a week covered in radioactive kurt. Can dust. So during this time andy learns about the wonders of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Medicine, and here he is reunited with the dog while in the background nevada is still continuing its nuclear tests. So this image was originally this educational magazine that children were supposed to read, then it became the sort of horrific picture of nuclear winter, sort of andy and this dog were the last survivors of nuclear war. And now you can buy it as a humorous mouse pad. Now its a joke. So i think that history is fantastic. But there is a terrible story in all this in the fact that all this time that weve been worried about being contaminated by being attacked by atomic bombs from the soviet union, in fact, the biggest danger to americans comes from the tests done in nevada which have now contaminated the entire continental United States and 11,000 americans die every year from that pollution, leftover pollution from nevada. So, but there is a little bit of good news in all of this. One of the pieces of good news is that weve spent a number of decades studying the survivors of hiroshima and nagasaki, and i would imagine that they would have 50 higher cancer rates than normal, 70 higher cancer rate. Instead all in this time they only have 1 higher cancer rates. So all of this is sort of mixed really. But the reason why i say were in the final stages of the atomic age is that even though if i had to id rather live next to a Nuclear Power plant than a coal power plant if i had to, every time we have one of these disasters happen the government and the company does such a terrible job managing it that theyve lost all their political capital. And now to build a Nuclear Power plant, to maintain it and to fix it if something goes wrong, you need subsidies, government subsidies, and who is going to vote for that . So unless there is the possibility of a technological breakthrough and i hope there is one because we cant keep using petrochemicals. California i really wish there was a technological breakthrough, but i dont think theres going to be one. So i think nuclear is on the way out as far as power goes. And then as far as atomic bombs go, the United States and the soviet union spent over 5 trillion on nuclear arms. And the last time anyone used nuclear arms was hiroshima and nagasaki in 1945. And every time somebody gets nuclear arms, everyone gets nervous about it, but they never get used. So even mao and stalin never used their nuclear bombs. And, in fact, theres a fantastic conundrum in that alfred nobel whose oil fortune founded the nobel prize said his great dream in life was to create a weapon that was so powerful or, it would make wars obsolete. And many people believe that teller, with his backyard bomb ideas, came up with that idea. That, in fact, the whole reason the cold war stayed cold was because everybody had nuclear arms. When reagan met with thatcher and said my great dream is to abolish all Nuclear Weapons, she said, are you crazy . What do you thinks keeping us from world war iii . That everyone has these Nuclear Weapons. So one of the great conundrums is should ed teller and the other creators of the atomic weapon get the Nobel Peace Prize for keeping us at peace with their atomic weapons. Many people think thats true. But i dont want to leave you on this terribly sad story. Remember when we first got together we talked about marie curies boyfriend and all that fun stuff . Remember what i told you about how los alamos was the name of that tree that they named the canyon after . Well, in fact, where i grew up in texas we also had an alamo which was a church also named for that tree. And last week on the radio someone asked he what was your first childhood memory. And i remembered that when i was a very little boy, we used to have these very strange dreams about thal hoe where i was helping the alamo where i was helping people escape their doom, but it was sort of this spiritual thing going on. It was a very weird dream, and i couldnt figure out what was going on. And then when i was a teenager, i went back to visit the alamo, and i went around the corner, and there was the memorial for everyone who had died. And on that was this fantastic angel carrying the honor of the dead up to heaven. So now in my job as a historian when i tell you a great story about marie curie that brings her alive for you today, when i help you remember someone whos forgotten, i may be no angel, but other than that little boys dream has come true. And for your time and attention, i thank you kindly. [applause] does anyone have any questions . Yes, sir. Oh, okay. I havent done this before. Hi. Yeah, what you said about world war iii, many people believed that mutual assured destruction, yeah. Mutual assured destruction saved us from world war iiis such as the u. S. Against the soviet union or pakistan against india. But other people feel that, actually, we were mighty lucky. Cuban missile crisis, 1983, 1995. So where do you come down on this area . Do you feel that we were lucky or that it really did save us from world war iii . I think both are true. One of the most frightening moments in the book is when brzezinski, carters security adviser, is woken up in the middle of the night and told that were being, the soviet union has attacked, and theyre sending in the missiles. And he waits half an hour to get the confirmation call before he calls the president. And they call him with the confirmation and say its true, and its much worse than we originally thought. We thought it was 120 missiles, and its 12,000 missiles s. So hes sitting there s and hes not even going to wake up his wife, because he knows theyre going to be dead in a couple of minutes. As he reaches over to the phone to call carter the phone rings again, oh, somebody