As you respond to each of the following prompts, support your position with appropriate evidence, including at least three sources in this Conversation on the atomic age, unless otherwise indicated.
There was Kennedy looking over the cliff thinking, “Oh my God, we might really have a nuclear war.” He judged the chances were between one and three and even of us going to war. And then he’s thinking as he did empathetically of this poor guy Khrushchev who’s sitting over there also worrying about this. It seemed to me implausible that he wouldn’t give him something, especially if he could give it privately.
Allison said that studying these frightening events shows that the roads to war are “paths of misperceptions, accidents, and unanticipated consequences.” He says that understanding the importance of the many possible paths can help prevent not only war but also “institutional and bureaucratic disasters.” Research the planning of the response to a potential disaster or the response to an actual disaster that you remember. Then write an essay in which you examine the decision making involved. Make sure, as Kennedy asked his military advisors to do, that you analyze the consequences of each decision, at least two or three steps down the line.
It is only when science asks why, instead of simply describing how, that it becomes more than technology. When it asks why, it discovers Relativity. When it only shows how, it invents the atom bomb, and then puts its hands over its eye and says, “My God what have I done?”