This is so incredibly important. Thank you, Jessica, for bringing us vital information day after day with such clarity and empathy. Your reporting is so important —cutting through noise and fear to deliver facts we can trust. I feel more informed, more grounded, and more empowered because of your work. Thanks for being there day after day. 💖
I’ve just finished listening to Mr. Graff’s book. Since it is an oral history, the varied collection of voices in the audio version makes it particularly vivd to listen to.
I was born exactly five months (to the day) before the Enola Gay opened her bomb bay doors over Hiroshima, and really did change the world forever, which makes me a plank owner in the first generation in history to grow up under the mushroom cloud.
The first bit of news from outside my local life I recall was the announcement that Russia had detonated an atomic device. Even at that young age, based I assume on conversations I’d overheard, I knew something fundamental had altered.
I was 13 when President Eisenhower sent Marines into Lebanon. I was spending a month at my grandparent’s house outside Essex, Ct when I heard about it on the radio. It was an absolutely gorgeous summer day, but when I heard the announcer say something to the effect that the Russian reaction might with force, all of a sudden the day turned icy, and I spent the next hour wandering about on the lawn utterly convinced that I would see Russian bombers coming over trees to the west of us. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so scared.
At 13, of course,I had no idea what was really going on or what Russia might actually do, but the climate of the Cold War (all that talk of backyard shelters and the ‘under-the-desk drills at school - which fooled none of us) had prepared us for something unimaginable..It would still be a year before Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon (one of the earliest post nuclear war novels) came out, but I was an imaginative kid, and I didn’t need much stimulus.
Then, in October of 1962, we came face to face with that 13 day terror of waiting for resolution or Armageddon, during much of which I became convinced I would not see eighteen. My state of mind was not made lighter by the fact that by then I’d read several of that first generation - the Frank book, Philip Wylie’s Tomorrow, Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7, and the granddaddy of the genre, Nevil Shute’s On the Beach.
Today, of course, what we could do to ourselves makes the possible results of a nuclear exchange in 1962 pale in comparison.
Mr Graff’s point that the immediate toll of toll Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did not at all equal what LeMay’s firebombing campaign had wrought, but as terrible as those raids were, they belonged to an four thousand year old era of human warfare that August 6th made largely irrelevant.
The increasing saber rattling going on today along with the potential proliferation of members in the nuclear club is a blatant insanity, not only because the level of destruction that is now possible is unimaginable, but now the time during which any nuclear armed state might have to react to a threat can be measure in minutes. No human being, no matte how experienced could be expected to make a rational decision about nuclear conflict in that amount of time. And that does not cover the incalculable risk of some battle field commander with tactical nuclear weapons at his command having to decide to use them - let alone the kind of computer error so well portrayed in Fail Safe or the single finger punch of the terrified ensign in The Bedford Incident - instances of both having already happened.
We’ve been playing this game for over four millennia, but if we do it again with nuclear weapons, the result would justify Einstein’s famous quote in which he noted that he wasn’t sure what weapons would be used in WWIII, but those in WWIV would be sticks and stones, if indeed any of us were left in any state to attempt it.
Thank you Garrett for your final comments in this video! My Dad was not only a proud Atomic Veteran, but he also went on as a Civil Servant for the DOD. Even serving on one of the boots on the ground NATO committees. He knew first hand the importance and the dangers of nuclear war. He was sworn to secrecy for nearly 50 years. I have never fully appreciated his silent work all those decades as much as I have these past several months. Watching the relationships he helped to build through NATO, USAID and others had been beyond heartbreaking. However I have found my path. I just retired from education early so I can fully participate in the peaceful resistance in memory of Dad and all he served with and for. As well as for the future of my three year old granddaughter 🙏🏻❤️
Odd aha moment in regards to Oppenheimer. Dad was aboard the USS Curtiss in the Bikini Atoll Islands in the spring of 1954. This is where he experienced his first Atomic Test, the Castle Bravo Shot. Apparently that was the same time frame the government was attempting to discredit Oppenheimer, as he was against any further bomb testing.
I am no great student of history so I really appreciate Jessica bringing on such an intelligent yet easy to understand historian like Mr Graff.
Thank you for tying together our historical events so clearly and providing a very reasonable outcome for our current international relationships. The people who are just trying to wait out the next 3 1/2 years really have their head in the sand if they think we can just pick up where we left off in 2024 with all our relationships, both at home and internationally
But we do not know the ending of the power of the Atomic Bomb yet. Those who experienced the bombs, as well as their children and now their grandchildren, many of them are experiencing health challenges due to the radiated DNA we have inherited from our parents and grandparents whose DNA was damaged and modified forever.
I am now a part of a full genetic genome study to see if and how my DNA may have been impacted by my dad’s extreme exposure to the radiation from the Castle Bravo Shot.
My genome as well as my daughter’s genome both show that our DNA has been negatively impacted by Dad’s exposure.
