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- I'm not universally beloved,
to put it mildly.
At one juncture in my life, I was perhaps,
and maybe this is correct,
the most reviled creature on the face of the earth
because of the neutron bomb,
which was unquestionably, at that time of its arrival,
the most detested weapon on earth.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- [NEWSCASTER] We are in mortal peril.
- [NEWSCASTER] The neutron bomb
would operate as a kind of death ray.
It will destroy all life in the targeted area.
- [SAM COHEN] I began to see radiation,
nuclear radiation, as an effective means
of waging ground warfare in a relatively moral way.
- [NEWSCASTER] First, there is an emission of thermal energy.
- [NEWSCASTER] Enter the neutron bomb.
- [NEWSCASTER] A neutron warhead
is a defensive weapon designed to-
- [NEWSCASTER] ...this particular bomb seems to
have discovered that radiation kills people.
The neutron bomb is no exception, it will kill people.
- This technology kept ramping up
and becoming even more lethal,
and now we have the neutron bomb.
I mean, it was the whole idea with the neutron bomb,
was it so that they could go into an area and drop this bomb
and it wouldn't destroy buildings,
it would just kill people, right?
- Yes.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- Since the beginning of time,
man has been devising weapons of destruction.
The slingshot, employed by David against Goliath
and used by the armies of Alexander the Great.
The catapult and the ballista,
formidable weapons of their time.
The great spears of the Greek warriors,
and the broad swords of the armored knights.
The invention of gunpowder by the Chinese
revolutionized warfare
and ushered in a new era of explosive munitions
through the creation of crude bombs, field artillery,
and even hand grenades.
World War I saw the development of automatic weapons
like the machine gun,
the giant artillery cannons,
the tank, and the airplane.
Toward the end of World War II,
man created the first atomic bomb
and plunged the world into the atomic age.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- [NARRATOR] Nuclear weapons,
created in all shapes and sizes,
large ones and small ones.
For nearly 75 years,
the United States designed and tested these weapons
to improve their size, weight, and purpose,
for a war which may never be waged.
One weapon stood out amongst all others
in purpose and function,
enhancing an invisible yet deadly characteristic
of nuclear fusion.
This was the neutron bomb.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
[MACHINE WHIRRING]
[ROCKET LAUNCH]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
- Enter the neutron bomb.
- [NARRATOR] At the center of this weapon is the neutron.
Nestled within the structure of an atom
exists a tranquil sub-atomic particle
that possesses no electric charge, called the neutron.
- Neutrons were discovered in England in 1932.
They were immediately perceived to be immensely valuable
for sub-nuclear research,
because unlike the particles that had been used
to bombard atoms,
to look at them, if you will, up to that time,
neutrons could slip into the nucleus,
positively charged nucleus, of an atom,
without being repelled by that positive charge.
They would just kind of fall into the nucleus
and then all sorts of interesting things would happen.
- [NARRATOR] These free neutrons
can invade the foundation of matter
and create useful isotopes for medicine and industry.
Free neutrons, however,
can be extremely hazardous to all living things.
Free neutrons are produced
within the heart of a nuclear reactor,
or from a chain reaction created in the detonation
of an atomic bomb.
From the beginning of nuclear testing in 1945,
neutrons have maintained a special interest
in all atomic tests.
- When the scientists at Los Alamos
worked on the targeting of the first bombs
on the Japanese cities during the Second World War,
they were concerned that these weapons
not be perceived to be some new kind of poison gas.
They were concerned that the primary destructive force
that was harnessed would be blast and fire,
but not radiation.
They were however, aware that one of the first kinds
of radiation coming off a nuclear fireball
would be prompt neutrons, a huge flux of neutrons,
and that those neutrons would kill anyone
within a certain range.
What they calculated, however,
was that anyone who would be killed by the neutron flux
would probably be killed
by the blast of the explosion as well.
- [SCIENTIST] First, there is an emission of thermal energy,
gamma rays, and neutrons.
Depending upon the altitude of the burst,
the neutrons reach the target
in large or small quantities.
The gamma rays extend far from the target center.
In general, radiation causes ionization
in the component atoms of cells,
altering their chemical nature
and impairing or destroying their normal function.
With whole body radiation,
ionization causes loss of function
of the more sensitive tissues and organs.
The degree of loss depends upon the dosage.
If the exposure is both general and severe,
death results.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
- [NARRATOR] In May of 1945,
the war in Europe came to an end.
Nazi Germany was defeated.
Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin
met cordially at Yalta and Potsdam
to discuss the fate of Germany.
The allies agreed that the countries they had occupied
should be liberated
and that freely elected
governments should be encouraged.
But for the countries occupied by Russia,
Stalin had other plans.
The Russians kept their army intact,
overwhelmingly maintaining
the largest military force in Europe.
Then Russia decided to cut off
the allied sectors of Berlin from the west.
Trains and road transports were stopped.
Electric power was cut.
West Berlin was isolated from the free world.
The response was the Berlin Airlift.
For the next 11 months,
American, British, and French planes
landed one after another,
delivering supplies of food, coal, and petroleum
into the besieged city.
The Russian blockade of Berlin
had brought Europe to the brink of war.
It was at last clear that only a strong defensive alliance
could deter them from further aggression.
On April 4th, 1949,
the North Atlantic Treaty was signed by 12 western nations.
This alliance became known
as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
[MILITARY MUSIC]
- In 1949, there were a series of very momentous events
happening on the geopolitical stage.
One of them, of course, in April, 1949,
was the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
This was a group of 12 nations,
including the United States
and several other European nations,
which, together, created a security alliance
where the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts.
- The fact that the Soviet Union
had taken over Eastern Europe
in the aftermath of the Second World War
as part of the spoils of victory,
the fact that therefore there was,
as Winston Churchill famously said in 1946,
an iron curtain drawn across Europe
with the Soviet Communist world on one side
and the western, we hoped, democratic world
on the other side.
- The loss of China, if you will, to the Communists,
and then finally,
I suppose we could say the sense of crisis culminated
in August of 1949,
when the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb,
which was then announced to the American people
about a month later, in September, 1949.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- [ANNOUNCER] Eight, seven, six, five, four
three, two, one, zero.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- [NARRATOR] Early nuclear operations
focused on training American and NATO ground troops
in the use of atomic weapons on the battlefield.
