Two stories in a [January 1990] issue of the journal Science ask us to consider the robustness of life.
Articles with Nuclear War
Castle Bravo nuclear test • US Department of Energy (Public Domain)
The aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, 1862 • Alexander Gardner
No badge of courage in ‘star wars’
In Stephen Crane’s American classic, The Red Badge of Courage, young Henry Fleming goes off to war fired by dreams of heroic sweep and grandeur. “He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and had longed to see it all. His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds.” In the war to preserve the Union he would mingle in one of the great affairs of the earth. He longs, yes longs, for the symbolic wound, the blood-red badge of courage.
Castle Bravo nuclear test • United States Department of Energy (Public Domain)
Thinking about the unthinkable
It is often said that nuclear war is “unthinkable.” But it is thinkable. There are hundreds of scientists whose business it is to think about the weapons of nuclear war — how to use them, how not the use them, how to build them, how to get rid of them, and what the consequences of their use might be.