I Was an A-Bomb Baby

[MineralMan]

I was born 10 days before the city of Hiroshima was devastated by the first nuclear weapon ever used by any nation during a war. That fact has literally followed me all of my life. I grew up in a time when children dove under their desks during A-bomb drills. I remember the first radios that had CONELRAD Triangles on the dials to mark where to tune when there was a nuclear alert.

My father built a bomb shelter under our house when I was 14 years old, during the Cuban missile crisis. I had recurring dreams that startled me out of sleep when the sky lit up from a nuclear device exploding in Los Angeles.

All of that made me an anti-nuke person. I suppose it was inevitable. I have not changed that status in my 80 years of life on this troubled planet.

One thing has struck me throughout my life:

THE USA IS THE ONLY NATION THAT HAS EVER USED A NUCLEAR WEAPON DURING WARTIME!


Now, the subject has come up again. It keeps coming up. I served in the USAF during the Cold War, keeping watch on the Soviet Union as my job. As decades went by, more and more countries acquired and built nuclear weapons. The threat that they might someday be used has always kept me awake some nights. I have kept my eye on the Doomsday Clock.

Today, we're dealing with the possibility that Iran might be close to becoming a nuclear nation. As one nation after another has had nuclear capabilities, the threat has continued to grow.

So far, they have not been used again by any nation. So far. Still, we're just one maniacal head of state away from that. Still. It cannot be ruled out. Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) seems to have worked to keep the weapons in storage rather than on the battlefield.

Will that continue forever? I think about that still, far more often than I wish I did.

I do not know. I do know that there is always the risk that we will devolve into nuclear warfare. We really can't imagine what that would mean. We simple can't We have too little knowledge and experience of what that would mean. We don't like to think about such things.

The danger persists, and there is one fact that should never be forgotten:

THE USA IS THE ONLY NATION THAT HAS EVER USED A NUCLEAR WEAPON DURING WARTIME!


Please keep that in mind as elections come and go. Please!