At the end of Jan­u­ary, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can post­ed two won­der­ful comics from the nuclear age on their site: The Atom­ic Rev­o­lu­tion (1957; also here) and Pow­er for Progress from 1971 (also here). I was struck by the con­trast between their opti­mism and a news sto­ry that appeared about the same time. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing 1,000 ex-ser­vice­men in Britain are going to court to try and win com­pen­sa­tion for ill­ness­es, includ­ing can­cer, skin defects and fer­til­i­ty prob­lems, they claim are the result of expo­sure to radi­a­tion dur­ing 1950s nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacif­ic. As the BBC report­ed, tests were 70 times more pow­er­ful than antic­i­pat­ed and on one occa­sion, a group of men were so bad­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by the pen­e­trat­ing radi­a­tion that they pro­duced radioac­tive urine.

A few weeks lat­er, two nuclear mis­sile sub­marines — one British, one French — armed with a like­ly total of well over 100 ther­monu­clear war­heads col­lid­ed under the Atlantic Ocean. BBC radio had recent­ly been allowed access to Britain’s nuclear weapons infra­struc­ture in order to con­sid­er whether it real­ly is (to use that infa­mous Cold War phrase) fail-safe.

“One of Britain’s four Tri­dent sub­marines is always out there,” they report­ed, “some­where under the Atlantic, car­ry­ing more destruc­tive pow­er than was unleashed in the entire cam­paign of World War II.“  But they did­n’t con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a British sub might col­lide with anoth­er nuclear armed sub. His­to­ry sug­gests that noth­ing can ever be tru­ly fail-safe.

The nuclear issue has rather reced­ed from the head­lines in recent years, but as this inci­dent shows the dan­ger is still very real. As a New York Times edi­to­r­i­al said, the elec­tion of Barack Oba­ma to the White House pro­vides an ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty for real progress on nuclear weapons. Of course, there is no short­age of peo­ple ready to offer the new pres­i­dent advice, includ­ing Strangelov­ian fig­ures from the Cold War like Hen­ry Kissinger. Indeed, it’s report­ed that Oba­ma qui­et­ly sent Kissinger to Moscow in Jan­u­ary to test the waters regard­ing cuts in nuclear war­heads.

The need for cuts is clear and urgent. Oba­ma faces oppo­si­tion with­in his own admin­is­tra­tion, indeed (accord­ing to Time) from his Defense Sec­re­tary, Robert Gates, no less. And as ever, events — such as Iran’s nuclear ambi­tions — will con­spire to throw him off course. But let’s hope he can do it.