The Age of Radiance (71 page)

BOOK: The Age of Radiance

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20. The US Office of Civil Defense believed Americans could be trained to survive nuclear attack with shelters dug out of backyards and terrifying exhortations from popular magazines.

22. First a comic book designed to educate children on the wondrous benefits of nuclear medicine, power, and bombs, September 1953’s
Picture Parade
became a chilling symbol of nuclear holocaust in the 1960s. Today it is a comical mouse pad.

23. The John Amos Power Plant in Poca, West Virginia, August 1973. Our false sense of alarm in looking at this image—which is not even nuclear, but coal powered—reveals both our beliefs in the atomic myth, and the downfall of the Atomic Age.

24. Both the 1986 Chernobyl explosion (pictured on the left) and 2011 Fukushima meldown (pictured below) were dramatic, with Chernobyl releasing a cloud across Europe equal to four hundred Hiroshimas. But the real danger to human health was in core meltdowns through the floor, contaminating the water supply.

HEARTFELT THANKS

I
WORK WITH
the greatest guys and gals in town, baby, and don’t you forget it. My agent, Stuart Krichevsky, is so fantastic he gets his own page in this book . . . so if there’s anything I’ve written that you don’t like, it’s entirely his fault. My editor, Colin Harrison, is like a child’s fantasy of a publishing executive: hardworking, caring, thorough, and kind. Who could ask for anything more? Marketing titans Johanna Ramos-Boyer and the Great Kate Lloyd, future Viking-Random-Harper editorial directors Katrina Diaz and Kelsey Smith, Oppenheimer heiress Susan Moldow, the glorious executive titans of Scribner—Nan Graham, Roz Lippel, Brian Belfiglio, Paul O’Halloran, Daniel Cuddy—and the mythic warriors of SKA—Shana Cohen, Ross Harris, Kathryne Wick, and Elizabeth Kellermeyer. My magnificent jacket is by Tal Goretsky and its resonant innards are courtesy of Ellen Sasahara. To all of you, I bow my head in gracious servitude.

Librarians, archivists, and docents—every time I slip on those paper gloves to wear while browsing, I fall in love with you all over again. I’d like to thank for their remarkable professional courtesies and hard work both in person and in absentia the staffs of the American Museum of Science and Energy, Niels Bohr Library and Emilio Segrè Visual Archives of the American Center for Physics, Bradbury Science Museum, Bureau of Atomic Tourism, Churchill College Archives Centre, Library of Congress, Los Alamos Historical Society and Museum, Mandeville Department of Special Collections at the University of California at San Diego, Harvey Mudd College Oral History Project on the Atomic Age at Claremont, National Archives and Records Administration, National Atomic Museum, National Security Archive at George Washington University, Nuclear Weapons Archive, Society of Nuclear Medicine, Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago, US Department of Energy, Titan Missile Museum, Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, and Woodrow Wilson Center.

Isaac Newton thanked giants who supported him with their shoulders, and though I’m no Newton, there are indeed giants, starting with the magisterial Richard Rhodes, the fundamental overviews of Amir Aczel, Jim Baggott, David Lindley, James Mahaffey, Marjorie Malley, John Mueller, Jay Orear, Jon Palfreman, N. J. Slabbert, P. D. Smith, Tom Zoellner, the American Institute of Physics, and the US Department of Energy; Ève Curie and Susan Quinn on Marie Curie; Patricia Rife and Ruth Lewin Sime on Lise Meitner; Laura Fermi and Emilio Segrè on Enrico Fermi; William Lanouette and Bela Silard on Leo Szilard; István Hargittai on the other Martians of Budapest; William Laurence on the Manhattan Project; John Hersey and the Radiation Effects Research Foundation on Hiroshima; Svetlana Alexievich and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation on Chernobyl; and the
New York Times
reports on Fukushima Daiichi.

CRAIG NELSON
is the author of the
New York Times
bestseller
Rocket Men
, as well as several previous books, including
The First Heroes
,
Thomas Paine
(winner of the Henry Adams Prize), and
Let’s Get Lost
(short-listed for W. H. Smith’s Book of the Year). His writing has appeared in
Vanity Fair
, the
Wall Street Journal
,
Salon
,
National Geographic
,
New England Review
,
Popular Science
,
Reader’s Digest
, and a host of other publications; he has been profiled in
Variety
,
Interview
,
Publishers Weekly
, and
Time Out.
Besides working at a zoo and in Hollywood, and being an Eagle Scout and a Fuller Brush man, he was a vice president and executive editor of Harper & Row, Hyperion, and Random House, where he oversaw the publishing of twenty national bestsellers. He lives in Greenwich Village.