[PENSIVE MUSIC]
- [W. PATRICK MCCRAY] Nuclear weapons can,
to put it crudely, be divided into two categories.
One of them would be tactical nuclear weapons,
which would be for use on a battlefield.
These would be small-yield weapons
that would be designed to be used in
particular theaters of operation.
- "Theater" and "tactical" nuclear weapons
are to some degree, interchangeable terms,
but "theater" basically refers to
a particular area of conflict,
thus the Korean War theater,
the European theater.
- And at the other end of the spectrum
are the strategic nuclear weapons,
the weapons that are large enough to destroy entire cities.
- [NARRATOR] In the summer of 1951,
more than 100 scientists and academics
participated in Project Vista,
a secret study
hosted by the California Institute of Technology.
Vista's purpose was to determine how existing technologies
supported by nuclear weapons
could offset NATO's weaker conventional forces
and repel a massive Soviet invasion.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
- Vista was a special project,
it was initiated both by the Air Force
and then also by the US Army.
And the whole idea of Vista was to study the ways
in which Western Europe might be defended against
a massive Soviet attack.
And of course, one of the technologies that was looked at,
and probably the most controversial aspect
of the Vista report,
was that the United States should develop
lots of small-scale, low-yield, tactical nuclear weapons
and deploy these for use on the battlefield,
in that the United States would counter
Soviet superiority, and manpower, and tanks,
with American superiority when it came to nuclear armaments.
- As Robert Oppenheimer told the army in his lecture
in the early 1950s, they were always too big.
How do you make them little?
And if you make them little,
does that put everything at risk of
crossing what was an increasing barrier
between conventional weapons, as we now call them,
and nuclear weapons?
- [NEWSCASTER] Mr. President, Bob Frank, CBS News.
Yesterday at his news conference,
Secretary of State Dulles,
indicated that in the event of general war in the Far East,
we would probably make use
of some tactical, small atomic weapons.
Would you care to comment on this
and possibly explain it further?
- Well, in any combat
where these things can be used on strictly military targets
and for strictly military purposes,
I see no reason that they shouldn't be used
just exactly as you'd use a bullet or anything else.
- Can't we design some that could be used by the army?
Remember, Eisenhower was an army man,
he wasn't an Air Force pilot,
he was concerned that the army had the benefit
of these very powerful, and efficient, and lightweight,
relatively speaking, explosives.
Therefore, he commissioned all sorts of efforts
to find ways to make
battlefield-scale nuclear weapons.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
- The battleground of the future
may well be a nuclear battleground,
and the nuclear weapon is perhaps the greatest challenge
to the foot soldier in military history.
The United States Army believes
it is a challenge that can be met
and that today's soldier has a chance of surviving
this new weapon, just as the soldier of the past
was able to survive the weapons of his day.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC] [GUNFIRE ECHOING]
- [ARMY INSTRUCTOR] Keeping in mind that your first
priority, as always,
is to perform your assigned task,
now let's see what protective measures you can take
against an atomic attack.
For atomic defense, you need a deeper hole than usual.
Have a minimum of three feet between ground level
and the top of your body in crouching position.
The sides may crumble,
but this foxhole will give you very good protection
against flying missiles, heat, and radiation.
Have faith in your leaders,
they will ensure that you do not get more radiation
than is absolutely necessary.
[EXPLOSIONS ECHOING]
Your weapons and equipment
may also be contaminated by radioactive fallout.
[EXPLOSIONS ECHOING]
If your immediate assignment requires their use,
go ahead and use them.
The risk of not carrying out your job
will be more critical than the amount of radiation you get.
You can decontaminate your equipment in the field
by sweeping or scraping it down.
- Today, the army is training its soldiers
against possible nuclear warfare,
and teaching them the most effective methods of defense
against atomic attack.
There is no minimizing the potency of the nuclear weapon,
but today's soldier,
well-informed as to the nature of that weapon,
and well-trained in test explosions
over the last few years,
has a better chance of survival on the atomic battlefield.
[PENSIVE MUSIC]
- [NARRATOR] In November of 1952,
an event took place which was to have a profound effect
on the scientific and political climate of the world.
This event was the detonation of Ivy Mike,
the first full-scale test of a thermonuclear device.
The blast produced a flood of neutrons.
In an instant, experiments were exposed
to more than 10 times the neutrons
that similar experiments could be exposed to
by a nuclear reactor in a year.
This got the interest of some
in at least two separate fields,
that of bomb design
and the associated diagnoses of bomb performance,
and those in interested in collateral effects,
the incidental reaction to material
and people in particular.
The experimental hydrogen bomb test verified
that an extremely high flux or surge of neutrons
had occurred within the Ivy Mike detonation.
- What comes off?
Well, a lot of different kinds of radiation,
but one of the most prominent kinds,
an enormous flux of neutrons,
and these neutrons in turn,
as the scientist Philip Morrison commented about
our first big test,
those neutrons produced every element on the periodic table,
and a bunch of manmade elements
all the way up through from 92 to 116,
on the now bigger periodic table of manmade elements.
- [NARRATOR] Intrigued, the Atomic Energy Commission
established a study program
to investigate this particular characteristic
of nuclear weapons.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
Several subsequent events
would help to shape the development of the neutron bomb.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
Castle Bravo,
the largest nuclear test conducted by the United States,
exploded,
delivering a promptly lethal dose of radioactive fallout
to more than 6,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean,
injuring the Marshall Islanders and some Japanese fishermen
caught inside the danger zone.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
[SOMBER MUSIC]
In response to the public alarm over fallout,
Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the AEC,
requested both weapon laboratories
to investigate the possibility
of reducing radioactive fallout
through designing clean multi-megaton weapons,
relying almost entirely on fusion.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- I have been visited by people
that certainly, by reputation and common knowledge,
are among the most eminent scientists in this field,
among them, Dr. Lawrence and Dr. Teller.
What they're working on is this:
the production of clean bombs.
They tell me that already,
they are producing bombs that have 96% less fallout
than was the case in our original ones,
or what they call dirty bombs.
But they go beyond this.
They say, "Give us four or five years to test
each step of our development,
and we will produce an absolutely clean bomb
so that the weapon becomes completely military
in its application.