made mistake, we put in the training tapes. [laughter] and this happens over and over and over again where the soviets are convinced that something, that were attacking them, and its geese. And were convinced were under attack, and its weather balloons. And, you know, the bombers have an accident, and they drop their payload in the middle of the desert. And, yes, were extremely lucky. And the most terrifying one, another terrifying one is that during the Reagan Administration we ran this nato war game called able archer, and the soviets, the kgb had developed an entire theory that we were going to use war games as a cover for attacking. And we, england had the queen prepare a speech on how england was going to respond be now that atomic missiles were falling on england, and all of these were signs to the kgb that we were going to attack them. And thats why the Korean Airline plane was brought down, because it wandered into air space as they achieved their total paranoia from having these war games. Yes. Oh, he has the mic. Okay. You touch on this when you spoke of where you would prefer to live, but the fact is people perceive risk irrationally and behave irrationally regarding what is risky, relatively speaking. Hundreds of thousands of people each year even with lower with higher pollution standards in varying countries die from everyone sue ma and emphysema and other respiratory problems from particulates produced by fossil fuels. I could go on and on. Yes. If a bus goes over a cliff, it makes news. If 100 automobiles are involved this fatal collisions, people die one at a time, it does not make news. Right. But the reality is that conventional Nuclear Plants are a much better deal for civilization. Yes, i agree with you. In fact, at the chernobyl after i point out how the u. N. Says 75 people died, i have their biggest u. N. Critic says, no, this is wrong, at least 16,000 people died. And then i point out how in the u. S. 16,000 die every year from pollution caused by using coal to produce electricity. But i still feel that when you have a situation like three mile island where, in fact, they could have used that to prove that the design of the reactors we have in the United States are safe because Nothing Happened to anybody from three mile island, they didnt even they couldnt even do that. So i think every time we have one of these disasters, its so mishandled that the public feels no sense of safety in having this go down, so theres no political will power even though i agree with you about the truth of the fatal todays fatalities. [inaudible] yes. [inaudible] yes. Yes. Yes. As i recall, and im 72 years old and it was a few decades ago, unless im mistaken on who the president was, reagan made a joke, and they didnt realize that it was still being [inaudible] right. About bombing moscow. Right. And it horrified the women with children in moscow when they played it. That kind of went around the world for about a week until [inaudible] in canada were appealing. If this is going to blow us up around the world six times and theres not going to be any living thing on the face of the earth, when are we going to stop producing these weapons that ended the cold war . Because the rationale of that is nothing and no one is going to stay alive. Right, absolutely. One of my favorite moments in the book is when i have jerome wisener whos kennedys scientific adviser, and he says, you know, in order to wipe out a continent completely, we need about 3300 atomic weapons 300 atomic weapons, and at that moment in 1962 we had 2300 atomic weapons. We only have seven continents, and we only need to wipe out five of them. So anyway [inaudible] yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Who has the mic . Oh, okay. [laughter] i can repeat questions too. Why dont we go with you, and ill repeat your question. [inaudible] i couldnt hear, so say it again. Yeah, im sorry. You had mentioned a statistics that only, i thought you said like 1,000 people had cancer from the radiation no, 1 . Oh, 1 . Im sorry. 1 . Why was it so minimal . Because, apparently, it takes a lot more it takes a massive amount of exposure for you to actually have cancer effects from radiation much more than any of us would imagine. [inaudible] youre basically saying if one of us or two of us would smoke, you would have more of a chance of getting cancer than the 1 well, actually, theres radioactive polonium in tobacco. So in daytoday life, thats your most dangerous method of getting radioactivity, is by smoking. Because when i told you before about the little fat atoms spitting things out, those subatomic particles are too fat to penetrate your skin. Thats why in the movie silkwood there are all those scenes of naked meryl streep writhing in agony as men scrubbed her down. Theyre washing the radiation away. If you were at an event and didnt inhale or swallow anything, you could take a shower, and youd be okay if youre not sitting on top of the reactor, but nearby. But anyway i remember reading [inaudible] all of the women who worked in the plant, i remember my parents having those clocks. You could see them in the dark. That they licked the brushes because it worked better. Yes. Every single one of those people died ten years later. Yes. Twelve years later. Yes. Because they were doing that every day, licking the brush. Yes. They were sharpening the brushes with their mouth, and they were using the radiation as makeup. That those women died, those were the first people to sue their employer for unsafe working conditions, and that case became the foundation of osha, the occupational safety. [inaudible] i study eisenhower and truman politics, and ive been, i study [inaudible] i studied the descendants of the [inaudible] signed cairo treaty. And it is believed that reason for the Second World War was to