The Thinkability of the Atomic Bomb I
There was a time before nuclear weapons. Before even the idea of them.
The starting point for the idea of nuclear weapons? Let’s say 1896.
That was the year Henri Becquerel and Marie Sklodowska-Curie, working in France, discovered that an electrically neutral chemical compound containing the element uranium spontaneously emitted invisible rays that could penetrate paper and blacken a photographic plate.
Not light rays, then. What were they?
In 1898, two years later, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered two new elements—polonium and radium—that also emitted these energetic rays. The two scientists coined the term “radioactivity” for the phenomenon.
The emanation was caused, it came to be realized, not by a chemical reaction but by a kind of spontaneous and continuous “decay” in the atoms of the radioactive elements. The rays would be emitted by the radioactive elements for, well, no one knew how long, but in the case of the new elements for an extended time—days, maybe years. The rate of the emission could not be altered. The total amount of energy released finally would be enormous.
The atom had now to be conceived, not as an indivisible block of matter, but, as a physicist in a novel by H. G. Wells whose name was Rufus puts it, as “a reservoir of immense energy.” (Wells sometimes does not give first names. It’s a British thing.)
In 1903, the British scientists Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy showed that in radioactive decay, elements not present to begin with would be produced. They called this “nuclear transmutation,” despite the long-since debunked claims of alchemists to be able to change base metals into gold by a process of “transmutation.” Soddy showed that, in the case of radium, the new element was helium.
In 1909, Soddy published a book for the general reader entitled The Interpretation of Radium and the Structure of the Atom. (A new edition was published in 1920.)
In 1914, the British writer H. G. Wells (1866-1946) published a work of speculative fiction he entitled The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind. Wells had already published many widely read works of what would come to be called “science fiction,” including The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds.
Wells dedicated The World Set Free "To Frederick Soddy’s Interpretation of Radium.” Wells’ story imagines, for the first time, as far as I know, an “atomic bomb.”
Early in the novel, the professor of physics named Rufus asks, “Suppose presently we find a way to quicken [radioactive] decay.” Which to that point had been found to be impossible. Radioactive elements decayed at their own rate, and that was that.
The novel goes on to tell us that in 1933, a gifted young scientist named Holsten discovers a process that is able to “induce” radioactivity and thereby generate huge amounts of energy. At little cost.
By the autumn of 1954, the novel says, the process of “induced” radioactivity that Holsten discovered has ushered in an era of almost unlimited energy and astonishing economic plenty. A
“gigantic replacement of industrial methods and machinery was in progress all about the habitable globe.”
But all is not well in this world. It is beset by inequality, confusion, division, and strife.
A war begins when the "Central European Powers” suddenly attack the “Slav Confederacy.” France and England take the side of the Slavs.
By 1959, we are told, a number of countries had, using Holsten’s process of induced radioactivity, developed an “atomic bomb.” The bombs use an element called “Carolium” (Wells’ invention: of all the “artificial elements,” he tells us, it is “the most heavily stored with energy and the most dangerous to make and handle.”). A by-product of its manufacture happens to be gold. Finally the “transmutation” the alchemists had been hoping for.
Manufacturing Carolium may be difficult, but soon several states have managed to do it.
The bombs as finally produced are black balls two feet in diameter, small enough for three of them to be carried by a passenger in a biplane and tossed over the side. (Wells imagined the bombs being delivered in 1959 in biplanes. In 1959, the US and the Soviet Union both will have heavy bombers and be on the cusp of having Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles as a means of delivery.)
Upon detonation, this bomb gives up about half of its energy right away but then it burrows into the earth and continues a “furious radiation of energy” for an “indefinite” time afterward. Wells compares the result to a volcano.
To begin with, the bombs are dropped by the Central European Powers on Paris. In retaliation, the allies drop some on Berlin. The Central European Powers then drop on east London and on the dykes of the Netherlands.
The consequences are catastrophic and, given the nature of the bombs, they keep getting worse.
When The World Set Free is mentioned today, it is usually because it contains a description of the first “atomic bombs.” But this happens about a third of the way in. What about the rest of the story?
And why does the book have the title, “The World Set Free”?