If you use it on the battlefield,
you will have an effect only so far as its blast
and heat waves reach,
and there will be no fallout to injure
any civilian or anyone,
any innocent bystanders that are off for X miles
or the necessary distance to get out
of the area of heat and blast."
Moreover, they go to say this:
"If you are going to get the full value
out of the atomic science in peaceful development,
that is, let us assume that there are no more bombs
made or used,
and you want to make certain
that you are getting the best out of this new science
for the peaceful uses of mankind,
these tests must go on."
- [NARRATOR] The weapon laboratories vigorously pursued
clean nuclear weapon technology,
which would minimize fission
in favor of radioactively cleaner fusion.
This would be an important step
toward development of the neutron bomb.
However, success in developing clean nuclear weapons
wasn't easy.
At first, only extremely large nuclear bombs
could be made clean.
The government tested such devices in the Pacific
as part of Operation Redwing in 1956.
Conducted at Bikini Atoll,
these megaton tests were over 200 times
the yield of the bomb which leveled Hiroshima,
and of which the majority of the explosive force
was considered clean from fusion.
These weapons could only be considered clean
when compared to their dirty counterparts,
yet still included tens of
kilotons of fissionable material.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
The military needed small low-yield weapons
for the future battlefields of Europe,
small tactical weapons in the fractional kiloton range,
only a thousandth the size of the Nagasaki atomic bomb.
But these were still radiologically dirty devices
and their fallout threatened collateral damage
for allied troops on the battlefield.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
Meanwhile, testing continued with tactical fission bombs
for the battlefield.
The government tested competing designs
for the Davy Crockett battlefield nuke.
During these tests,
pigs placed in tactical environments
were used as biological targets
with immediate lethality from radiation
as the principal objective.
[BOMB EXPLOSION ECHOING] [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[EXPLOSION ECHOING]
- Can you move it up a little bit?
Thank you.
I'd like the first slide, please.
Our primary objective was to determine
the immediate lethal response to the Humboldt device.
Next.
Here are the animals 12 minutes after detonation.
You can see that they hardly move at all.
This one was very close to the front of the APC at 25 yards,
and he is manifesting Central Nervous System Syndrome
due to the acute central nervous system radiation injury.
Next.
All of these animals have received an average dose
of 40,000 rads.
Next.
They were all alive for at least two and a half hours.
You can obviously see how stunned these animals are.
Next.
This is pure prompt neutron gamma radiation injury.
We've been getting requests from commanders repeatedly,
concerning how much radiation it takes
to kill a human immediately,
or how much radiation it would take
to stop an infantry man in his tracks,
or to prevent him from driving a truck,
or prevent him from pulling a trigger.
Obviously, no one can give an exact answer on this
with respect to human beings.
The group decided a person had to be 10% efficient
just to pull a trigger.
To assault a position with any hope of survival,
he should be 90% efficient.
If a commander is interested in incapacitating
50% of a group of troops
so that 50% of them cannot pull a trigger,
3,000 rads would be necessary.
If the commander were interested,
say, in a period of one hour,
he would have to deliver 10,000 rads to incapacitate
50% of these troops so that they couldn't pull a trigger.
Now at eight hours, the dose is reduced again
because radiation sickness has taken over,
and by 24 hours, 1,000 rads would've sufficed initially.
Now, with respect to killing immediately,
no one knows how much radiation it would take
to kill 50% of the unit within 5 minutes.
The dose would certainly be most fantastic.
At 30 minutes, it is estimated that the dose
would still be greater than a 100,000 rads.
Are there any questions?
Anthony?
- You see, here's the problem.
Immediate lethality only occurred where the test subjects
would've been killed by the force of the blast anyway.
If you're gonna weaponize radiation,
you want it to incapacitate the enemy immediately,
not two days or a week later.
- [NARRATOR] Enter Sam Cohen,
the architect of the neutron bomb
who began his career at Los Alamos,
providing the neutron calculations
for the Fat Man atomic bomb.
- Real early on,
I began to see radiation,
nuclear radiation,
as an effective means of waging ground warfare
in a relatively moral way.
- [NARRATOR] The army called for the use of atomic weapons
to break the stalemate in the Korean War,
advocating field tests
to establish a doctrine for battlefield use.
[GUNFIRE ECHOING]
[EXPLOSION ECHOING]
- And I was dispatched as an observer,
to see what was happening there,
and then in the back of my mind,
wonder about the applications of tactical nuclear weapons.
[HEAVY ARTILLERY FIRE]
But now here I was, in the middle of a war going on,
and I saw the hideous carnage of the innocents,
and destruction of their habitats,
and their industries, you know,
and all the structures that made their lives viable.
And this was all done by non-nuclear weapons,
and we did just as good a job with our conventional weapons
as the bomb that leveled Hiroshima did,
so-called Little Boy bomb.
What Seoul looked like
when I entered Seoul for the first time,
it looked almost exactly like Hiroshima after the bomb.
[SOMBER MUSIC]
And in wandering around the countryside
and seeing the awful state of the peasantry
and seeing how they were affected by the war
and by our weaponry,
and that's what it's always been about,
and it's immoral,
it's just plain immoral.
Now, excuse me,
it's not irrational
because that's what war has always been about.
Use the biggest bombs you can,
blast the living daylights outta all these goddamn cities,
which is precisely what we did at World War II.
And we did a beautiful job
against Germany and Japan
with fire bombs and large high-explosive bombs,
and we killed countless,
hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
of innocent urban dwellers,
and that ain't right.
That's immoral, but that's the way it was fought.
[SOMBER MUSIC]
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
That's just the way that war was,
and I was all for it,
and I'm not about to damn myself
and condemn myself
for the attitude that I had, it was typically American.
You blast the bad guys into oblivion,
and bad guys being men, women, and children.
I had not a feeling of wretchedness, of guilt.
Not in the slightest.
This began to put a little sense
of what I would call normal decency, into me.
Namely, if you wanna go to war, and sometimes you have to,
try and keep it as clean as you can.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
So we drove into Seoul
and we had to drive across a bridge on the Han River.
And this bridge looked like it had a case of smallpox,
it was just cratered
as a result of countless high-explosive bombs
that had pocked it up.