make sure the third world war never happened. And the reason for the kings speech is because britain was so hesitant about joining the allies or joining the other side because they knew when the war ended with the atomic britain would wind up paying the bulk of the destruction in germany. Yes. And thats why they went almost bankrupt. They lost onethird of their colonies, and they gave up colonialism many in total after world war ii. My question is does america consult with hitler through a speech like kings speech . Does truman give a speech . I dont believe that the United Nation league of nations, turkey gave up league of nations and invaded. Japan gave up on league of nation. Iran gave up on league of nations, and it caused first world war. So what is americans price for dropping the atomic bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki . I mean, britain lost onethird of her colonies, and she could britain gave up colonialism in all. What is americans price, and what is u. N. s you mean the cost of creating the atomic bomb . Question was does the american president have a speech like kings speech, or the second question is what is americans price in paying for do you mean monetary price or emotional price . Yeah. Yeah. The Atomic Bomb Program cost 2 billion, but the program to make the plane to drop the bomb cost 19 billion. So thats one of the funny ironies about all this. That it costs a lot more to make the plane that could carry the bomb than it cost to make the actual bomb. And im not sure about the speech. Truman is not one of my favorite president s for this, partly for this Decision Making behind the dropping of bomb. I dont know why he had to drop two of them. But anyway, but eisenhower is a fantastic, fascinating president , and one of the reasons why is he started something called atoms for peace, not have it just for military. And thats where the sort of drive to create Nuclear Power plants began. And as part of our trying to make up to the japanese for their infected tuna, we gave them atomic power plants. That was part of the apology to the japanese. [inaudible] that stopped hitlers invasion. And i think actually may some time, hitler stopped his invasion at the end of world war i, world war ii, european theater. But when the bomb was dropped on june 12th in japan, the japanese didnt even know that they had been hit. How is that possible . Oh, no. In europe no, it wasnt dropped in europe. Youre thinking of something be else. It was only dropped in japan. [inaudible] oh. Then that tells you to be careful what you read on the internet. [laughter] yes. Anyone else . Hold on, hold on. Somebody else has the mic first. Thank you. When it comes to power plants using Nuclear Power, what is your, what are your thoughts on the prospects of fusion power . Because they have a big project in europe going on, but it sounds impossibly complex. Yes. Like its not ever going to come in the near future not in the near future anyway. Yeah. It also sounds wildly dangerous to me, too, since theyre creating little tiny stars on the face of the earth to make this power. But the theory behind it is fantastic. And if it ever works, it will be the greatest thing that ever happens to us because well have Terrible Energy problems. And if any of you are tinkering in basements or garages, please tinker on energy, because we need help in this process. Right now whats going on is that china is working on something called, oh, god, pebble bed reactors where the uranium is cored inside the graphite, and the concept is that if something happens to it, it cant cause any trouble, it cant cause any be fallout, because itll immediately extinguish itself. Since china is terribly polluted from using coal and petroleum, if they come up with a breakthrough, that would be a tremendous help for us all. Then bill gates is supporting something called the traveling water reactor which is a little, tiny Nuclear Reactors that you would have at your house. But i dont understand the people designing this havent released a lot of the details, so i dont know about that. Then the fusion reactor that youre talking about is something called iter which is a 35nation Coalition Building in the south of france. And anyone who wants to look into it can look up iter. Weve been Lawrence Livermore here in the United States has been trying to create fusion since 1955, i think, at something called the National Ignition facility. And for the First Time Since then, so in 60 years about, theyve created something that creates more electricity than it costs them to make it. So they did make this breakthrough. So my fingers are crossed that something happens, because we need something to happen. Yes. I have a question. I have always been wondering why u. S. soviet union, former soviet union and china, these three countries theyre afraid of each other, china is afraid of russia and the u. S. , u. S. Is afraid of russia and china, and russia is afraid of u. S. And china. What is origin of this paranoid among these three countries . Well, thats a very good, a very good question. Laugh [laughter] and, in fact, no matter in this history in the book when you read the book, its like no matter what the u. S. Or the soviet union or china do, it makes everyone else more hysterical, you know . The cuban missile crisis makes America Military hysterical that they were able to sneak missiles in right under our noses, so that means we need even more Nuclear Weapons. And it made the soviets hysterical that the americans were able to force them to remove those missiles, so they needed more Nuclear Weapons. Every single thing triggers more theres a great churchill quote that after a certain amount of nuclear material, all youre doing is making the rubble bounce. And i say that, you know, apparently no matter what happened, both