The Sword of Damocles Our Nuclear Age

Never has a book about nuclear weapons and their impact been timelier. This work, The Sword of Damocles, Our Nuclear Age, deals with our history as well as today’s headlines. I had the opportunity to study that precarious period in a unique way. As a museum director with a forty-year career behind me, I met and worked with some of the leaders in the field of nuclear weapons testing. During those years of my association with them, their heyday had long passed, but these atomic vets still conveyed many amazing tales. I used their information in those years in which I managed, with my son James, who contributed chapters to this book, a nationally designated Smithsonian affiliated museum. Partially sponsored by the Department of Energy, we curated a history detailing over eighty years of nuclear weapons production and testing. During that time, I had access to stories and facility tours that few are ever privileged to. I learned from so many veterans of the nuclear weapons field, who although long retired, were active in recounting the significance of their experiences.

I soon came to understand that the people who created the weapons of the nuclear age were not warmongers but brave patriotic men and women who prided themselves on winning the peace of the Cold War. However, I also became aware that the great nuclear arsenals created over many decades, while reduced in numbers from the height of the Cold War, are still to this day a sword of Damocles hanging over us all.

Our museum served an international audience, and I gave hundreds of tours to visitors from every corner of the globe. I always cautioned our audience to not ignore the history of the nuclear age nor take it too lightheartedly even though I often quoted amusing tales of pop culture from the nuclear era. I was especially cognizant to convey that message to our younger audience and school visitors.

I explained that once Pandora’s Box had been opened, inevitably other countries developed nuclear weapons and built those weapons as deterrents to counter each other’s growing arsenals of bombs. They believed in the power of deterrence even though they themselves had become hostages to their own mutually escalating nuclear arms race.

Admittedly, consensus tells us that to date nuclear deterrence has prevented a third world war although it has only done so because rational leaders have continued to make rational decisions. Will a day come when that could change? With growing tensions in today’s world now outpacing what we saw even during the worst days of the Cold War, could a nuclear nightmare finally be realized?

This book contains a collection of independent and little-known vignettes, not only detailing the horror of nuclear weapons but also the culture inherent in their creation. The stories attempt to relate our present times to those lessons of the past.