But it was never destroyed, it was built so firmly.
And so, the first question I asked myself,
suppose we dropped a nuclear weapon on that bridge.
It would go into the river.
Now, that bridge was a very important part
of our military exercises,
and so it was a real military asset,
so I began getting ideas.
But now, from a moral standpoint,
see, I would not have regarded the destruction of that bridge
as immoral, because it could have been done
with a very low-yield,
accurately delivered nuclear weapon.
[EXPLOSION ECHOING]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
And it would not have destroyed the town of Seoul
or anything else like that,
it simply would've destroyed the bridge.
- But while the phones are ringing off the hook tonight,
this is a very interesting topic.
Do you think that using a neutron bomb,
is that a moral issue?
Because Sam Cohen,
he talks about how he felt that it was a moral weapon
to use this on somebody else.
- [CALLER] I think drones are the way to go myself.
- [PETER KURAN] Maybe I could fill in.
- All right, well, thank you so much, Sam.
We have another caller.
Well, thank you. Thank you for calling.
Do you think that it's a moral issue, the neutron bomb?
I'm stuck on this moral issue. We have a caller on the line.
This is a Jim from Orange County.
- [JIM] Hi.
- Are you familiar with the effects of a neutron bomb?
And it's not just- We're not just
talking about an immediate death.
This is horrific.
[TELEPHONE BEEPING]
All right, Jim, well thank you very much for your call.
Wow, pretty interesting, huh?
They love or hate this guy.
- I went to work for a very famous Air Force General
who masterminded our ICBM development,
and that's Benny Schriever, General Bernard Schriever.
And here's a guy who would devise
a thermonuclear, a ballistic missile,
that would've killed God only knows how many millions.
[PATRIOTIC MUSIC]
But at the same time, regarding the battlefield,
he began hammering at me.
See, I was his nuclear advisor,
he was running a planning shop
for the Air Force and the Pentagon.
He began hammering on me: "Sam,"
he says, "Why don't you give me a weapon
that will produce all these horrendous effects
on innocents?"
He says, "It's the logical thing to do."
Now, what I had to do is I had to look for a warhead
that had the necessary characteristics,
and so I used to pay very frequent visits
up to the Livermore Nuclear Laboratory
in Northern California.
And I'd always visit with the director of the lab,
we were very good friends,
and I'd ask him if there was anything new
in your developments.
Well, this particular visit, he said yes.
He said, "But I'm not quite sure if you'd be interested."
I said, "Why are you hesitant about my interest?"
He says, "This is a nonmilitary warhead.
This is for peaceful applications
for the so-called Project Plowshare."
You know, "Turn swords into plowshares."
[PROJECTOR WHIRRING]
- [NEWSCASTER] The United States is conducting,
for the benefit of all nations,
a program it calls Plowshare.
- The great and violent power of nuclear explosions
can be used for peaceful purposes.
We call this Project Plowshare.
Geographical engineering,
move great amounts of earth, build canals, harbors,
use nuclear explosives
like high explosives have been used,
for the purpose of mining.
Use nuclear explosives in the bowels of the earth,
using the earth itself as the crucible.
We built up a physics laboratory
right down there in the salt mine,
to find out more about the neutrons
which make nuclear explosives and nuclear reactors tick.
We try to do the best
to develop further, this great tool, nuclear energy,
for peaceful purposes.
But at the very outset
we were convinced of one thing,
the most interesting thing that we might find out,
maybe something which no one expects, a surprise.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
- And I really wasn't all that much interested
in the peaceful application of nuclear devices,
and he called the project heads of two projects
who were working on these clean, peaceful nuclear weapons,
to come in and brief me on these weapons.
And when they were through briefing-
see, they were thermonuclear, fusion, not fission.
When they were through briefing me, I asked them,
I said, "How many neutrons come out?"
And they said, "Well, we have to make a quick calculation."
And the answer was
essentially, all of the neutrons came out,
they weren't absorbed in the device.
Well, with that I said, "Thanks a lot,"
and I excused myself and I raced for the airport,
went back to Santa Monica
and to the Rand Corporation where I was working.
I went up to my office and I took out a slide rule
my Dad had given me on my 15th birthday
when I had displayed an interest in science,
and I made the necessary calculations.
I knew how to make neutron calculations real good.
And lo and behold, what came out of these calculations,
was a weapon, that if burst at a proper altitude,
would kill the bad guys underneath
but spare the properties,
the cities and towns of the good guys.
And vóila! Here is how the neutron bomb came about.
- What would someone expect to feel or experience
from the effects of the neutron bomb?
- It all depends how close you are to the burst point.
[PENSIVE MUSIC]
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
If you're roughly 1,000 yards away,
you, within a matter of minutes,
are going to be rendered totally incapacitated,
and physiologically, you will be
one of the most miserable creatures imaginable.
You will be vomiting your guts out,
your head will be bursting
as your central nervous system
has been knocked out of order.
And within a matter of
less... considerably less than an hour,
you'll be dead.
But within a matter of minutes,
you'll be unable to conduct combat operations.
So you're gone.
If you go a few more 100 yards out,
then you can pick up a nonlethal dose
that will still have effects on you.
And you'll survive it,
you'll live through it,
but you will not feel very well
and you'll feel disoriented.
You won't be violently ill
like the poor guy at 1,000 yards,
but nevertheless, you will not be physically
or mentally capable of conducting combat operations.
So if you're talking about a tank crew
that picks up this dose,
they won't be able to work their tank for a while.
Now, if they were out of the combat theater,
I'd say, well, fine and dandy, they'll pull through,
they won't be very happy for a while.
The dose is far less than the dose that produces
these God-awful, hideous effects,
but it will still have the desired military result
of putting an enemy soldier out of action...
because the neutron bomb
is the most discriminate weapon ever devised.
There's a very sharp cutoff
between the radius out to which the enemy will be killed
and where the friendly troops are positioned.
After the war is over,
instead of having a continent of devastation,
physical devastation,
it'll be a physically intact continent.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
From a radioactivity standpoint,
the radioactive effects will be,
to a first approximation, zero, zilch,
and the area that's under the burst
will be inhabitable immediately.