sides, all they wanted was more bouncing, you know . They didnt care it was rubble, they just needed more bouncing. Theres a fantastic quote where one of the consultants is at the pentagon, and hes going over the war plans, and hes going, but you know, everything is based on attacking the soviet union and china together. What if china has nothing to do with it . And the guy running it says, well, i sure hope that doesnt happen, because thatll really mess up our plans. [laughter] okay. Yes, maam. So we know that [inaudible] and they liked the glow of the uranium. So i want to know about us. Were all over the place with our computers. Youve got one up there. Are we getting the same kind of effect slowly, getting cancer there all of these cell phones and gadgets people have surrounding us . No. The one little part about this that i left out is the fact that radiation is all over the place. Its descending on us from cosmic waves, its rising up at us from the bed rock, its in our smoke alarms and in our microwave ovens, your dog and cat are radioactive, your friends and family are radioactive, and right now were all so radioactive that were e radiating each other and, in fact, maybe the combination of our pheromones and our sparkling personalities and this radiation is what causes human chemistry. But i wasnt able to get to that point. [laughter] so thats part one. Its everywhere. So in order to have a cancerous effect, it needs to be a lot more than what were getting already in daytoday life. So, for example, the two ways you can get it are by sunburn, by getting cancer through sunburn sun is a kind of radiation too and by having radon in your basement. People, all of you who have basements need to check your basement from radon. From smoking, theres radioactive polonium in tobacco leaves, and thats pretty much it. You dont have to worry about fukushima, and you dont have to worry about these other things or computers or anything like that. You only have to worry about the basement and the sun and smoking [inaudible] well, thats not good if youre surrounded by lots of smokers. A little bit. Yes, you are. [inaudible] yes, exactly. If youre under an unusual, if youre under an unusual medical situation and youre getting lots of different diagnostics and you dont have one doctor, personal physician whos overseeing all of these things, you need to add them up in your head. Yes, youre right. Yes, sir, thats a good point. Yes, maam. There any prospects of the fukushima problem being resolved yes. Rather than being a serialized tv movie unfolding week after week, month after month . Well, theyre doing this wild thing. Theyre putting in these giant pipes of coolant to freeze the ground. So theyre trying to freeze the area around it, and then theyll have a no mans land like they have at cher noblement chernobyl. But they think this technology is going to keep it from leaking off into the ocean some more or leaking into the rest of japan anymore. And i hope thats true. I hope that resolves it, because but the amazing thing is that they have an open air laboratory going on in chernobyl, and what theyre finding is dramatically less than we would expect. So, for example, they have barn swallows that have a higher rate of, they have a certain percentage of the barn swallows have smaller brains than normal, and a higher percentage are albino than normal, but its not affecting the population as a whole. And then they are finding, theyll find moose bones that are wildly radioactive meaning the wolf ate these wildly radioactive moose, meese or mice anyway, but the Wolf Population doesnt seem to be affected. But the really, the disturbing thing thats really affected the bacteria that churns the garbage of the dead biological waste into mulch, thats been cratered. So its not mulching like it should, the area around chernobyl, the forest, isnt decaying like its supposed to. Yes. Yes. Yes. I think were having more probables [inaudible] from people who didnt care about where [inaudible] yes. We got lots of cancer going on out there. Yes. Whole pockets of it. Yeah, yeah. There yes, thats what shes talking about, toxic. Yeah. Theres a famous mad men episode where the family goes on a picnic, and they just throw all their trash in the park and just pick up and leave with all the trash sitting there, and i think that explains a lot of what were still living with today with that toxic chemical. And for washington where they created plutonium. That is one of the most polluted places. And both the soviet union and the United States put a lot of its military Nuclear Waste in metal oil drums and dumped it in the ocean. So now the islands off san francisco, they have like radioactive coral because they had Nuclear Waste dumped there. I just wanted to Say Something else because im older than a lot of other people here. The league of nations put such a heavy war debt on germany that when hitler won the election, people were working 14 hours a day in factories. I heard that from german immigrants from all over. Yeah. And thats how he got elected yes. It was breaking the backs of the people. Yeah. And when, when hiroshima was bombed, the em record was contacted by us, and they did not give up. Look whats happened as a result to japan, theyre one of the biggest economies in the world. The current theory is that its one big war with a break. So thats the sort of current military thinking about world war i and ii. [inaudible] uhhuh. [laughter] [inaudible] uhhuh. Yeah, hi. So this is the nuclear is the nuclear age over, and should it be . Well, i wish it wasnt, but i think it is over. I think were seeing the falling apart of it now that, you know, you do not, you know, were worried about iran having a nuclear device, but thats the only nation weve been worried about for a long time. You would think with the fall of