This is so incredibly important. Thank you, Jessica, for bringing us vital information day after day with such clarity and empathy. Your reporting is so important —cutting through noise and fear to deliver facts we can trust. I feel more informed, more grounded, and more empowered because of your work. Thanks for being there day after day. 💖
I’ve just finished listening to Mr. Graff’s book. Since it is an oral history, the varied collection of voices in the audio version makes it particularly vivd to listen to.
I was born exactly five months (to the day) before the Enola Gay opened her bomb bay doors over Hiroshima, and really did change the world forever, which makes me a plank owner in the first generation in history to grow up under the mushroom cloud.
The first bit of news from outside my local life I recall was the announcement that Russia had detonated an atomic device. Even at that young age, based I assume on conversations I’d overheard, I knew something fundamental had altered.
I was 13 when President Eisenhower sent Marines into Lebanon. I was spending a month at my grandparent’s house outside Essex, Ct when I heard about it on the radio. It was an absolutely gorgeous summer day, but when I heard the announcer say something to the effect that the Russian reaction might with force, all of a sudden the day turned icy, and I spent the next hour wandering about on the lawn utterly convinced that I would see Russian bombers coming over trees to the west of us. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so scared.
At 13, of course,I had no idea what was really going on or what Russia might actually do, but the climate of the Cold War (all that talk of backyard shelters and the ‘under-the-desk drills at school - which fooled none of us) had prepared us for something unimaginable..It would still be a year before Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon (one of the earliest post nuclear war novels) came out, but I was an imaginative kid, and I didn’t need much stimulus.
Then, in October of 1962, we came face to face with that 13 day terror of waiting for resolution or Armageddon, during much of which I became convinced I would not see eighteen. My state of mind was not made lighter by the fact that by then I’d read several of that first generation - the Frank book, Philip Wylie’s Tomorrow, Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7, and the granddaddy of the genre, Nevil Shute’s On the Beach.
Today, of course, what we could do to ourselves makes the possible results of a nuclear exchange in 1962 pale in comparison.
Mr Graff’s point that the immediate toll of toll Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did not at all equal what LeMay’s firebombing campaign had wrought, but as terrible as those raids were, they belonged to an four thousand year old era of human warfare that August 6th made largely irrelevant.
The increasing saber rattling going on today along with the potential proliferation of members in the nuclear club is a blatant insanity, not only because the level of destruction that is now possible is unimaginable, but now the time during which any nuclear armed state might have to react to a threat can be measure in minutes. No human being, no matte how experienced could be expected to make a rational decision about nuclear conflict in that amount of time. And that does not cover the incalculable risk of some battle field commander with tactical nuclear weapons at his command having to decide to use them - let alone the kind of computer error so well portrayed in Fail Safe or the single finger punch of the terrified ensign in The Bedford Incident - instances of both having already happened.
We’ve been playing this game for over four millennia, but if we do it again with nuclear weapons, the result would justify Einstein’s famous quote in which he noted that he wasn’t sure what weapons would be used in WWIII, but those in WWIV would be sticks and stones, if indeed any of us were left in any state to attempt it.
Homo sapiens indeed!
Thank you Garrett for your final comments in this video! My Dad was not only a proud Atomic Veteran, but he also went on as a Civil Servant for the DOD. Even serving on one of the boots on the ground NATO committees. He knew first hand the importance and the dangers of nuclear war. He was sworn to secrecy for nearly 50 years. I have never fully appreciated his silent work all those decades as much as I have these past several months. Watching the relationships he helped to build through NATO, USAID and others had been beyond heartbreaking. However I have found my path. I just retired from education early so I can fully participate in the peaceful resistance in memory of Dad and all he served with and for. As well as for the future of my three year old granddaughter 🙏🏻❤️
Odd aha moment in regards to Oppenheimer. Dad was aboard the USS Curtiss in the Bikini Atoll Islands in the spring of 1954. This is where he experienced his first Atomic Test, the Castle Bravo Shot. Apparently that was the same time frame the government was attempting to discredit Oppenheimer, as he was against any further bomb testing.
I am no great student of history so I really appreciate Jessica bringing on such an intelligent yet easy to understand historian like Mr Graff.
Thank you for tying together our historical events so clearly and providing a very reasonable outcome for our current international relationships. The people who are just trying to wait out the next 3 1/2 years really have their head in the sand if they think we can just pick up where we left off in 2024 with all our relationships, both at home and internationally
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. --George Santayana
What a great conversation, thank you.
But we do not know the ending of the power of the Atomic Bomb yet. Those who experienced the bombs, as well as their children and now their grandchildren, many of them are experiencing health challenges due to the radiated DNA we have inherited from our parents and grandparents whose DNA was damaged and modified forever.
I am now a part of a full genetic genome study to see if and how my DNA may have been impacted by my dad’s extreme exposure to the radiation from the Castle Bravo Shot.
My genome as well as my daughter’s genome both show that our DNA has been negatively impacted by Dad’s exposure.
The sound needs adjusting. Can barely hear your guest.