And if the burst is used in a city
and the populace has taken common-sense steps
to protect themselves by taking shelter
against the radiation, the neutron radiation...
[EXPLOSION ECHOING]
then they won't be touched.
- [NARRATOR] Further developments of the neutron bomb
would have to wait
as Eisenhower imposed a moratorium on nuclear testing
through the end of his presidential term.
Undeterred by the moratorium,
Sam continued his research with fellow strategists
at the Rand Corporation,
whose responsibility was to formulate
and shape military policy.
At Rand, Sam continued to pursue his vision of a bomb
that would one day weaponize neutron radiation.
- I went into analysis, strictly Freudian,
and this went on for about six years,
and it was six of the most agonizing
yet fascinating years of my life,
because thanks to listening to myself,
because I had no choice,
see, now I have the analyst
and the son a bitch, he would just sit there
and he wouldn't say a word.
I was, to a certain extent,
and this would vary from individual to individual,
a neurotic.
I wasn't a psychotic,
at this stage of the game, I might say.
I was employed in security work,
in doing nuclear weapons work,
and I had top secret clearances and so on and so forth,
so if I had been psychotic,
I never would've gotten the job, or let alone clearances.
I was working with a think tank
called the Rand Corporation,
which has become world famous,
in Santa Monica, California,
and I was in with a group of extremely bright guys,
to put it mildly.
They were not only bright
but to a very, very high percentage level,
they were neurotic as all hell, just like I was, okay?
And now, having this analytic background
and allowing me to understand people,
I began to see these guys
who were being driven by their neuroses.
Now, the Rand Corporation
had a huge effect on our nuclear policies.
They had it all figured out on computers,
and the computers were based on mathematical models,
and the mathematical models
were based on their neurotic way of thinking.
But they're with us.
Now, the question,
if push came to shove and we wound up in a nuclear war,
would it go according to these policies and strategies?
No.
Absolutely no way.
How would it go? Heaven only knows.
I don't.
Despite all the profound calculations by such geniuses,
as the late great Herman Kahn,
you know, the master of thermonuclear war and so on.
I would say Herman,
who had a huge effect on Washington thinking,
believed we could fight and win a thermonuclear war.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
What a pile of crap.
He pretended to really believe it.
Now, the truth of the matter is
he didn't believe it one bit,
but he was a natural-born showman
and he desperately needed attention.
- [ADVERTISER] Man looks not only to their great energy
but also to their relative size and cost.
He sees that a 10 kiloton nuclear explosive, for example,
could be as small as 15 inches
in diameter, and three feet long.
The price would be about $350,000.
Furthermore, if he increases the nuclear yield 200 times,
up to two megatons,
the package is only about two feet greater in diameter
and seven feet longer, and the price barely doubles.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
- I visited the Pentagon
and I was introduced to Tom Moorer,
who was a fledgling rear admiral
in charge of long range planning for the Navy,
by a colleague of his.
So I come into Moorer's office
and I take out my briefing charts
and I go through my song and dance,
and when I'm all through,
he has practically gone through the ceiling.
He really got excited and he said,
"Do you mind if I ask you to give your briefing
around certain quarters of the Navy in the Pentagon?"
I said, "Of course I don't mind.
You arrange for it and I'll show up."
And before you knew it,
you had an exponentiating chain reaction.
I had briefed every significant quarter
of the Navy in the Pentagon,
all the way on up to the Chief of Naval Operations,
and they wanted that bomb.
Thanks to the Navy pressures,
it worked its way out of the Navy
and into the office of the Secretary of Defense.
And there was this briefing in his conference room,
the Secretary's conference room,
and I was on stage with my charts,
and in the audience were a bunch of very senior characters,
you know, in the Pentagon, including an admiral
by the name of Arthur Radford,
who was then the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
And when I was all through, Admiral Radford muttered,
"If we only had these weapons at Dien Bien Phu,"
this was during the French war in Indochina.
And it would've been ideal for us in Vietnam.
Had we used these weapons in Vietnam,
we could have won that war in short order
and saved God only knows how many thousands upon thousands
of American soldier boys' lives.
- [NARRATOR] Throughout 1959,
Sam continued to pitch his fusion weapon concept
to various agencies of the government,
including the Department of Defense, the State Department,
the CIA, the Atomic Energy Commission,
and the National Security Council Planning Board.
It was during this time period
that this advanced weapon concept
became popularly known by the press as the "neutron bomb."
Generating the kind of hysteria that could only be created
by the premiere of a Hollywood movie,
news of the neutron bomb spread quickly.
As the revelation of this newly proposed weapon
raced across newspapers, television, and radio.
It took root in the political landscape
and resounded through Congress.
Connecticut's Democratic Senator, Thomas J. Dodd,
became the neutron bomb's most enthusiastic proponent,
telling Congress...
- [VOICEOVER] "We are in mortal peril.
More than a year has passed since I first spoke
on the folly of the test ban moratorium.
I mentioned the neutron bomb
would operate as a kind of death ray.
It would do next to no physical damage
and result in no contamination,
but it would immediately destroy
all life in the target area.
Today, I doubt there is a single nuclear physicist of repute
who would challenge the neutron bomb
from the standpoint of feasibility.
It can be built, but nothing can be done to build it
until we are free to resume nuclear testing."
- [NARRATOR] Responding to Senator Dodd,
Linus Pauling proclaims...
- We have had one principal reason
for hope during the last three years,
the negotiations for a bomb test agreement
being carried out in Geneva.
And now there is a great effort being made by the forces
of militarism in the United States,
to break off the negotiations in Geneva
and to start up bomb tests again.
The greatest foe of the peace movement
and the committee for a sane nuclear policy
is Senator Thomas J. Dodd.
He, in his speech on the 12th of May, 1960,
urged that we stop trying
to make an international agreement
to stop the testing of all nuclear weapons,
that the United States immediately resume
the testing of nuclear weapons,
and now he is bally-hooing what he calls a neutron bomb.
This is a great fraud.
Senator Dodd said, "If the Soviets were to get it first,
it might well cost us our freedom.
If the day should ever come
when the Kremlin forces a showdown crisis over Berlin
and then demonstrates its possession of the neutron bomb,
we would find ourselves confronted
with the price of capitulation in Europe
or all-out nuclear war."
