Last night I watched the movie Oppenheimer, I wasn’t really sure what to expect I am not usually a fan of bio pics but this movie was an amazing piece of work. If you get the chance you should certainly watch this movie.
The movie tells the story of how Robert Oppenheimer became the leader of the Manhattan project and than was involved in warning the world about the dangers of nuclear weapons and was basically kicked off the AEC for his warnings.
It seems impossible to watch the movie and think about how the science that moved atomic energy from theory to reality made a world in which massive destruction can and did happen.
Two cities with high civilian numbers were targeted and essentially destroyed. Low numbers set the death toll from the nuclear weapons at 110 000 people the higher numbers are about 200 000 people. To date the United States of America has been the only nation to ever use this technology in war to kill people. The devastation of these blasts are still felt today some 75 years later.
Today 9 countries have nuclear warheads and everytime one of those countries engages in war the world has held its breath. For 75 years the world has probably held its breath when the United States engaged in any type of armed conflict and there has been a lot of armed conflict from the United States.
In the last 75 years the United States has officially been involved in at least 46 military conflicts. That is 46 times the world has held its breath and waited for the devastation used in WW 2.
All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal,
Steinbeck
To me the villains in the movie and in the history of the world are not the technology or the weapons but the people that use the weapons and wage the wars and armed conflict.
The Corrigan Encore 