Twilight of the Bombs | Richard Rhodes

Pulitzer-winning author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb"," Dark Sun", and "Arsenals of Folly" completes his tetralogy on nuclear weapons with his new book, "The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons".
A single weapon profoundly shaped world history for most of a century. Its disappearance can have equally profound effects
"Twilight of the Bombs" was given on September 21, 02010 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:
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[@albin2232]

Richard is the most qualified person to speak on this topic.

[@mikeall7012]

We do the same thing with fighter jets. We build over priced, maintenance heavy fighters that never get used to their full ability. Id like to see what we have spent on those lately. Ike was right. The military industrial complex isnt the right answer to maintaining the economy.

[@raystack6250]

They misplaced 3 trillion dollars right before 9 / 11

[@elliottdiaz1687]

Everyone is way too worried about nuclear proliferation. I believe in focusing on the positive side of the human spirit! We absolutely should believe that every government on this earth, from our time and over the entire future of all human governance, shall refrain from detonating a nuclear weapon in anger! And this they shall never do...FOREVER!

[@TheArter84]

Dreams are nice

[@timstadlmueller58]

Fantastic talk

[@bunrisl]

Who are these key military contractors who are the economical benefactors of all these funds allocated to them?

[@madeconomist458]

8k nuclear weapons times 100kt is 800 megatons, but 100kt is probably way too high an average since a lot, maybe even half, of those warheads are *tactical* nuclear weapons with less than 10kt or even less than 1kt yield.

[@bunrisl]

Thanks so much.

[@NoLegalPlunder]

"...that deprive us every year of billions of dollars that might otherwise have gone into productive investment." This is so critical. One wonders what the market would have done with all of those billions of dollars. I wonder what advances in technology did we forego, or how did it get twisted, because these vast sums of money were diverted towards these "negative and sterile purposes". Ike was right to warn us so long ago. The military industrial complex is our greatest enemy.

[@billharwood5844]

Time can be a harsh critic. His thesis that war no longer involves the slaughter of civilians, thereby rendering nuclear weapons obsolete has, sadly, been proven overly optimistic. That's before China starts playing silly buggers with Taiwan. Still have immense respect obviously but his naivety surprised me.

[@jimsteele4489]

Any reason they didn't include South Africa? S.A. had over 20 nuclear tests.

[@schr75]

Because they didn´t test a singe weapon, with the possible exception of the Vela incident. S.A. only build 6 weapons, and they voluntarily dismantled them.

[@timstadlmueller58]

Also Israel.

[@TheArter84]

Shhhh! Don't spill the beans

[@matthewgrissop9408]

Also the map and tests were only the tests of bombs. Not the stock pile each state has and had

[@mikemullenix6956]

Rhodes needs to update this discussion because of Iran . the doomsday clock is only 90 seconds. If Rhodes cant continue then have a think tank and use AI

[@theschmedaparadox1018]

The silence of the audience

[@matthewgrissop9408]

Why don't we take it all and dump it into the Cola bore hole. The deepest hole on earth??

[@jimmci9584]

Rhodes told you why, we'd run out of uranium. We need it for electrical power.

[@canman5060]

The USSR flag still there pass 1991 !