This is pure poppycock.
The neutron bomb is a fraud, a hoax, and nothing more.
- [NARRATOR] Former Atomic Energy Commissioner,
Thomas Murray, sent an ominous letter
to presidential candidates Kennedy and Nixon,
warning that the Russians were developing
new types of atomic weapons
which could lead to nuclear blackmail
unless the United States was allowed to resume testing.
Murray identified two different weapons
on the drawing board,
whose code names were synonymous with the neutron bomb.
Contemplated as a battlefield weapon,
Eisenhower eventually had reservations
about the concept of the neutron bomb.
- He didn't like it.
For his own, I consider to be, grossly immoral reasons,
didn't believe in battlefield nuclear weapons
regardless of how discriminate they might be.
Even though he had these thousands
of nuclear weapons under his command,
battlefield weapons, tactical weapons, under his command,
I don't think he ever would've made that call.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
We'll never know.
- Our military organization today
bears little relation to that known
of any of my predecessors in peace time,
or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts,
the United States had no armaments industry.
American makers of plowshares could,
with time and as required, make swords as well.
[EXPLOSION ECHOING]
But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation
of national defense.
We have been compelled to create
a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
In the councils of government,
we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought,
by the military-industrial complex.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry
can compel the proper meshing
of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense
with our peaceful methods and goals.
- [NARRATOR] Soon after Eisenhower left office,
the newly elected president and NATO allies
were faced with renewed threats over West Berlin
by the Soviet Union.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
On August 30th, 1961,
the Russians broke the nuclear testing moratorium,
culminating with the detonation
of a 57-megaton hydrogen bomb,
allowing the United States to proceed
with a new series of tests.
Many of those tests, conducted in the fall of 1961,
were designs considered for low-yield tactical use,
including continued development of the neutron bomb.
Despite its growing reputation
as the government's worst-kept rumor,
the neutron bomb was back in the news.
- [REPORTER] Mr. President,
there's been lots of talk recently
about the development of a neutron bomb.
Could you give us your estimate of the feasibility
of developing a weapon which would destroy human beings
without destroying real estate values?
- [PRESIDENT KENNEDY] No.
- [NARRATOR] Publicly, Kennedy refused to discuss
the neutron bomb.
Privately however, he debated the use of the weapon
he referred to as the "fusion bomb."
- [NEWSCASTER] These troops, forming a special task force,
were the first in our army's history
to engage in a tactical exercise
supported by live nuclear fire power.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[MUSIC INTENSIFIES]
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
[EXPLOSION ECHOING]
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
[PENSIVE MUSIC]
This field exercise was not a war gaming maneuver,
but rather a pre-designed demonstration
of the tactical employment of low-yield nuclear weapons
in conjunction with conventional weapons.
- [SOLDIER] By this time, I think the rest of the group
had all reached the same conclusion I had reached,
that some limited wars can best be fought
with a combination of conventional weapons
plus nuclear weapons, for appropriate tactical targets.
It could mean the difference between winning now
or fighting for months.
[PENSIVE MUSIC]
- [NEWSCASTER] In 1964,
important steps in this direction
were taken in experiments,
with nuclear explosives specially designed
to produce high-intensity neutron radiation,
the specific characteristic that promotes isotope formation.
In one hundred-millionth of a second,
more neutrons were released by each explosion
than could be released over decades
in the most efficient nuclear reactor.
The blast pumped these neutrons into targets of uranium,
producing isotopes of very heavy elements beyond uranium.
Eventually, Plowshare scientists hope to use
these heavier elements as targets in nuclear explosions.
- [NARRATOR] Over the next decade,
26 nuclear tests would be
conducted under Project Plowshare,
for the development of peaceful nuclear weapons.
The neutron bomb continued to be aided
by advancements in this technology.
The future looked bright for peaceful nuclear explosions,
but unrealized expectations
and public and political opposition
doomed the program to closure.
Plowshare quietly ended in 1977.
Without Plowshare,
the path the neutron bomb would take would be bumpy.
The neutron bomb found early success
as the warhead for the Sprint missile.
The SPRINT was an anti-ballistic missile, or ABM,
designed to explode and deliver a blast of neutrons,
rendering incoming ICBMs inoperable.
The Sprint was capable of hypersonic speeds,
reaching temperatures twice the melting point of steel,
[WHICH] would cause the missile to glow
as it shot through the atmosphere.
However, high costs,
questionable results,
and the lack of congressional support
retired the Sprint in 1975.
In the ever-changing world of defense,
Sam's advocacy for his neutron bomb
was falling increasingly on deaf ears.
[EXPLOSION ECHOING]
The Air Force favored its strategic programs,
like the ICBM and Long Range Bomber.
The Navy favored the Polaris
as its nuclear weapon of choice.
The army was preoccupied with the Vietnam War
and stewardship of the Sentinel ABM program.
[HELICOPTER ENGINES RUMBLING]
Lyndon Johnson had little interest
in Cold War confrontation,
as he reduced government support for many programs
to pay for the Vietnam War.
After Vietnam, the government and the military
returned to a strategy of flexible response,
reviving interest in tactical nuclear weapons.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- All right, you'll be working on this assignment in groups.
Barker, your group will develop plans
using only conventional weapons.
Fox, you have no restrictions,
you may use any weapons in the arsenal,
including nuclear ones,
against any targets you deem suitable.
Maloy, your group also has permission
to use nuclear weapons,
but you're restricted to using them
against tactical targets.
Our next get-together will be on Thursday
to receive your reports.
That's all, gentlemen.
- [NARRATOR] In 1973, the Army Chief of Staff
produced a memorandum
requesting a study to reexamine nuclear artillery.
The study requested radiation dose requirements
for incapacitating military personnel
and minimizing collateral damage.
- [NEWSCASTER] The goal is to establish
a valid and consistent model
from which military planners can predict the probability
of mission accomplishment
in a wide range of operational situations.
A project involving 10 primates was initiated
to determine gross performance efficiency
after irradiation.
The reactor is programmed and the subject positioned
to receive a mid-head dose
of approximately 10,000 rads of mixed gamma
and neutron radiation
in a period of about 50 microseconds.
