The following ten selections are related to the consequences of the atomic age, a period that began with the detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945 and that most people consider to have ended with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, though nuclear weapons and nuclear power continue to be the subject of both fear and optimism. Atomic power exemplified technological progress in the early to mid-twentieth century, giving rise to elaborate fantasies of nuclear cars, an atomic reactor in every house supplying unlimited free energy, and sci-fi weaponry. While most of the domestic uses of nuclear technology failed to live up to their futuristic promise, the atomic bomb became a stark reality, making nuclear technology less a symbol of hope and progress than one of geopolitical, social, and psychological anxiety. In 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb and an arms race began that would result in the Soviet Union and the United States stockpiling and testing thousands of nuclear weapons, each more powerful than the ones used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This tense atmosphere of danger and distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union resulted in the so-called Red Scare: scientists, artists, writers, filmmakers, and more were brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee, as well as a similar Senate committee run by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and questioned about their ties to the Communist Party, often becoming blacklisted if they took the Fifth Amendment to avoid incriminating themselves or refused to cooperate by naming names. There was some basis for this paranoia. Tipped off that the Soviets may have been aided by spies within the American nuclear facility at Los Alamos, the FBI launched an investigation that netted a group of Communist sympathizers, most famously Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had relayed information from Ethel’s brother David Greenglass, a scientist at Los Alamos, to the Soviets. The Rosenbergs were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and executed in 1953. Since 1945, nuclear fears have risen and fallen but have never disappeared. The immense power of atomic energy, for good and for evil, continues to fascinate and frighten.

Sources

Ace Comics, Atomic War! (1952)

Office of Civil Defense, Duck and Cover (1952)

Lillian Hellman, I Cannot and Will Not Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year’s Fashions (1952)

John F. Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis Speech (1962)

Nikita Khrushchev, Letter to John F. Kennedy (1962)

Julia Alvarez, Snow (1991)

Arthur Miller, from Why I Wrote The Crucible (1996)

Michael Scheibach, from Atomic Narratives and American Youth: Coming of Age with the Atom, 1945–55 (2003)

Ronald Radosh, Case Closed: The Rosenbergs Were Soviet Spies (2008)

Spencer R. Weart, from The Rise of Nuclear Fear (2012)