In the remainder of the book, Wells describes a transformation, or perhaps it should be called a transmutation, of society and international relations that ensues because of the catastrophic results of the bombs’ use.
Certainly it seems now that nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands.
Led by a wise and dedicated French diplomat named Leblanc and a king named Egbert, a council of ninety-three world leaders is convened at a still-untouched place in northern Italy called Brissago.
In a conversation Egbert has with an advisor named Firmin during a hike before the convocation, Egbert reveals that he has decided to relinquish his crown unilaterally as part of a movement toward a single world order. Firmin demurs. But Egbert insists.
Manifestly war has to stop for ever, Firmin. Manifestly this can only be done by putting all the world under one government. Our crowns and flags are in the way. Manifestly they must go.
The king points out to Firmin that “advisors” have an interest in things continuing as they are, and this needs to be recognized. Egbert also recognizes that his kingship, far from simply according him power, has also enslaved him.
The council begins. In the discussions that follow,
The atomic bombs. . . dwarfed the international issues to complete insignificance. When our minds wandered from the preoccupations of our immediate needs, we speculated upon the possibility of stopping the use of these frightful explosives before the world was utterly destroyed. For to us it seemed quite plain that these bombs and the still greater power of destruction of which they were the precursors might quite easily shatter every relationship and institution of mankind.
Wells adds to the account.
That conference upon the Brissago meadows was one of the most heterogeneous collections of prominent people that has ever met together. Principalities and powers, stripped and shattered until all their pride and mystery were gone, met in a marvellous new humility. Here were kings and emperors whose capitals were lakes of flaming destruction, statesmen who countries had become chaos, scared politicians and financial potentates. Here were leaders of thought and learned investigators dragged reluctantly to the control of affairs. Altogether there were ninety-three of them, Leblanc’s conception of the head men of the world. They had all come to the realization of the simple truths that the indefatigable Leblanc had hammered into them. . . .
This assembly was no leap of exceptional minds and super-intelligences into the control of affairs. It was teachable, its members trailed ideas with them to the gathering, but these were the consequences of the “moral shock” the bomb had given humanity and there is no reason for supposing its individual personalities were greatly above the average.
The strength of the council lay not in itself but in the circumstances that had quickened its intelligence, dispelled its vanities, and emancipated it from traditional ambitions and antagonisms.
Wells seems to be saying here that the testimony of experts was not what was required for the accomplishment of the new order.
Sooner or later this choice would have confronted mankind. The sudden development of atomic science did but precipitate into and render rapid and dramatic a clash between the new and the customary that had been gathering since ever the first flint was chipped or the first fire built together.
Agreement is eventually reached by all present that a single world government is needed.
With a queer feeling that he was dreaming [Egbert] assisted at the proclamation of the World State, and saw the message taken out to the wireless operators to be throbbed all round the habitable globe. "And next," said King Egbert with a cheerful excitement in his voice, "we have to get every atom of Carolinum and all the plant for making it, into our control. . . ."
For a time the whole world had been shocked into frankness; nearly all the clever people who had hitherto sustained the ancient belligerent separations had now been brought to realize the need for simplicity of attitude and openness of mind; and in this atmosphere of moral renascence, there was little attempt to get negotiable advantages out of resistance to the new order. Human beings are foolish enough, no doubt, but few have stopped to haggle in a fire-escape. 168-69
The old tendencies of human nature, suspicion, jealousy, particularism and belligerency, were incompatible with the monstrous destructive power of the new appliances the inhuman logic of science had produced. The equilibrium could be restored only by civilization destroying itself down to a level at which modern apparatus could no longer be produced, or by human nature adapting itself in its institutions to the new conditions. 193
Ah, but
One single monarch held out against the general acquiescence in the new rule, and that was that strange survival of medievalism, the “Slavic Fox,” the King of the Balkans.
The “Slavic Fox” is dealt with handily in the novel, in the old way, with military force, rather than with whatever had proved persuasive to the council at Brissago. He and his advisors are shot and killed and their supply of atomic bombs secured before any can be used.
And then what?
Next: H.G. Wells, The World Set Free II (concl’d) and the World that Followed That World