These parameters approximate the dose and delivery rate
that might be anticipated
following the detonation of a nuclear weapon.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
[MONKEY SCREAMING SHRILLY]
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
[MONKEY SCREAMING GUTTURALLY]
- Hello there, are you conscious?
- Can you hear us?
Can you see this light?
- We'd like to ask you some questions. Is that okay?
- What was the last thing you remember before the blast?
Were you unconscious at any time?
If so, do you know for how long?
In the period immediately following the blast,
do you remember any inability to perform major functions?
If so, how long did that impairment last?
- Are you sick or nauseated?
Did you vomit after the attack?
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[MUSIC FADES]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
- Good evening.
The neutron bomb is back in the news.
- [NARRATOR] Senator Stuart Symington,
head of the Committee on Atomic Energy,
was a staunch opponent of the neutron bomb.
This opposition evaporated
when Symington retired from the Senate in 1976,
thereby opening the door to approval of the neutron bomb.
Quietly, the neutron bomb was reintroduced
into the energy department's budget request.
[RAPID TICKING]
The neutron bomb had reappeared
after secretly being inserted
into a House Appropriations Bill
during the Carter Administration.
- Do I have any questions?
[CROWD LAUGHING]
- How do you reconcile your decision
to go ahead with the neutron bomb
with your inaugural pledge
to eliminate all nuclear weapons?
Also, why didn't you know the money was in the bill?
And three, doesn't this escalate the arms race?
And I have a follow-up.
[CROWD LAUGHING]
- Well, it's a very serious question.
In the first place, I did not know it was in the bill.
The enhanced radiation or neutron bomb
has been discussed
and also has been under development for 15 to 20 years.
It's not a new concept at all, not a new weapon.
It does not affect our assault
or strategic weapons negotiations at all,
it's strictly designed as a tactical weapon.
Before I make a final decision
on the neutron bomb's deployment,
I would do a complete impact statement analysis on it,
I'll submit this information to the Congress.
But I have not yet decided
whether to approve the neutron bomb,
I do think it ought to be one of our options, however.
- [NARRATOR] Almost immediately,
funding from the neutron bomb faced opposition
by then Oregon Senator, Mark Hatfield,
who blocked finances for the weapon.
- I think that argument is the very reason
why we should be very reticent to embark upon this system,
because there's more of an invitation to use it
and to introduce it into conventional warfare.
- Some of the opponents of this particular bomb
seem to have discovered that radiation kills people.
They also seem to have discovered
that bombs kill people.
All weapons kill people.
Nuclear weapons are dangerous, there is no doubt about it.
The neutron bomb is no exception, it will kill people,
that's the express purpose of it.
- [NARRATOR] Initially, Carter opposed the neutron bomb,
which was on its way to being fitted for use
as an artillery shell
and as the warhead for the Lance Missile.
Although the Lance had been on the drawing board
since the mid 1950s,
and eventually introduced into the US arsenal,
it wasn't until 1977
when the Lance was ready to move into the production phase
for its neutron warhead.
- The six-kiloton device
was to be used in a tactical missile
called the Lance, a battlefield missile.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
[MISSILE WHOOSHING]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
Now, the army never wanted those damn things,
they never did from the very beginning,
but it was forced upon them by the president,
toward keeping a promise, okay?
Well, in design specifications
for how the weapon would be used,
it was to be exploded as close to the surface as possible
to avoid contact,
which might've produced
your large-scale radioactive fallout,
like a few hundred feet above the surface,
the reason being
the army never trusted radiation.
What it wanted was physical demolishment
of enemy tanks.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
The military did not want people to know
that it did not have a significant blast component.
That it had a reduced blast component, fine and dandy.
- [NARRATOR] The neutron bomb
would move from one conflict to another,
from the battlefields of Congress
to the front lines of Europe.
- That was where the battle would be fought,
but it was densely populated with human beings.
Germany in particular,
which was where the line was really drawn,
between east and west Germany, was densely populated.
How could you use nuclear weapons
without killing more friendly civilians
than enemy combatants?
The idea of a neutron bomb was
if you could suppress the blast and fire effects
of a nuclear weapon
and enhance the neutron effects of a nuclear weapon,
you might be able to have a weapon
that would kill those guys inside those tanks,
but with minimal damage to the German countryside.
Germany is a densely populated country.
The German leadership, really very early on
understood, as I think Helmut Schmidt said later on,
"One nuclear explosion in my country
and then the war would be over as far as we're concerned.
We'd stop, we wouldn't fight anymore,
because there's no point in
destroying our country to save it."
- [NARRATOR] NATO members could not agree on deployment
of the neutron bomb,
saying it is militarily useful but politically dangerous.
- And I can assure you that the SACEUR
would not ask for the use of those weapons
unless he projected
that the defense was no longer gonna be viable,
and therefore, we face two choices,
one to be overrun and to give up,
which is not very viable to me,
or two, to resort to the use of theater nuclear weapons,
which is also not very viable to me.
- [NEWSCASTER] The neutron bomb kills people
the same way monkeys are killed
in this armed forces laboratory,
by huge doses of radiation.
- [NARRATOR] While pressure erupted from all sides
and countries on the issue,
President Carter postponed production of the neutron bomb.
- And I'm looking forward to going to get some rest.
- [REPORTER] The Senate's saying it turned down
the neutron bomb by one vote today.
- Oh, did they? That's a matter I
haven't gotten into very deeply.
We'll look into it in the future.
- Do you think the neutron bomb is really essential?
- I don't know.
I'll see you later.
- [RONALD REGAN] The neutron warhead is a defensive weapon
designed to offset superiority
that the Soviet Union has on the Western front,
against the NATO nations.
You also have to remember
that those who are crying the loudest,
the Soviet Union,
and many of those who,
under the name of pacifism in Western Europe,
who are opposing things like this,
are really carrying the propaganda ball
for the Soviet Union.
- President Reagan,
many people don't realize this,
came to office with a personal dream
that he had been pursuing ever since 1945,
to get rid of all the nuclear weapons in the world.
That was the famous summit at Reykjavík in 1986.
But he was shrewd enough to realize
that he would have to start by
building up the US military to such a high level
that no one, domestically or on the Soviet side,
could claim he was weak on defense.
So the first thing he did was double the US defense budget,
and in doing so,
they had to go to the farthest reaches of their dream book
that they could use to spend all that money on.
And I think the reason
the neutron bomb reemerges a little bit
during the early years of the Reagan Administration,
we got all this money, the president wants us to spend it,
okay, let's throw that back into the mix,
maybe we should work on that a little more.
- Yeah, that was one of his principal themes
and he promised, you know, if elected president,
"I will develop and stockpile that weapon."
And he kept his promise, incidentally,
but he went back on it from the following standpoint.
He was stockpiling in the United States, not in Europe,
It was the only place
where they could have been of any good.
And the reason being
is that the Europeans, who were really detested my bomb,
wouldn't have anything to do with it.
[DISTORTED CROWD NOISE]
I put up a big holler,
and you know how much good that did me?
On the positive side, zero.
On the negative side, a lot of harm.
As a matter of fact,
the fellow who really ran the Air Force,
the famous infamous General Curtis LeMay,
he tried to crush me
and bring my briefings to a halt.
- But LeMay, as well as the other Air Force generals
who were part of strategic Air Command,
had a distinct preference,
not so much for small-scale tactical nuclear weapons,
but for the large, strategic nuclear weapons
that they wanted to use to lay waste to Soviet cities
and Soviet industrial infrastructure.
- General LeMay wanted all the bombs,
and he wanted big bombs,
the bigger the better,
because his idea of how to prevent
an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union
was to attack the Soviet Union
before they could attack us,
either in the final minutes of a conflict
before it went nuclear,
or God knows, as a preemptive war,
which was seriously discussed.
- Now, really and truly, from the very beginning,
the army never wanted battlefield nuclear weapons.
Never.
The reason being,
they had done some studies
which they decided to take seriously
for political reasons,
that showed it was impossible to fight
a battlefield nuclear war in Europe
without wiping out half of Europe
and contaminating the other half.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- The idea of a weapon that would just kill people
and leave the neighborhood intact, so to speak,
had a really bad smell to it, for most people.
It sounded like
what had gone on in Nazi Germany in the Second World War,
if you will.
Let's just kill everybody around
and then we'll take over their buildings,
and their houses, and their factories, and so forth.
So from that point of view, if you will,
I'm sure the Pentagon thought of that
as a public relations problem.
- [NARRATOR] A month after the surrender of Iraqi forces
in Operation Desert Storm,
President George H.W. Bush moved unilaterally
to denuclearize the US Army, including the neutron bomb.
- I am announcing today, a series of sweeping initiatives
affecting every aspect of our nuclear forces on land,
on ships, and on aircraft.
I'll begin with the category
in which we will make the most fundamental change
in nuclear forces in over 40 years.
Non-strategic or theater weapons.
I'm therefore directing that the United States
eliminate its entire worldwide inventory
of ground-launched, short-range,
that is, theater, nuclear weapons.
We will bring home and destroy
all of our nuclear artillery shells
and short-range ballistic missile warheads.
- We have zero,
thanks to two guys.
General Colin Powell
who advised President George Herbert Walker Bush,
this is right after the Persian Gulf War,
to get rid of all of the battlefield nuclear weapons.
He didn't need them, he didn't want them,
and so Bush put forth an edict,
destroy all of these weapons.
And so, here were all these thousands of weapons
which were destroyed, including my neutron bomb.
[PENSIVE MUSIC]
For the time being, it's gone for all time.
[SOMBER MUSIC]
[KEYBOARD KEYS CLICKING]
What I've always told myself,
it's not a question of if, but when.
The bombs that I've been discussing
are the bombs we've actually developed,
and so I've talked about their nature,
and their effects, and so on and so forth,
but let's talk about another bomb,
and I have a nickname for this.
I was the first guy to become aware
of this bomb and its implications,
and this bomb I call the Nothing Bomb.
It doesn't knock down buildings,
it doesn't contaminate the surface
over a huge area or anything else like that,
but there's one thing that it does do,
so it's not a totally nothing bomb.
It kills people with neutrons
from a device,
roughly speaking, the size of a baseball,
and a yield, not kilotons,
but at the ton level.
And that makes it the ultimate radiation weapon,
the ultimate neutron bomb.
And it was based, technically,
on a very exotic substance
to get the super effective explosives,
you know, for a peaceful application.
And it involves an explosive that didn't go bang,
instead what it did is it got extremely hot
and it glowed white hot,
and inside that glowing material,
the pressures were enormous beyond imagination.
They were comparable to the temperatures and pressures
that existed in the inside of the sun.
Now, you know what the sun does,
it produces thermonuclear reactions
where the ingredients are the two heavy forms
of hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium,
which are the same ingredients of a regular neutron bomb.
This one is pure fusion.
And would you like to know something?
Despite all of these treaties and agreements we've reached
regarding nuclear arms control,
for a country to produce these kinds of explosives
is strictly permissible.
Not one treaty that's ever come out,
not one agreement that's ever come out,
has forbidden the development of such devices.
[SINGER VOCALIZING] [ENERGETIC MUSIC]
So I don't claim any God-given uniqueness
as being the only one on Earth
that really understands what this business is all about.
I don't. I never have and I never will.
It's not about logic and it's not about rationality,
and I'll add one, it's not even about sanity.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
[DISTORTED VOICE]
My thinking along nuclear weapon lines
and what kinds of weapons ought to be developed
and stockpiled and so on,
has been my moral view of the subject of nuclear weapons,
and their use, and how they oughta' be used.
I'm being more than a little bit overly pompous here,
in acclaiming my morality,
because I ain't that moral.
You know, I've still got a lot of meanies inside of me,
but good, despite all the years of psychoanalysis
that I went through.
But I'm, relatively speaking,
whether you wanna make about morality,
a moral- a far more moral person
than I was before the analysis.
And not only more moral, but more rational.
[TELEPHONE RINGING]
- And we have Ray on the line and she had a question.
Ray, what's your question?
- [RAY] My question is,
why do I need to wait for 18 hours to die?
Why can't I just like, up and die?
Would it be better if one had a gun
or if one had a supply of pills,
and then one would just down it and pass out
or shoot one's brains out
instead of suffering the 18 hours?
- I would say, you know, for me,
I'm just gonna get a bottle of Jack.